They got me good. My dear man and our Georgia besties had been plotting a surprise birthday trip for most of 2025. And I had no idea. They were sneaky as fuck.
How to make Val grumpy (to put it mildly)
I wish I could say I was more gracious about the surprise. When I found out about this mystery trip, I have to admit I was not a happy camper.
By the time I learned about it, the “adventure” was only a couple of weeks out. When my dear man sheepishly mentioned I’d scheduled a gallery shift during our mystery winter trip he had on the calendar, my response was “What the ever-loving fuck are you talking about?”
It turns out he’d put this “mystery winter trip” placeholder on our shared calendar but it was somehow accidentally marked private. So I hadn’t seen it and was going about my merry way with life.
At any rate, in my life as it stood at that point, I was booked solid 3-4 months out. So you didn’t just get on my calendar. Shuffling calendar shit around was like trying to solve the Theory of fucking Relativity.
So I embraced my inner Einstein and somehow got things moved, canceled, etc. The dependencies were extreme—the calendar equivalent of a house of cards.
Side note
I’d like to interject here that the calendar from hell is not a badge of honor. It’s not some self-serving humblebrag. And I’m not advocating “busy-ness” as an honorable life goal.
It was just my reality at the time in start-up mode for Southwest Art Towns on top of my obligations as an exhibitor at a local art gallery and all sorts of other things related to running your own business.
I was hella stressed and over-extended. I’ve made significant life changes since then to rectify the situation. But I’m still working on it and fixing a shit show like this is a long play. Like, really long.
I have a lot more thoughts on the whole “busy” life motif but that’s a post for another time.
Ok, back to the story.
How to make Val grumpy–Part 2
When I finally found out about the trip, I knew nothing other than we would be traveling. That was it. And it was only a couple of weeks out.
My brain went into overdrive. What was he planning? And why the secrecy? There must be others involved. The only people I could imagine would have been our dear friends in Georgia—Leslie and Jim.
But they couldn’t get away in December! On top of their real estate businesses, they run the Farmhouse Inn. And it’s a demanding business, especially in the holiday season. If there is anyone who is more over-extended than me, it’s them.
So not only did I not know who was involved in these shenanigans, I had no idea where we were going. Which meant I had no idea how to pack. My dear man gave me some guidance but that only raised more questions.
Are we taking the bikes or the truck? That’s unknown? Fucking great. How am I supposed to know how to pack? Those are two entirely different travel scenarios.
Did I need camera gear? Yes.
Ok, all of it? Some of it? Do I need a tripod? Which bodies? Which lenses? (I have a lot of camera gear—it’s an occupational hazard.)
What kind of clothing, layers, shoes, etc. do I need to bring?
Are we camping? Staying in a hotel?
Those details were minor compared to having no idea how I’d be able to manage work shit.
Will we have internet access?
How busy will we be?
What do I need to make sure is handled work-wise before we go?
Will I have time to manage things? A little? A lot?
So. Many. Questions.
Trust
In the end, my dear man asked me to trust him. And I did. But that doesn’t mean I was happy—or comfortable—with it under the circumstances.
With all of the stressors and unknowns, the fun-factor was pretty low for me. At a different time in my life, I could have rolled with it. At the time, not so much.
I learned later it hadn’t occurred to them that I didn’t know about the trip. They thought my lack of questions up until I actually found out about the trip was just me being super-chill about it. That should have probably been their first clue. “Chill” was not happening in my life then.
Extra layers of not-fun
Through all of this I was pursuing foot surgery to deal with a couple of issues, one of which is the fact that I can barely bend my big toe thanks to some fuck-all gnarly bone spurs. When I finally decided I was going to go for it and began the scheduling process (I’m quite surgery-averse), I thought it would be a month or so before the big day. Nope. It would be the next week.
Little did I know that behind the scenes Leslie and J. were trying to work around my recovery from timing standpoint for the trip as well as our activities. Leslie was coordinating a tour of the Ladder Ranch for us without knowing if I would be able to walk at all and what kind of accommodations I’d need.
Of course, I had no idea this was happening in the background. I was only approaching the surgery crap from a managing my day-to-day life perspective, not a managing fun travel perspective. (And trying not to be a whiny little bitch about having to be off the bike for a couple of months, to be honest.)
Then, insurance struck. Once the surgery was scheduled, the folks at the podiatrist’s office began the insurance approval process. Keep in mind, this is only a week out from the procedure.
As I’m frantically making plans to manage the travel and other logistics of the surgery (this isn’t really something I can do locally in my small town), I got a call saying that with deductibles and whatnot, my out of pocket would be $9,000.
My response? The fuck it is.
So I spent a few days navigating that bombshell trying to salvage the procedure so I can get some relief from the constant fucking pain. (Apparently the ability to walk is considered “elective” in the insurance world. But let’s not go down that rant-hole right now.)
In hindsight, I now know that J. and Leslie were in their own secret swirl of chaos trying to manage the unknowns throughout this in a scenario that was changing constantly, hour-by-hour.
In the end, it was no surgery for Val. At least not until I can find away to get that price tag down. (For the record, that’s still in progress and I’m still miserable with an increasingly dysfunctional foot.)
Clues
In the eleventh hour, Leslie showed her hand. We’d been orchestrating one of our semi-routine virtual happy hours but she was cagey about it. Then out of the blue she called. That was a major red flag.
We don’t “chat” on the phone. We message each other. We share bite-sized updates that don’t show up on social media, arrange our video happy hours, send silly goat videos. That kind of thing. But we don’t talk on the phone.
So my initial reaction when the phone rang and her name came up on the caller ID was that something was majorly wrong. Like I-need-to-get-my-ass-on-a-plane-to-Georgia-right-fucking-now wrong. She scared the ever-loving shit out of me.
