What Are You Doing New Year's Eve?

"...When the bells all ring and the horns all blow
And the couples we know are fondly kissing?" We were in a hotel with Anne, her boyfriend, Sean and Quentin blowing horns and spinning noise makers wearing funny hats. It was warm and lovely outside, and it was pretty low=key but perfect.
The morning consisted of our last California bike ride along the coast from Newport Beach to the Balboa peninsula and back. We packed out of that hotel to the one we had booked closer to Anne's for New Years.




We grabbed Anne and Quentin and took a hike through a nature preserve near her house, while Bill biked around the same park. More of what we wanted out of this vacation-- simply a chance to be outside and warm and active together.




We started the evening at Anne's house, then out to dinner and by the time dinner was over it was apparent that even though Anne had shipped her cat to another home for the week, it's presence had not been fully banished. All 4 of us terrible allergy sufferers were blotching and itchy and we moved the celebration to our cat-free hotel.



We talked and hung out and watched the ball drop and made lots of noise for about 5 minutes until Anne bolted to avoid the drinkers on the road and we put the boys down. Around 3 a.m. it was obvious the party had gotten out of hand for some of our hotel mates. We could hear yelling and screaming and glass crashing and one man's rampage down the hall. The next morning we saw a broken window and heard from the front desk that 3 hotel rooms in this brand new beautiful hotel had been totally demolished and that many arrests from those rooms had been made. It made our tame little "party" seem like a good choice in comparison.