There’s been a noticeable gap between blog posts over the last month. Life certainly likes to show it has no limits when the semester is coming to an end! While I have been busy over the last four weeks, I have also been feeling way too nostalgic as I keep thinking of what I was doing/where I was this time last year. Life certainly is such a precious thing, and it seems that the most random of situations prove to prevail this point. For me, travelling is that one thing that motivates me to get up and move, to work hard and make the most of this gift known as life. Getting out there and pushing yourself well out of your comfort zone – that to me is carpe diem in a nutshell!
I’ve been lucky in that I have done a lot of travelling since I was a kid, so I’ve seen a lot and been to a lot of amazing places. I often get asked if I’m ever going to settle down and stop travelling. To be honest, that’s something I just can’t comprehend. For as long as I’m breathing there’s something out there for me to see! With this passion to be constantly moving in mind, the thought of finding someone to settle down with and who would understand (and hopefully share this passion) seemed pretty slim. I wasn’t being pessimistic, I had just come to a point in my life where I finally realised what exactly it is that I wanted, and a partner didn’t really seem to fit the mould well. However, like the saying always goes ‘you find someone when you least expect it’, and of course this came wonderfully true when I left Australian shores at the end of 2013 to embark on 7 months of travel (and a little bit of study :p ). I had no intentions of meeting anybody, in fact the only talk of the possibility of meeting someone prior to leaving was joking with my friends that I might have a Vegas wedding. Fast forward to my second day on the MSU campus; it was orientation day for all of the international students, I was meeting so many people who, in the coming weeks would become my new adopted family and best friends. Little did I realise that the boy who I sat next to at lunch who was wearing funny shoes would become someone so important and special to me! Over the next couple of weeks, Henry (funny shoes guy) and I became very close, we shared the same sense of humour and were constantly in fits of giggles, and shared the same passion for travel. It didn’t take very long for either of us to realise that we had something unique, and within a month of being in Bozeman we decided to take that leap and became a couple.
Since it had been set in stone that I would be attending University in America, I had made plans with a friend in Australia to meet up in California somewhere and spend 6 weeks travelling together. While I was in Bozeman the plans still seemed as if they were going ahead until a nasty knee injury meant that my friend had to spend the money she’d put aside for travel on surgery. I felt so bad for my friend knowing that she was in so much pain and I wasn’t around to give her support, but at the same time I was also put into a bit of a panic as I realised there were only 4 weeks left before uni was out, and I now had no idea what I was going to do with myself for 7 weeks. I’d already planned about 10 days worth of travel, meeting up with some of my new friends and catching up with other friends and family in the country, but I was still unsure of what to do with the remaining time.
Since November, Henry had been planning on travelling around America on a motorbike, utilising a tent as his accommodation for the entirety of his trip. While I thought the bike sounded cool, the 7 weeks of camping wasn’t entirely appealing for me and I had never thought of traveling with Henry on his motorcycle as I had too much luggage. One night in Bozeman, I was particularly worried about what I was going to do and Henry asked me if I’d like to travel with him on his bike. Initially, I thought he was joking, so I kind of shrugged it off, until he reassured me that he wasn’t joking. We’d just have to plan for me to ship most of my belongings back to Australia, and keep a small bag that would fit on the back of the bike and it’d be fine. It seemed easy enough to do, so without much further thinking we were both online, buying motorcycle and camping gear.
The saying is hindsight is always 20/20, and in regards to riding a motorcycle around North America for 2 months, this saying is definitely correct. In terms of technicality anyway. Even now, Henry and I still laugh at how ridiculous we must’ve looked with our two duffel bags and back pack each on the bike. Although, I do still argue that I think we did well to condense so much considering we had been living in such a cold climate for 6 months, and were still traveling on the motorbike in cold climates too. The most important technical thing we have both taken from this experience is that packing is hard. Especially when you’re travelling through several different temperature zones.
Technicalities aside though, I think for the both of us, it is easy to say that this trip has definitely been the most adventurous trip that either of us had done. And the most crazy (After all, i’d only known this guy for 5 months and I was trusting him to drive with me on the back of a motorbike for 2 months)!
This trip is a great example of how spontaneity can bring so much fun and light into your life! While I would (and could) love to take you all through every step of this journey now, it would be very lengthy. So over the next couple of weeks I will continue to blog about this trip (the planning of it, where we went/what we did and the final leg of the trip). Can’t wait to continue sharing this story with all of you!
Happy Monday,
Kachina 🙂
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