The Last Night
It's literally 6 minutes until the day we are supposed to be leaving on our trip. At times it felt like this day would never come, and at the same time, now that I'm staring at the clock, feels like it's come too soon. All of our furniture and stuff was shipped back east a week ago, we just finished up a party with some friends at a bonfire at Ocean Beach, and now I am sitting on my cousin's couch, Mango (our dog) to one side of me, and Michael on the other, writing this blog post so that I can have some content on our website before I go and purchase the domain (teehee). These past fews weeks have been a crazy scramble to the finish line and it's hard to look back and reflect when you're trying to sprint to the end.
At the beginning of June, we took a test run to Sequoia National Park. 1) because we were going to miss it on our tour of the U.S. 2) because it was only 4 hours from SF and 3) because we wanted to see hold well the van would hold up, and man am I glad we did.
We had made it there through the windy mountain roads and back about 45 mins out from home when we started hearing a roaring come from our engine every time we tried to accelerate. We immediately put on the hazards and drove 35 mph on the right lane all the way back home. Luckily we made it back in one piece but called a mechanic to get it in for a check right away. Turns out, our transmission needed to be completely rebuilt.
Prior to this mechanic, we had brought it another one closer to our house, but apparently they had not caught this issue with the transmission and were going to send us on our merry way with this giant issue hanging over our head. Knowing that we were incredibly fortunate to have discovered this issue before we hit the road for 3 months, we agreed to have them rebuild the transmission.
2 and half weeks later and a couple of thousands of dollars later, here we are on our last night in San Francisco.
These past few weeks without a car and trying to prep for our move have been pretty mentally exhausting. Dear reader, has anyone ever told you how much moving f*cking sucks?? The time, the effort, THE COST, oh god, THE COST!! We've moved 4 times in the last 4 years! We are obviously sadistic (...only in this one particular moving situation...I think..). Anyways, I digress. Forgive me its late. ANYWAYS, it's been pretty mentally exhausting. Moving, waiting on the van, trying to hang out with friends one last time, prepping the van without the actual van and trying to guesstimate what we need and how much we can fit, couch- surfing on my cousin's couch (bless him!), researching our itinerary, building our itinerary, deciding how to share our journey (blog, insta, vlog maybe??), actually setting that up.. Basically it's all happening and jesus, mary, joseph, I'm already tired.
And it's weird right? Cause people keep asking me, "Ariel, how does it feel?" and tbh I couldn't even tell you if I tried. Like yes, I am nervous and anxious and excited about it all but also I'm kind of numb to it too. I've been thinking about this trip and dreaming it up for months, that I just want it to start. I don't even have time to think about all that I'm leaving behind in SF and what our plan is once we land back in Jersey. I really just want to start.
So on this last night in SF, the city I used to dream of living in, thank you for fulfilling a dream of mine. I'm off to fulfill the next.
xx
Ariel