The Past 2-ish Years
March 16, 2020
There’s a lot to cover in the past 2-ish years. I’ll try my best to keep this somewhat brief so we can move on to our global trek 2.0.
G left last the entry with us drinking wine in the Chilean airport lounge, in shock and trying to process that our year-long adventure was abruptly frozen after less than 6 weeks in.
My best friend had been texting me over the past week or so that if we needed a place to live for a while, we could live with her (we’ll call her A) and her husband (also our friend, we’ll call him E) in The Hudson River Valley, and that she had been buying extra food for us just in case the apocalypse was coming. I decided to use the business center in the lounge to look for tickets and managed to find a flight to New York that departed that night for about $700/person, flying with LATAM to Mexico City then United to Newark. Out of curiosity, we checked United’s site on our phones and those exact tickets were $5,000/person. I let A know our flight details and she reassured us she would be ready to pick us up when we arrived. LATAM fed us a delicious risotto dinner with wine. United tried to charge us $100/each for sitting in regular economy seats instead of budget economy, even though there were less than 10 people on the plane.
St Patrick’s Day, 2020
The Newark airport experience was such a stark contrast to the Lima airport experience. Rooms were empty. It took less than 10 minutes to get through security and customs. The TSA agent didn’t even check our passports to verify which countries we had been in and didn’t mention anything about Covid or quarantine. We hugged our friends, A and E, who picked us up and enjoyed the little snack pack they put together for us.
Our end goal was to travel again. We thought we may need to stay through 2-3 quarantine cycles before being able to relaunch. Little did we know it would be over 2 years.
St Patrick’s Day - Cinco De Mayo, 2020
Although we weren’t on our grand adventure, we were so lucky to be with friends and we actually rather enjoyed the beginning of Covid lockdowns. We went on many hikes in nearby state parks in the Shawagunks and Catskills, cooked dinners together, ate pancakes on Sundays, watched movies, went running (I went from detesting running to being able to run a 5k!), played games, planted a large garden, cuddled their dogs, hung out and became friends with their awesome neighbors next door, threw a themed 30th birthday party for E with the neighbors, etc. I even got to be the teaching assistant for A’s kindergarten class in a couple of video lessons.
As time went on, it became clearer and clearer that international travel would likely not be possible soon. Though our friends insisted we could stay, we decided to live with my brother and sister-in-law in Austin where all of our stuff was while we continued to wait to pick up our travels again. We were still holding on to hope.
May-July, 2020
When the world stood still and millions of people were isolated, we continued to appreciate being surrounded by our loved ones and realized how fortunate we really were. Our time in Texas was filled with morning workouts, weekly runs, walks, swims at the neighborhood pool, grilling on Sundays, movie nights, more cuddling and playing with dogs and their cat, and a few visits to state parks that were open. I hadn’t spent that much time with my brother since I was in high school and I will always be thankful for that time with him.
Late June rolls around. About 3 months had passed since our return to the US. Our previous employer contacts us and asks us if we would be interested in coming back as there had been a lot of unexpected growth in the company that year. Our gut reaction was, “no, we still want to travel”. We said we would think about it and get back to them quickly. Our thoughts led to us concluding that we wanted to be respectful of other countries; we knew many countries weren’t doing well and were actually stressed by tourists, so we didn’t want to add to that stress. Also, many places would be closed and who knew how many more lockdowns could occur. We were well aware of how quickly things could change. We decided we would return, and we would work in Omaha where our parents lived. We committed to at least a year of work. But we weren’t ready to give up on adventure quite yet!
July 2020
We flew up to Omaha for the 4th of July then went on a 3-week road trip through Colorado, Idaho, Utah, and New Mexico back to Austin to pack up our belongings and up to Omaha.
We visited friends in Denver, tried sandboarding in the Great Sand Dunes National Park, explored Ouray (the Switzerland of Colorado), stayed in Eden, Utah in the mountains, went on a few hikes around there, went to Arches and Canyonlands National Parks, hiked in Moonshine Wash Slot Canyon (in between Arches and Salt Lake City. Highly recommend. It’s in the middle of nowhere. Need 4-wheel drive to get there), drove up to Bear Lake at the Utah/Idaho border, swam in a glacial lake nearby, visited Bonneville Salt Flats, drove through Valley of the Gods and Trail of the Ancients, saw Monuments Valley, pretty sure we saw UFOs, and drove through New Mexico past Ship Rock. Our friend, A, joined us for the most of the Utah and Idaho portion of this adventure.
In late July we settled into our apartment and started working again, this time working from home.
August 2020 - February 2021
We enjoyed our apartment pool and the area of the city nearby, spent time with friends and family, and worked from home.
We made a visit back up to The Hudson River Valley to visit A and E in October and to see the Fall foilage.
Toward the end of 2020, a very noisy neighbor moved in above us. We had lived in apartments for years and had never had a neighbor this noisy. Sometimes it sounded like they were aggressively rollerblading and sometimes they would drop or throw something on the floor so hard that our walls would rattle. We tried complaining about it multiple times but it never got better, and we couldn’t continue to live and work from home with that going on. So, we thought, well, we were able to get a lot of our trip refunded and we have some cash, why not buy a house? It seemed like we weren’t going to be able to travel for a while still.
