The VanNess Vagabonds

Thursday, February 4th-
The next morning we borrow our friends car again, drive to the airport, meet my mom, (who switched her flight somehow for $70 (Jet Blue) when we were going to have to pay $600 (American Airlines) just wanted to throw that in there). She gets a rental car, the Mazda dealer calls. They are finished with our car, we load it up with the rest of the stuff and go to Mom’s hotel. I thought ‘Ahhh, my Mom is here, everything will go much more smooth’. It did. We had cheese crackers, wine, and beer in front of the fireplace in her room, repacked and relaxed. We picked up Steve (who also changed his ticket on the train for $7!), met Mark’s brother, Piper, and our new niece for dinner, returned home to Lola waiting in our bed and passed out.

Friday, February 5th-
Dropped off my Mom’s rental car, picked up ours (and overhead other people in line who were angry about their flights being canceled (thank god we decided to rent a car). Then, we attempted to go to breakfast at a restaurant that had just closed for breakfast, and ended up driving to Raleigh to grab a bite. Mark went to his Mom’s to drop off paperwork. We had a nice breakfast, then packed up the convertible up, and started the first leg of our trip- on the road to Tampa in a band of storms covering the entire eastern seaboard (that weekend it snowed so much in DC it broke the record set in 1922-fyi my stepfather, Steve, lives outside of DC which is where our Mazda was headed). We make it to Tampa with our leaky convertible windows through some pretty sketchy storms to my sister who was really happy to see us! She went to IKEA and bought all new stuff for the room we were going to stay in. We put on flip-flops only to realize the cold followed us and it was 40 degrees in Florida. Put the hoodies back on and gave up the idea of laying out by the pool out due to the overcast sky. No top down cruising for us. We hung out in Tampa until Sunday morning when we headed out to Miami. On the way my Starbucks coffee dumped all over my sisters’ backseat carpet; my camera stopped working; and we got lost in downtown Miami trying to find a Best Buy or Target (only to find out that Target had sold out of pretty much their entire camera stock that weekend leaving only a few piece of craps cameras for me to chose from). I bought one apprehensively and we head to the airport. Finally, we are doing it!

Everything that happens is a story- it just so happens that most great stories are the hardest ones that challenge you the most.

During this whole thing, my special time was late and Mark & I were discussing how much it would suck to get preggers the month we left. Don’t worry! My friend came to visit with some serious vengeance the 1st day we arrived in Buenos Aires.

I truly believe that everything happens for a reason- who knows exactly why we went through so much, but my thought is that it was meant to make us appreciate our trip even more-the hell we had to go through to get here makes it so much more beautiful and meaningful. How bad we want it, is part of what makes it so awesome. The idea of wanting something so bad, giving it your all, and the whole cliché ‘you can do anything you want as long as you put your mind to it’- all of it has so much meaning to us now. We could have easily given up before now – with work, moving, all the crap- but it made us want it even more. Now here we are living our dream and we will always remember how much we had to go through to get it and we will never take it for granted because of that.

If this story could present one point- I hope that it is -most things do not happen because of luck. Most “lucky” people put a lot into what they are so “lucky” to have. I don’t consider myself lucky, I consider myself as being really dedicated to making something happen that I want- this story shows that dedication, although sometimes really tough to get through- pays off.

So now on with the stories of the adventure and the pay off. . .