Where Have I Been? (III)

Click here to read all of the posts in the “Where have I been?” series (if you haven’t you should probably start from the beginning, before you read on)

Part III: Sacramento, CA, USA to Quito, Ecuador

Crossing the finish line. Supremely literal and symbolic.

In this case, the finish line serves as the end of a foot-race (the California International Marathon), the end of a season (the six months of training leading up to that race from June to December, 2014), and the end of an even longer period of chasing one particular goal (the US Olympic Marathon Team Trials qualifying standard).

Before crossing it, I had laid out two paths on the other side of that finish line.

The path I find myself traveling now is just as sweet as I’d hoped. It’s hard to overstate the satisfaction of working hard for something for a long time and achieving it, even if that something is as silly as the simple act of arriving at Point B from Point A (at least I’m not running around in circles….).

Post Finish-Line: The beginning of a long journey

Relishing in the glow, I return home the day after the crossing, with just four days to pack and move out of my apartment.

Despite the single-mindedness one might assume my life follows from reading this, there are – in fact – events in and around my life that do have a significant impact on me besides the number and speed of miles run each day.

Mariana had received an offer to start a new job in Washington D.C. in early 2015. And itching to leave wintry Boston behind once again, Richard Parker, Esther the Turtle, and I had all planned to join her. We set a date to move down in the middle of January, leaving us a little over a month between my very sore and stiff arrival back from Sacramento and our departure in the Uhaul on January 17.

We decide to take advantage of the opportunity of a big chunk of time – when’s the next time we’ll both have a whole month with relatively little commitment? – and plan an appropriately big trip through South America. Again, in an attempt to avoid winter, we head to the Equator and then south – into the land of long, warm summer days.

But before all that, we have these four days in snowy Boston. Despite only living in our cozy apartment (which just happened to be upsettingly close to our Alma Mater) for a few months, we’d managed to get remarkably nested and scraping our lives out of the place takes more effort than either of us expected. Add to that a day trip to DC to find an apartment, packing for our grand adventure, and finding a long-term cat-sitter for Richard Park – well, there aren’t a lot of hours left for running.

But somehow we make it. All our belongings sit packed up and ready to go in my parents’ basement while our big back-packing back-packs sit stuffed full of camping gear, pretzel m&ms, D&G perfume and Columbia fleeces for my Ecuadorian friends (American products carry high import tariffs), and enough reading material to keep us occupied for the 17 flights we on schedule. Here we go.

On the morning of our departure, I wake up early and slip out the door for a calm run through the quiet streets of Brookline. It’s my first run since CIM and I’m enjoying myself. I have to constantly remind myself of what happened. The context of this run and every run for the next 14 months. And each time, I exhale a little deeper. The whole year in front of me is a hundred-dollar bill I found in the pocket of an old jacket. It’s all icing.

And so, Mariana and I leave the cold, crisp Boston morning at 200 miles per hour – heading south. We’re in Dulles, then Bogota, and then, finally, after we were sure we wouldn’t make it, we arrive in Quito, Ecuador. What time is it?

In the morning, Quito blinds us with sunlight. It’s 11am by the time we get up and have our coffee on the rooftop terrace of our hostel, overlooking the city that I once called home.

That sun.

I’ve missed it.

Enjoying that equatorial sun (and getting burned)

We spend the morning walking the familiar streets and it’s far too late when we realize how badly burned we are. The sharp, red lines serve as a warning for the rest of our time here for how unprepared we are for this high-mountain, direct light. A reminder that our bodies still think it’s winter.

I blink and our three days in Quito are gone. We’ve seen friends, climbed a mountain, walked down the street basking in the equatorial sunlight and the feeling that – really, for the first time in my memory – we have the freedom and privilege to do anything.

But now, we’re back at the airport, wishing Omar a “Feliz Navidad” and bidding farewell to the people and place. We step back inside the building I know all too well and board the plane that will take us down, down, down to the south – into what is (for me) unknown territory. I can’t sleep.

Next stop: Argentina!