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I was getting ready to leave the barn this evening when I caught this shot. This embodies everything I love about the barn and about summertime. It’s so close — summer is so close! And this weekend is our first horse show (and my first gymkhana!) AND the weather is supposed to hit 90F+ for the first time since last summer.
Bring it, summer — I’m ready.
Friday evening slice of paradise at the barn.
No, my thesis still isn’t done. That’s why I’m posting a new blog post, of course!
Every year since I was in college, March has always been a restless month for me. It’s when I start to think about summer, and about going somewhere awesome, or heck, just going somewhere in general! As much as I love living in Sacramento, I love to wander, and I love the process of planning and the anticipation that comes with building up to a trip.
This summer’s trip plans evolved somewhat randomly. I’m not entirely sure how this happened, but John, me, and an Indianapolis-based good friend of ours (Matt) randomly decided we should take a road trip through eastern Canada for two weeks in July.
Ok, I know how it happened. I was my usual “Let’s go somewhere!” self, and I decided to drag them with me. Really, I was jonesing to go back to Europe, but I looked at plane fare and went “Ummm, NOPE!” So I started to think about where else in North America might be a reasonable facsimile of a European city. QUEBEC!! OF COURSE!! Thus The Great Canada Road Trip[tm] was born.
In any case, the current plan is to fly into Buffalo, hit up Niagara Falls, then drive over the border into Toronto and stay with friends there, go up to Montreal and Quebec City, then head over to New Brunswick and stay with friends there and get eaten alive by mosquitoes go camping and kayaking. Then we’ll drive back to Buffalo via New England, leave the car there, and fly home.
This has a slight chance of not happening, unfortunately–we have no idea what may happen with the internship John needs to get for his master’s program. But I’m keeping my fingers crossed!!
As part of this process, two of the three of us had to get/renew their passports.
Not me. I’m Have Passport, Will Travel. John needs to renew his (NAG NAG HONEY) and Matt needed to get one.
I dragged mine out to kiss it gently and remind it that it’ll only be a few short months before I need it again, and I decided to take pictures of it, just for kicks.
I love my passport. Don’t get me wrong — I love my photos and other trip souvenirs. But there’s just something about my passport. It’s the one thing I carry with me at all times on all of my foreign jaunts. It’s the memory of standing there in the immigration control line, eagerly waiting for it to get stamped so that I can get on with my adventure, time and time and time again.
It’s flying into Rome the first time, and the excitement of my first European country and the knowledge of the trip we had ahead of us.
It’s a ferry ride to Canada.
It’s sitting in a car at the Hungarian-Romanian border and watching the border people completely strip down the car ahead of us and praying they wouldn’t do the same thing to us (they didn’t.)
It’s getting into London, and seeing my friend Holly for the first time since college, and John getting to go to his first “foreign” country (we also went to the Netherlands while we were there.)
It’s flying into Rome with John two years later and seeing the city through his eyes that time.
It’s leaving Costa Rica, sick as a dog with fever and chills and a headache, and getting back into Miami and just wanting to curl into a ball and bawl.
It’s sitting on a bus on the Croatian-Montenegrin border for over an hour just waiting for something, ANYTHING to happen.
It’s being woken up on a night train between Sarajevo and Zagreb four different times in an hour’s timespan, and finally giving up any pretense of trying to sleep altogether, and thus getting to watch the sun rise over the Croatian countryside out the train window.
It’s the absolute misery I felt when we flew out of Brussels on our way back to the US after our epic trip in 2010, knowing that no trip I ever would take from that moment on would be as amazing as the previous 56 days had been.
It’s returning to Singapore 15 years after I’d first been there, wondering if I’d find it as amazing the second time (it was better!)
It’s getting off of a refrigerated bus and standing in a long, unairconditioned immigration line in Malaysia, and trying to take a picture of Flat Zoe without dropping my other stuff.
It’s leaving Singapore, exhausted and saddened with the knowledge that our cat had been hit by a car and killed shortly before I left.
I wish I had the time and the money to fill up all of its pages with stamps in the next five years before it expires. So, so many places I want to visit… someday. Someday I’ll get to them all.
But this summer, Canada it is. I can’t wait. :-)
For what it's worth, you're not supposed to smile in your passport pic. Americans are apparently the only country with this tendency.
Page 8, clockwise: leaving Rome (2007), entering Hungary by train (2010), leaving Hungary by plane (2007), and entering Romania by car (2007). Page 9: Leaving Romania by car (2007), entering Hungary by car (2007), leaving Hungary by plane (2007), and leaving Belgium by plane (2010.)
Page 10: Entering Costa Rica (2010), leaving Croatia by train (2010). Look at the train stamp--it's an old-school steam train. SWEET. :-) Page 11: Leaving Croatia by car (bus) (2010), entering Croatia by plane (2010), entering Netherlands by plane (2009), entering Singapore (2011).
All stamps from Malaysia (2011). I like the QR code on the visa sticker.
Page 14: Entering Italy (2007), entering England (2009). Page 15: entering England (2009), leaving Netherlands (2007), entering Netherlands (2007), leaving Netherlands (2009).
Page 16: Returning to the US from Italy (2009). Page 17: Entering Canada (2007), Entering Ireland (2010).
Blue: entering the US (2010). Black: entering Montenegro (2010.)
Leaving Hungary (2007).
Last but not least--entering Bosnia (2010).
Yeah, this TOTALLY isn’t helping my travel bug AT ALL. Is it July yet???
