#47 - Kayak on a River

Selfie lessons on the river

While it's certainly gratifying to complete a big list item, one that requires a lot of planning, commitment, and work... It's also really lovely when something off my list happens naturally.

Lately I've been feeling that I'm at a place in my life where though I have financial, mental, emotional worries, I feel as if I'm thriving socially. Not only do have intelligent, kind, fun-loving, ambitious, beautiful people in my life whom I can call friends, but because of them, I constantly get to do things I want to do. I have regular plans with the Zanns twice a week. Masters is always organizing some fun, new experience with other fantastic people. I get to have long conversations over wine and weird liquors with my parents. And sometimes I have the good fortune of being able to connect with friends who live hundreds of miles away and they take all the work out of planning my birthday trip by planning a trip they want to go on and choose things to do that happen to be on this list.

I've blogged about it many a time, so to summarize, I always plan a trip in November in lieu of a birthday celebration. 

Beautiful backdrop for a paddle

2009 - Las Vegas, NV

2010 - Louisville, KY

2011 - Kalamazoo, MI

2012 - Hollywood, CA

2013 - San Juan, PR

2014 - Catalina Island, CA

2015 - Kona, HI

2016 - Portland, ME

2017 - Austin, TX

This year as I contemplated where to go, some friends of mine from San Diego started planning a trip to Austin... in November. Perfect. 

I met Da Jung, Karl, and Jon through the University of Michigan Club of San Diego (UMCSD). I'm so thankful for the people, including Karl, who put so much work into that club, and I hope they know how important their work is. Through UMCSD I was able to make friends outside of school while working on my PhD. We played kickball, went on hikes, went to happy hours, and eventually planned things on our own with each other because we were actually friends. When things were tough academically, I had a group of friends who were supportive, kind, and fun. As moving makes friendship very inconvenient and a lot of work, I'm thankful that I've stayed in regular contact with several of my UMCSD friends, including these three.

Since I left San Diego, Da Jung moved to Austin, so here we are in Austin, just over a year since I've last seen any of them, and it's so nice to be reassured that I have lasting authentic relationships from San Diego. It's also nice that they did a lot of research on what to do and like to do things that I like to do. One of those things just so happened to be kayaking.

I like turtles.

What a deal at $10/hour at the boathouse. Jon, Da Jung, and I took a paddle down Lady Bird Lake, a part of the Colorado River. The weather was perfect, the views were lovely, and there were so many turtles.

While this wasn't quite the river kayaking I imagined, I'm counting it as it's much different than the sea kayaking I've done previously. I much preferred river kayaking as I didn't get seasick. I definitely need to look into some paddle sports on the Chicago River and Lake Michigan.

Thanks, friends, for a lovely weekend.