The long way home.

There's something about a long car ride. You forget your troubles. Forget you even are in the car at times. You have to focus on just one thing and nothing else really gets in. If you're alone it's you, the white line, the yellow lines flashing past, and the music. If you know me at all, you know this is what I believe in. I don't believe in god, I'm not big on church, that feeling, where nothing else matters is what I believe in.

I'm big on that moment just before sunset where the light is just right, no matter where you are it's beautiful and the whole world seems to have paused except for you and your car. The windows are down, your almost always passing a field, and Tom Petty miraculously comes on the radio as if the DJ were seeing the same thing you are. And for just a second you're wearing rose colored glasses, you completely zone out and there's nothing more important going on in the whole world than this moment. There's no real explaining that feeling, you just know it. Every time you feel it you want to feel the wind beneath your hand, sing a little louder and more than anything, have someone with you looking over, seeing the same thing. You don't really have to speak, you just understand. If you're alone, you don't go home and tell someone about it, you just smile a little bigger and wish they only knew.

I think somehow in the busyness and lack of sleep this year I forgot what those moments were like. Going to California I realized that those moments are not only more beautiful here, at home in Colorado, but that people here have the mindset to really appreciate them, it's when we forget that that we lose what makes where we live what it is and become the kind of people we do everything to avoid. I believe religiously in forgetting my feet are touching the pedals, feeling the wind beneath my hands and above all else, that even after the sun has gone down, that tomorrow there's another opportunity for the DJ to play Tom Petty at just the right time.

Surprise!

Today (which because this is a surprise will be days ago) was wonderful! This morning I packed as quickly as possible and went to a meeting to talk about getting my little Partner to mentor. Worked from 12-6 and then took off! After two terrible hours of super slick driving conditions, too many coffees and a very long phone conversation, I am in the land of the Mormon! Let me tell you, getting to this hotel almost made me a believer. As Toby peed on the No Vacancy sign and looked at the flashing lights on the church billboard I think I saw "oh, thank you Jesus." in his mind too. We are checked in and ready to crash, tomorrow is a 5am jump in the car and go if I want to make it in time.

Surprise!

My dad and a few other conspirators have a history of surprising me. I think I was 10 when I got the first one. Cynthia took me out shopping and I remember her coming to the house, picking me up in a little red convertible. We pulled back up to the house and things were a little weird, she seemed excited and my dad was already outside waiting. As I went inside everyone and I do mean EVERYONE yelled, "Surprise!" On my 17th birthday my dad kept asking and asking what I was doing, who was I with, where was I going. In the Target swimsuit section, I got a tap on the shoulder and (the very odd) a "Can I buy you a swimsuit?" which resulted initially in excitement and quickly became a scream and crying....you can imagine the looks two teenagers and a guy in his 40's were getting in the swimsuit section. Graduation was a biggy when Cynthia showed up in tow with my dad, lots of tears here as well. All of these surprises have left me skipping town on my birthday to avoid being surprised for fear that I will break down crying in front of a room full of people. So I figured it was my turn to return the favor. The big fears were that, one- my dad would be trying to surprise me and be here while I was there, two- that I would get stuck in traffic etc. and be late and he will have left work making finding him somewhere in Orange County difficult, and three- that being as similar to him as I am, that he would figure it out.

Well....it worked. After fourteen hours, four coffees, two redbulls (Sam you were right), and a little insider help, I walked into Nordhavn headquarters. As I walked in the front door three Leishman boys stood questioning and I quickly shushed them before sneaking around the corner and into my dads office. He stood jaw dropped, quietly, papers falling from his hands and there may or may not have been a tear. This, ladies and gentleman, is how you do a surprise. After all what do we have to be thankful for if not out families?

Personal Statement (Fall 2012)

This was my personal statement that I sent to Western last year. It's amazing how things change and I wonder what I would write differently if I had to write another one today.

Personal Statement

 In everyone’s lives there comes an opportunity to do something that could change them forever, the moments that define someone are the chances that they take. But if every person were to wait for the perfect moment to arise, the best weather, or time to go- nothing amazing would ever happen. It will always be raining, there will never be enough time, and you will never have enough money or all the right gear. The opportunity to accomplish something will pass by and eventually be your biggest regret.

College is the biggest opportunity I have ever been given, it’s a chance at becoming something more than what I ever thought possible and a way to break away from everything I have ever known. I have been told by everyone that has heard that I wanted to go to Western that Gunnison is too cold, too small, and too windy. But they don’t know me. They don’t know that those same things will be exactly what I will love about it.

               The summer of 2011, my dad and I did what even we weren’t sure we could accomplish. We left Southern California in a 1986 Suzuki Samurai; it was close to ninety degrees. Our only plan, to reach the Arctic Circle before it was snowing too hard for us to keep going and to not tell anyone where we were going until we got there.

               There is never going to be a good time to drive North 3200 miles in any car, let alone an old Samurai. I was a part time student with two jobs and my dad was flying between Taiwan and California for work, making our schedules fit together was a challenge in and of itself. Making it there before fall was another.

               In Alaska, you can only count on two things- that while you are there it will rain and then it will rain some more. Road conditions along the Dalton Highway are always questionable; between broken glass, pot holes and wildlife the size of a minivan, you grow accustomed to roughing it. Just because on the map there is a town, does not mean anyone will be there selling gas, food or water. Even though you are going to be on a Ferry for 4 straight days, this does not mean you will be given a bed or that you will be sleeping inside. Despite the fact that your sleeping bag says it is made for temperatures between 0 and 25 degrees, it may not be warm enough. All of the unexpected made the adventure that much more spectacular. By the end of October, when we hit the pull off sign for the Arctic Circle, I was used to wearing rain boots, being muddy, and sleeping in a lawn chair on the back of a boat underneath the stars.

               At every gas station, campground, or diner there are people from all different backgrounds and areas of the world. On the 4^th of July, we went to a small town celebration to watch the most patriotic ‘Parade of the Species’ I had ever seen. In the middle of absolutely nowhere we met a man who was closing up shop October 1^st for Winter who had adopted and raised 18 children putting 12 of them through college. The men responsible for the security of the pipeline were the kind of characters you would rather have on your side. Fifty miles north of the Arctic Circle we had coffee with the housewives of Oil Truckers who had secret games of poker while the men were away. These were people all in Alaska for different reasons who wanted nothing more than to hear why we had brought our little car all that way-Sociology at it’s finest.

               We left Alaska with less than ten dollars, some Sourdough starter, holes in our rain boots, and a story to leave us standing a little taller. When we tell people where we went and how we got there, they all have the same things to say, did we know anyone there? Are we crazy? Why did we do it? To which we always reply we do now, why not, and wouldn’t you?

               The problem is that most people can come up with a million reasons not to go. They are broke, they’ve got a job, it will be cold, I’m too old, too young, and I don’t even own a tent. But if we had let any of those things stop us, I would have stood in my own way of experiencing something worth sleeping on the frozen ground in the rain for. I don’t know anyone in Gunnison, maybe everyone is right, and I don’t know what will happen. What I do know is that I’ve done crazier things, under worse conditions, with less of a plan. Sometimes you just have to jump on in with both feet. Moving two hundred sixty miles, just my dog and what I can fit in my car is nothing in comparison to driving to the Arctic Circle for no reason, but it’s an opportunity to do something I have never done before, with a whole different group of people, in an entirely new place.