Once I realized she called for no ostensible reason, I essentially had confirmation she was the one behind this mystery trip. And once I relaxed that there wasn’t some major catastrophe, we had a great chat. Go fig.
The journey
By now you’re probably thinking “For fuck’s sake Val, what about the damn trip?”
Well, it was great. Eventually.
Through the last-minute preparations, I managed to get enough information from J. to get packed and out the door. It ended up being a truck trip rather than a motorcycle trip which made the packing a much less challenging task.
Keep in mind though, we’re rolling out of the driveway and I still have no fucking idea where we were going. Given that the trip was only five days and we were driving, there was an obvious distance limit. But other than that, I was relegated to detective mode to suss it out and eliminate possibilities as we drove.
J. pointed us east and we made over way over the gorgeous Black Range which eliminated a huge chunk of destination possibilities. But my brain was still swirling.
Were we headed to Truth of Consequences? We were just there for my birthday ride which we’d done early thinking I’d be laid up for my actual birthday. So that didn’t seem super likely.
It couldn’t be Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Reserve which we’ve been wanting to explore more. J. told me I didn’t need a tripod which would be important there so that didn’t seem likely either.
Santa Fe? No, we would have left earlier in the day if we were going that far.
I was baffled.
Then J. threw me for a loop. He turned south in Hillsboro, pointing us towards the Las Cruces/Mesilla area. All the pieces of the puzzle appeared to be coming together. Every time J. and I go to Mesilla, we talk about how much Leslie and Jim would love it.
Given everything up to this point in this trip insanity and being almost completely certain Leslie and Jim were the ones involved, I figured J.’s atypical route there was simply to throw me off the scent.
So I thought I had it figured out at that point. I was wrong.
The destination
So we’re cruising along and I’m feeling quite satisfied with myself for piecing the puzzle together and began looking forward to some time in Mesilla. Then out to the blue, J. pulls into Sparky’s in Hatch, the town known for New Mexico’s famous chile peppers and their annual Chile festival.
The fact that J. didn’t ask me where I wanted to go for lunch—or if I was even hungry yet—was another clue. Clearly this was part of the big plan. Sure enough, we walk into Sparky’s and who is standing at the counter but Leslie and Jim.
After the wave of being so fucking happy to see them subsided, more confusion set in. I got a lot of the backstory over lunch but it became evident Hatch wasn’t the final destination. So even with many mysteries solved at this point, I was still left wondering what was coming next.
As we stood in the parking lot and the three of them were trying to surreptitiously coordinate the next leg of the trip with me standing there, I caught a glimpse of one of their phones with the route highlighted on the map. Aha! We are going to Truth or Consequences!
I played it cool and pretended I didn’t know. And, in truth, I was still very much in the dark about where we were staying and what we’d be doing so only knowing the destination was only mildly helpful. I did know we were in for a good time with our friends though, so at that point I was hella on board with the whole trip.
Branching out
J. and I have been spending a decent bit of time in T or C over the last couple of years. Largely that’s been on behalf of our Southwest Art Towns project. And we’d just been there a few weeks earlier for the aforementioned early birthday trip—the one we took thinking I’d be in gimp mode after foot surgery.
On that last trip, we remarked that having the business budget to stay at the Sierra Grande hotel was a medium-term goal. We tend to stay at The Charles—a lower price-point motel that’s always an adventure.
Either way, we like staying downtown to be able to walk places. So being fairly familiar with the lodging options if T or C as we pulled into town, I was shocked that we rolled into the Sierra Grande. Not only that, we were staying in the two-bedroom casita on the property. And I have to tell you, it was glorious.
It was the perfect setup for two couples traveling together. And, quite frankly, to have a few nights in a house that’s not a construction zone was an enormous relief.
The next surprise
When J. and I are in T or C we tend to be hyper-focused on work stuff. Specifically, getting the word out about our Southwest Art Towns. So we zero in on artsy stuff these days.
But with Leslie in charge of plans, she forced us to break out of our little art-centric bubble by taking a tour of the Ladder Ranch. It’s one of Ted Turner’s properties located southwest of T or C.
It’s something J and I wouldn’t have sought out on our own as travelers. Especially since the start time was 7 am. Not exactly our rhythm. But of course it was totally worth it.
The tour was an all-day excursion via one of those side-by-side things I’ve never ridden in before. Leslie had chosen this type of excursion not knowing what my ability to walk would be.
Of course, this is where all of the question marks I’d had about the trip finally came together. And why J. said I needed camera gear but not a tripod. The high-speed, bouncy photography was certainly a challenge. And because I wasn’t mentally prepared, I pretty much hosed the photographic opportunity. And I’m still mad at myself for it. Probably always will be.
Rounding out the trip
The tour was the big highlight of the trip, of course. But the timing of this mystery adventure meant we were in town for T or C’s Second Saturday Art Hop. It’s quite a lively event and—being December—the Hop-goers were in a particularly festive mood.
Outside of the tour and the art hop, the rest of the trip was about having some face time with Leslie and Jim. And that’s in short supply these days—geographical challenges, professional demands, and all. So we ate our way through town and “partied” middle-aged style the rest of the time. Which means being in bed by like 10 o’clock.
And it was awesome. There are no other people we travel with so well. Partly because we learned long ago that we need to just step back and let Leslie be in charge and it always works out great.
Gratitude
I’m truly fortunate to have friends who will go to these lengths for me. And I’m mad at myself for being so stressed out that I struggled to ramp down and just roll with it. It’s testament to the power of stress to overtake our lives. And a hard lesson learned.
Leslie told me while on the trip that if she hadn’t made our face time happen, it wouldn’t have. And she was right, of-fucking-course. She’s always right.
