chronicles of she

jared and i have been waiting for this day to come for over a year now. it's monday, september 30th, 2013. a couple hours ago i woke up and dropped jared off for his first day of bike school.

jared is taking a five week course learning how to weld a bicycle frame from scratch, as well as the advanced mechanics of the bicycle.

(a little over) a year ago we were moving ourselves to new york city for me to take a job i really had no desire taking. the beauty of mistakes is that we learn from them, monumentally learn from them. jared needed to remove himself from the hotel industry to realize he had no desire moving in that direction. new york was like climbing into a hot air balloon and letting it soar just high enough to see the possibilities. with no obligations holding us down, we couldn't have been in a better position to see clearly what direction we really wanted to go.

it was in new york that i realized i wanted to finish college as quickly as possible. it was in new york that jared realized he wanted to pursue a career with bicycles. we realized neither of these pursuits would realistically be obtained if we went any further with our new york plans. so with some disappointment and shock but a good deal of hope and optimism, we put on the brakes and did a u-turn. we literally picked up our suitcases and headed back to salt lake.

six months ago we paid tuition to the united bicycle institute and reserved a little basement apartment in portland for this month, october, while jared attends school. i have been taking classes since we came back to utah without a break and don't plan on taking one until i have a bachelor's degree. from even a little distance it may look like we gave up or chickened out of our plans to live in new york. but the truth is that we got a clearer picture of what we wanted long-term, not just what we wanted right then. and new york gave us that. so new york wasn't a mistake, and it wasn't a waste of time or money.

a month ago we moved out of our salt lake city apartment, the one featured on this blog this last year, the one i loved dearly. we put almost all of our belongings into a 5'x10' storage unit except a few suitcases of clothes and our bikes and spent the first three weeks of september living with my grandpa.

a week ago we embarked on a road trip through california and oregon. we headed straight through the nevada desert to san francisco. we spent three days there, staying in an airbnb at night. friday morning we woke up and drove the california coast until we found ourselves a campground in the redwoods. saturday we drove the rest of the california coast and then powered our way through to portland.

yesterday i realized i was sick, bonafide sick. i was unwilling to notice it the day before, or the day before that. because being sick, stomach sick, on a road trip is horrible as it is, but being stomach sick on a loooong road trip that had been planned for months and that was filled with gorgeous views and tight winding roads was just absolute torture. so i pretended not to be sick. but when we got into portland and finally crashed, man, it hit me. staving off two days of illness and letting it hit you all at once is a mind trip. yesterday is a blur of applesauce and rice and nausea and kaopectate and wimpering in bed.

today, i'm sitting in the coziest bed with the window open in that little basement apartment in portland, feeling better i think (still the thought of moving too quickly or bending over or food is a little nauseating), listening to beethoven, processing photos and videos, catching up on homework, looking forward to jared's lunch break around noon (gee, i love that guy), and noticing the sun shining so wryly in the window, it's rays landing on the bed, the first time it has graced us with an appearance since we've been here.

it very much feels like the last year of our lives has in many ways been leading up to now. and here we are, it's finally here! i'll have to fill you in on all the road trip details in upcoming posts because i took 9.8 million photos and probably a video since i can't work on school forever. stay tuned.