The Big Transition Part 1
What!? A post that doesn’t involve a video!? I know, this is a bit different than our normal blog posts, but I figured it was only fairly that you knew a bit more about us. In this “Big Transition” series, I plan to open up about our past and how Deanna and I arrived at this point in our lives. A lot of big decisions/transitions have been made in order to get where we are today. If you enjoy this post and want to hear more, feel free to let us know in the comments below. Alright, enough of the intro, I will get right into it. 🙂
Ever since Deanna and I first met each other, we have been on countless adventures together. We met while playing Ultimate Frisbee with a group of friends at Purdue University in West Lafayette, IN, but we didn’t actually start dating until she moved back to New York for her first job after graduate school. Perfect timing right? A girl I like moves nearly 1000 miles away and that is when I get the courage to ask her on a date. Needless to say, this was going to be taking long distance relationships to the next level.
One of the main reasons Deanna and I got along so well from the start was our love for getting outside in nature whether that was playing sports or going on hikes. So rather than one of us flying all the way to Indiana or to New York, we decided to meet half way between in western Pennsylvania at a state park neither one of us had heard of. Speaking of great timing, this was also in February with more than enough snow on the ground to make things interesting.
Just getting to Pymatuning State Park was an adventure in itself. The day prior and the day of our individual road trips, a big snow storm had just made its way across the Midwest making for some less than ideal driving conditions. Nonetheless we both decided to make this date happen whether Mother Nature wanted to behave or not. We both actually ended up making pretty good time to Pennsylvania from our starting locations even though the lack of cell service did make communication on our whereabouts a bit tricky.
So yea, this wasn’t exactly your typical first date that involved a dinner and a movie…we both went all in driving across the distance to see each other. We had a great time that weekend with a nice toasty campfire outside in subfreezing temperatures. I remember shaking the snow off the supplied firewood in order to make that happen. We even took a little walk onto the frozen Pymatuning Reservoir after we saw a bunch of fishermen doing the same. After that we got even more adventurous and attempted a short hike through the nearby woods. Turns out trying to hike a trail in a foot of snow without any snowshoes was a bigger workout than we were willing to take on at the time.
I feel like almost every weekend we have been together (for over 3 years now), we have tried to get out there and explore. When we first started dating we couldn’t exactly afford a trip every single weekend across the country to see each other…so we started planning an adventure once a month. Our second date took us a little bit further east in Pennsylvania to a state park called Cook Forest State Park (gallery above). It was the first time we had camped together, but luckily this time we avoided the snow while camping. I still managed to hit a blizzard on the way back to Indiana, but I’d say we lucked out fairly well in March. Should we have rented a cabin rather than camping that night? Probably, but with enough blankets it was worth having the park to ourselves looking up at the stars.
Besides meeting up once every month or so, Deanna and I were constantly texting and calling each other every day trying our best to make the long distance thing work. I’m sure to the point that we were driving our family and friends nuts, but we were determined that nothing was going to keep this relationship from working out. After a while though, it was getting harder and harder to say goodbye knowing that it was going to be another month before we saw each other in person (skype helped a bit). Something was going to have to change in order to really give this relationship the chance it deserved.
Since I already had a remote job that allowed me to work from anywhere within the country, it was the most logical decision for me to move to New York rather than have Deanna come back to Indiana. She had just started her career working in NYC and I didn’t want to disrupt that either. This seemed like an easy decision, but it was FAR from it…(to be continued)
This is just the first post of this series. I realize this blog post is a bit different than what we normally focus on within this website, but I wanted to show you all how we started and how we are evolving over time in our lives. We have some more ‘big’ transitions on the way and maybe this way we can emphasize the point that sometimes you just have to take that leap of faith in life to get where want or need to go!
Adventure On!
