4385 miles later...

I made it.  On Wednesday September 22, 2010 at 6:00PM I arrived at 263 Watson St. in Monterey, CA.  It took a while but I finally arrived; exhausted, scruffy, and starving!  I never saw pictures of my place before I arrived.  I found the place through a person I'm going to be working with who happened to have an open apartment.  It's below his family's place but it was a lot bigger than I had expected.  It's basically a studio apt. with a bedroom on the side, a decent sized kitchen and living room, a bathroom, one closet, and my own patio outside the living room.  There are plenty of windows so enough sunlight comes in.

I live not even a half mile from the water and I can hear sea lions barking up a storm each night!  Work is only 1.5 miles away so if I get my bike here I can bike and even so I might just walk.  There's no parking for employees so you have to find street parking which I'm sure is never fun.  I immediately went to the store on Thursday to get everything I didn't bring with me and started to get settled in.  I found a Goodwill nearby so that saved me a few bucks and a grocery store so I bought enough food to last for a week or so.  I still need to clean out my disaster of a car and get it washed though.  I also need to get my oil changed and probably the alignment as well (I guess that's what off-roading in Kansas will do).

Friday I had to get some bloodwork done and a couple of physicals for work.  After that I packed up my stuff and headed north towards Oakland because I had a half-marathon on Saturday.  I didn't exactly get a chance to train for this since I signed up for it before, well before a lot of things happened, but mainly before I found out about the job.  After I found out I focused more on moving and less on training because I never really expected to run it.  I backed out on my last race though so I really did not want to miss another one.  So I went for a quick run on Thursday, maybe 40 mins or so to see if my legs had anything in them and I felt fine so I decided to go for it.  I got up to the hotel around 4:30.  I headed to Concord, CA at 7:00PM to get my race packet and some GU for the race and then went back and found some food across the street at a Mexican restaurant.

The race was a trail half-marathon and wasn't too bad a race.  It started at 8:00AM on the dot.  Everything was going fine until mile 5 and then the hard part started.  The elevation changed about 350 feet and was around 0.5 miles straight up the side of a hill.  That was not fun at all.  The actual climb began before this so it was a long couple of miles.  That slowed down everyone's time significantly as we were all pretty much walking up this hill.  The good thing about a brutal uphill is that there's always a fun downhill.  The course pretty much did the work for me for the last 6 miles but there were smaller hills on the way back too.  Overall it was a good race, especially after not training for it.  I finished 6th overall (it was a very small race) with a time of 1:47.  It wasn't my best time but also wasn't my worst.

And that leads us to today, Sunday.  I woke up and realized that I needed to find a place to watch the Patriots game ASAP because west coast games start at 10:00AM!  Luckily there is a place only a half mile down the road so I walked down to enjoy the victory over the Bills.  The defense is still struggling but they made a key interception at the end so it's all good.  I came back after the game and somehow managed to spend over $100 at Rite Aid!  Are you kidding me?  I went in for envelopes and came out with half the store. I got everything put away and cleaned up and now my place actually looks like a nice place to live.  I have pictures on the walls, clothes put away, food in the fridge and a must needed Brita!

This entire trip has been an eye-opening experience.  It's amazing how much thinking you can get done sitting in a car by yourself for 10 days.  There were a lot of doubts in my mind before I came out here and I wasn't sure if I was personally strong enough to do this on my own, or even if it was the right move.  As the trip progressed though I realized I'm a much stronger person than I thought and that doing this on my own was the best way to do it.  When I first contemplated moving out to California it was under different circumstances and for different reasons but I'm glad God gave me this opportunity to grow and learn a lot about myself.  This is a great opportunity in a new place with a chance to meet new people and make new friends.   And if I ever run into trouble I know I have friends scattered all over the state just in case (I'll be in SD quite often).

So tomorrow is my first day of work.  I'm not nervous but excited about this new opportunity and I want to thank everyone for their support over the last couple of weeks.  If you ever get a chance to travel around this beautiful country I highly recommend it.  And if you are ever in the area, please give me a call!