flashback friday

It's time for another flashback!!!  After I graduated from high school, two friends and I decided that we should take an epic cross-country trip from Kalamazoo, MI to San Diego, CA.  My two friends, Lis and Sarah, are sisters and they are both over 6ft tall.  We took my car which at the time was a two door Chevy Cavalier.  We packed ourselves, enough clothes for three weeks, food, and camping gear into my tiny little car and headed west.

It was one of the best things I've ever done.  We saw so much from the windows of that little car...  We stopped in places I'd never been, saw things I've never seen, and made memories that have lasted for years and years.  Another cross-country trip is something I've thought a lot about doing again, but the memories from this first one will last a lifetime. 

This picture is of my friend Lis and me at the Pacific Ocean at sunset in August 1997.  Lis and I became friends while working at Northern Reflections (as briefly posted about here) together my senior year.  Fast forward a few years from this photo, Lis is ultimately how I got to Boston from K-zoo.  She was a flight attendant at the time and was moving from NYC to Boston.  Naturally she would need a roommate and asked me to come with her.  My thought process went like this:  Maybe...are you serious...I think that'd be cool...yes! I'll move to Boston! 

These days, Lis has moved back to Michigan, I am still here in the Boston area.  We're still friends but don't get to see each other very often (only when I travel to Michigan to run marathons and such...).  The friendship that we made as 17 year olds, all the ups and the downs, remains and we reminisce about the good ol' days.  "Remember that time we were trying to go to Tijuana and someone slashed our tire in Old Towne San Diego?" "Remember that time when we were riding horses on the beach and our guide got bucked off his horse and we had to find our way back to the ranch in the dark?"  "Remember that time..."  Yeah, I do remember.  And I hope I never forget.