Friends and the North

I'd be kidding myself if I said that moving to London was easy. The hardest part of any move isn't the logistics, adjusting to a new place, or even the culture shock. It's leaving friends.



I've known Crabby longer than I've known any of my main circle of friends except for the Beautiful Competition. He was in my wedding and roomed with us in Seattle and he's almost like family to us. He just left after a weeklong visit, having departed the flat at 6 this morning to make it to Gatwick by 7.30, and I'm sitting on the floor typing this not trying to wake anyone up. In another week I'll be making a similar post about Chad, who's currently crashed on our couch.

The travel part of this story is actually pretty funny: last weekend we were supposed to go to Paris, but there was a fire in the Channel Tunnel and our train was canceled. Plane ticket prices went sky high and our options quickly became 'find something in the UK,' so we got cheap train tickets to Yorkshire and went hiking in the North York Moors National Park. It was a great relaxing long weekend away, and while I'm really sad I didn't get to see Paris it was kind of cool hiking around the countryside with Crabby, who is himself quite the outdoorsman and has climbed, among other things, Mt. Adams.

As always, you can find pictures of the trip on my Flickr stream.

We had a great time with Crabby and will no doubt have a great time with Chad, but it threw into very sharp relief for us how much we really miss our lives back in Seattle. We had agreed London was going to be a temporary state of affairs and it's now starting to look more and more like that will definitely be the case, and that we'll return to Seattle when we're done here. My own goals are shifting. My life needs to be about maximizing the time I have here and taking advantage of every opportunity even moreso than before, to enjoy these months and all that London has to offer. Because when I go back to Seattle and we head out to the North Cascades for some camping, or we're sitting around the gaming table or having people over for a Sunday picnic, I want a good story or two to tell when we're spending time with the people we care about most.

(And yes, family readers, that goes for you too!!)