Home Sweet Home
Well it’s official, we are off on the grand adventure. On Tuesday, we moved out of our apartment, took the final boxes and Ryan’s road bike to the storage unit, said farewell to a few friends who wanted to send us off, and we drove out of San Francisco. Not before stopping at Comcast to return our modem of course. No matter how romantic I’d like to make this trip, there are the practicalities of life to deal with. Like dropping off the modem.
We hadn’t even made it out of San Francisco before we’d had 3 different people take photos of the camper and we had chatted thoroughly with each of them about the road trip and the camper in particular. It seems that people are into this adventure as much as we are, and also the biggest reaction so far from friends has been: It’s so much smaller than I thought it was going to be! Yes, the camper is a little tiny, but so far we love it.
After we drove out of the City, we headed south to Big Sur. It rained most of the way but traffic wasn’t too bad so we made decent time. By the time we arrived, though, it was dark and we were so exhausted from a week of moving and farewells and parties and family visits, that we just parked the camper in our campsite, brushed our teeth and immediately fell asleep.
And Wednesday when we woke up it was to the sound of the waves crashing against the shore and the sun peeping through the windows in the camper and it was so blissful. It also happened to be my 32nd birthday and I cannot imagine any other way that I wanted to ring in a new year on this Earth. We stayed for two nights at Kirk Creek campsites, which are right on the coast on the bluffs overlooking one of the beaches along Big Sur, just north of Gorda. It is a beautiful site and the weather couldn’t have been better. It seems to me that the universe was welcoming our adventure with sunshine and warmth and a nod to our risk taking. We spent the official first day of our trip in shorts and sunglasses, organizing the camper and the Subaru and exploring the surrounding coast.
If you have ever met Ryan (and most of you probably have given that most of the readers at the moment are friends and family), you know that he is a bit of a crazy person when it comes to being organized. Everything has to have its ‘home’ and it drives me absolutely insane (Me: where are my keys? HIM: I don’t know, where is their home? Me: [shooting daggers at him out of my eyes]). And so we spent the morning pulling everything out of the camper and the car and organizing it – much to the mirth of our fellow campers I’m sure, who thought my goodness they have a lot of stuff! After he was satisfied with our progress, we headed south and stopped in Cambria for lunch and reminisced about the weekend that we spent in that lovely little town for our first anniversary a couple of years ago.
SO. MUCH. STUFF.
It was a great birthday and I’ve got a pretty good feeling that 32 will be one of the best years yet.
Big Sur Sunset. No filter needed.
So, how was I feeling on Wednesday, on day 1 of the trip? I was not yet as excited as I thought I would be. I thought I would be positively bursting at the seams with excitement and anticipation and happiness. And I was and am quite happy and so looking forward to this sojourn of ours, don’t get me wrong, but not the kid-the-night-before-Christmas kind of excited. And that surprised me. I think it’s because I’m still trying to shake the anxiety and stress that I usually feel on a day to day basis, and I’m still feeling like I’ve got to rush through these experiences to get to the next. And somehow, unbelievably, I am feeling: how are we going to see it all and do everything in only 6 months? This is one of my biggest struggles – the feeling like there is never enough time to do all the things that I want to do, and so I rush through life, running from one task to the next, one activity to the next, and not fully enjoying the moment in the moment. And that is something that I hope to remedy on this sabbatical. Rome wasn’t built in a day and I am not going to be able to live in the moment in a day, but I am certainly working on it. And campfire brownies to celebrate my birthday certainly helped with that!
BY: Jackie
LOCATION: Big Sur, California