We house hunted for a few months, put an offer on a couple of houses and got outbid. In January 2021, we found the one, a craftsman-style house in the heart of Omaha. Our offer was accepted! We closed in late February and moved in during early March. Thus began our adventure in home ownership!
(BTW, if you ever need a realtor in the Omaha area, let us know and we’ll hook you up.)
February-August 2021
We quickly learned house projects never end. We had most of the house rewired and updated from old knob and tube to modern electrical and replaced many of the light fixtures. We replaced the sink - in doing so, the cast iron, farmhouse style sink had so much adhesive under it that we used a car jack to remove it from the counter, which broke part of the laminate countertops. New countertops were in our future, but would have to wait a bit. We replaced all the cabinet handles. We had the exterior of the house repainted froma dark brown body, darker brown base, and white trim to a grayish blue body, white base, and white trim. We named our home Merryweather, a popular name in the 1920s when the house was built and after the fairy in Sleeping Beauty who insists on making Aurora’s dress blue.
In March we visited our friends in New York again. We went on a few hikes and tried some rock climbing outdoors.
G made 4 large planter boxes and we planted a garden from which we would snack during work breaks all summer long.
In July, a storm plowed through with record-breaking winds that completely uprooted a giant maple tree in our front yard. Fortunately, it was on the city’s property so the city cleaned it up. Unfortunately, they refused to fix the sidewalk, so we had to take care of that.
In August, A and I went to San Fransisco, Napa, drove down Highway 1, stopped by an outdoor hippy library, went on a couple of hikes, I fell on some rocks and had to make a pit stop to the ER (I’m fine), then met up with E and G in Sequoia National Forest where we walked Trail of the Giants; and, wow, the sequoias really are quite something spectacular.
September 2021
It had been a year and a half since leaving the country and we were finally able to go somewhere international! We went on an amazing trip to Greece with our friends and met their family. We went to Athens, Naxos, and rode a boat around The Cyclades. We’ve never seen water in such vibrant shades of blue anywhere else in the world. The people are welcoming, the food is delicious, and the culture and history are rich. Greece is definitely somewhere we will be returning. Of course, we had to stop in New York on the way back.
September 2021- February 2022
The house projects continued. We repainted the main level interior. We got new countertops. We added railings to the stairs on the porch and a railing to our stairs near the side entrance. G created the perfect accent piece to go on our roof above our porch.
Merryweather (our house) proved to be a great hostess. We celebrated Thanksgiving and Christmas with my family and threw an entertaining White Elephant party with my team from work. Our New York friends, A and E, came to visit us in January.
G and I enjoyed many snowy days by the fireplace.
February-March 2022
We were able to go on another international trip! This time we went all around Ireland: Dublin, Cork, Blarney Castle, Dingle, drove up the west coast to Galway, saw The Cliffs of Moher and the Buren, and Giant’s Causeway. We also visited the Loire Valley in France: Nantes, Tours, Chenonceaux, biked 30 miles from Chenonceaux to Amboise back to Tours, and visited a long time friend in Paris. Yet again, of course, on the return home, we made a stop in New York. We enjoyed a couple of snow days together there with A and E.
March-June 2022
We were hoping the time was approaching for us to be able to relaunch our year-long trip. If we went everywhere we wanted to go on this trek using time off at work, even with a 4-week sabbatical in the mix, it would take us 10 years, and we feel like it would be worse for us to have started it and not finish than to have never started it at all.
Our plan for Merryweather was to either rent or Air BnB her while we were traveling. We had grown quite attached to her and our neighborhood. I would be remissed if I didn’t mention our favorite neighborhood cat, a friendly black cat with bright green eyes who would frequently visit us. However, after much, much consideration, we determined that wouldn’t be cost-effective and didn’t want to risk any disaster happening while we were away or trying to sell her if the market turned to a buyer’s market.
It was time to kick our house projects into even higher gear! We finished repainting the entire interior, painted the kitchen cabinets, had the siding on the garage replaced, had 2 egress windows installed and repaired the drywall, painted the garage door and garage entry door, and completely renovated the upstairs bathroom. We could not have completed this all without the help of our family and friends. You know who you are, and we are very thankful for you! We contacted the realtor who helped us buy the house, and he and his wife successfully helped us sell the house.
On June 10th, we left our employer again, and again this time around, it was difficult to leave. My team and I had become quite close over the past year and I wanted to continue to be a part of their growth. They gave me a few extremely thoughtful parting gifts that made me tear up a little, and that is no easy feat. G had also built strong relationships with his team and was sad to leave the people he had worked with over the prior year. We had a happy hour with our colleagues on our last day and felt so supported by the turnout of people who came to say bon voyage.
We had been packing and moving our things into storage over the past few weeks. We finished moving everything before we closed on the 15th and we stayed with my parents the 13th-16th (thanks dad, for making us breakfast every morning), celebrated and had dinner friends, and then took off on the 16th.
There’s so so so much more I could write in here, but this is a blog and not a book, and we need to focus on our current adventure!