Caitie is answering customer emails from the desk of a hotel room in Columbus, Ohio. I’m sitting across the room on the bed, making phone calls about whether or not a subcomponent of a product we sell is ULC certified. This is our new reality.
We drove out together this morning from Cleveland in the pouring rain on a “joint” work trip. She goes to see one type of client, and I see another…we’re coordinating schedules, and it’s fun to still travel together when the opportunity presents itself.
During the drive, we joked about how we’d lost appreciation for how crazy it is to stay dry while traveling in the pouring rain…to be in a car bubble. “This would never happen on the boat” we said, and we laughed. “I’d be soaked at the helm”.
We smiled, paused, and both kind of wandered off into our own heads. We were driving our brand new Subaru that we’d leased only a couple of months earlier, but at that moment, we could still feel the rain on our faces, and the smell of wet canvas.
When Caitie finally broke the silence, we sprung into an hour of reminiscing about our trip. By the end, we were surprised how many specific moments we were able to remember…days/minutes/seconds that will hopefully stick with us forever…
“Remember that time in the Alligator river when we anchored overnight in the middle of nowhere and the fog rolled in? Remember being completely surrounded except for one small gap above us which became our sunroof for the stars, and we laid on deck and felt like we were the only people in the world?”
“Remember that marina we visited in North Carolina when the temp dropped below freezing and we huddled down below, soaking up the WiFi and blasting the heat? Oh yeah – wasn’t that the place where you picked all of those hot peppers and got the ride to the liquor store from the guy who had to blow into a breathalyzer to start his car? What was his name again? He was nice.”
“Remember when I tried to back into those public pilings in Elizabeth City because I thought it would be easier to get off the boat that way, but couldn’t do it because of the current…or my lack of skills or something? …yeah that was where we met that really nice guy from Seattle that helped us dock normally”
“Remember that long sail from the Potomac up to Rock Hall, and when we finally dropped the hook in time for the the most amazing sunset?! …Yeah! We had nice sunsets both times we stayed there. I wonder if they have amazing sunsets every night…?”
“Remember the crisp mornings on the Erie Canal when the leaves were changing color and the deck was soaking wet with dew, but you knew it was going to warm up by lunchtime? Yeah I can practically smell that morning…the water…the fiberglass…Y’know I read that the Erie Canal has some closures again this year due to high water levels. Yeah?…Frig, that’s a bummer.”
“Why did we rush home again? We should have spent a month cruising the Chesapeake…”
As we talked, we found ourselves getting happier and happier, recounting all the little moments that we remembered. We were amazed by how deep the sensory memories were…we could recall the smells, the sights, the feelings…from two years ago as vividly as if it were yesterday.
Chock it up to stepping outside your comfort zone, or just the incredible nature of travel…Either way, looking back and remembering how powerful the experiences were (good & bad) leaves us lusting for the next challenge.