And We're Back!
It's been nearly a month since my last post; the blog break has been nice. I'm finally back in Seattle; I arrived last Thursday at 3:30am. The last month has been great. I'm not sure there's anything worth mentioning, but I'll give a quick run down of everything that I've been up to.
The drive from Phoenix to Las Vegas was pretty easy. There must be some sort of Airforce base in northern Arizona because I saw a ton of military aircrafts. That helped keep the drive interesting. I also made a stop at the Hoover Dam (and took a couple pictures). As expected, the dam was huge, impressive, and definitely worth the stop. But you wouldn't believe how many people I met in Las Vegas who said they wish they could visit the dam. Do they not realize it's a 40 minute shuttle ride out there? If you really want to see it, then go see it! :)
Anyway, the weekend in Las Vegas was fantastic. It's the first time I'd seen Jordan in well over a year. Parties, sun, weddings, losing money... all the essentials. No pictures, though. :) Actually, I put my camera away after the Hoover dam and haven't pulled it back out since. Guess that means my road trip was officially over at that point.
After Vegas I spent some time in the bay area, which is still one of the greatest places in the world. And you always learn something new there. I mean, did you know that America now celebrates "Indigenous People's Day"? I didn't know that either, but it's a valid holiday for parking meters. It turns out that Indigenous People's Day is actually the politically correct version of Columbus Day. How much money do you think they spent changing all the parking meters?
And finally it was time to come home. Having done the 13 hour trek from Seattle to San Francisco once before I had sworn to never, ever attempt a one day drive again. But I ended up hanging out in SF one day too long and was forced to pull a 2:00pm to 3:00am drive to Seattle. But I was in good form. I feel like the whole road trip was all preparation and this last drive was my final test. I passed with flying colors. Well it was actually a terrifying drive. I picked up a couple more boxes of stuff in SF which meant that my car was absolutely packed to the gills. It was, in my opinion, an impressive engineering to repack my car with those two additional boxes. My car was so packed, in fact, that I couldn't see anything out the right side. Couldn't see the blind spot, couldn't use my mirror, couldn't even look out the passenger window. Merging to the right felt like a game of Russian Roulette. I'd put my indicator on, wait for a few seconds, then slowly merge over, listening for the sound of a horn. Fortunately there were no accidents (that I know of, at least!)...
And now I'm back in Seattle. Jordan's wedding last weekend was definitely worth the drive up for; it was beautiful. And the weather over the weekend was probably 4 of the nicest days I've ever seen in Seattle. It was one of the best weekends I've had in a while and I'm now in a bit of a post-wedding funk. Well, post-road trip funk actually. Jordan's wedding was the last thing on my calendar and now I'm just ... free. A year ago I think I would have been terrified to be in this position, but I'm very okay with it now.
I don't know how long I can stay like this; when I'll break down rejoin the real world, but I'm happily planning out my next fantasy trip. I may not be all over the world right now, but I'll be back there soon enough. And I'm confident that my life will still be an adventure. And as long as I've got adventures to live, I've got stories to share. So this blog isn't going anywhere quite yet.