In the morning, I convinced Jack to join me for the morning bakery run. We decided to try a different bakery, and 20 min into the walk, it started to rain–and this rain was more like Malaysia rain than Idaho rain. A few minutes later, we were standing against a building watching a torrent of rain make rivers in the streets.

On Wednesday, we had a few things to accomplish. We needed to get some breakfast, get the plumber to fix the toilet, and then go to a cenotes we found online. It’s amazing to me how much time is spent on vacation thinking about where the next meal is going to come from, and how much time is spent walking to get it.

As it turns out, there were coffee filters in the house, but they were way back in a drawer. I woke up before everyone else and walked to a bakery for a coffee and a bunch of pastries. After I got home, I got everything out to make eggs for the kids to go with the pastries. I searched everywhere unable to find a lighter for the gas stove, so I took Abbie on my second long walk into town for a lighter. They didn’t have any long-handled ones, so I just got a normal lighter and walked all the way back. My 3 months of Duolingo didn’t help me at all. I ended up using google translate and a bunch of awkward hand gestures to communicate with the cashier. I was very grateful for the lighter, but disappointed that all my training failed to help me communicate.

The alarm went off at 2:15am–which is a time that is not normally associated with happiness. But we were excited to be going to Mexico, and we had a lot of bags to pack into the car. We got everyone up, dressed, and out the door by 2:45am. The drive to the Boise airport was uneventful, and we got there with plenty of time to spare. Too much, actually.

The HV bench test is finally happening. I’ve got most of the components I need, half of them are wired up, and getting to this point was more of an adventure than it had any right to be.