Hold the Line

The sunset soon after we arrived at Leelanau State Park

My man and I are so pumped about this mini vacation to the Traverse City area on Michigan's lower peninsula!

We love a good road trip, and this one sure hasn't disappointed.

Not to mention the mountain biking we found today -- wow! 18 miles of gorgeous, flowy woods that we had almost entirely to ourselves. It was an incredible ride.

I was so tired afterward that I was tempted to sleep at the trail head after our picnic dinner, but my boyfriend had enough left in his tank to drive the additional 1.5 hours to our beautiful campsite on Lake Michigan.

And the next morning under the bright sky!

Cranking good tunes always helps the miles tick by faster -- and we are both feeling that this Toto song tells a little bit of our story, seeing as it took a few years for us to get to where we are now:

It's not in the way that you hold me
It's not in the way you say you care
It's not in the way you've been treating my friends
It's not in the way that you'll stay till the end
It's not in the way you look or the things that you say that you do

Hold the line
Love isn't always on time
Whoa oh oh
Hold the line
Love isn't always on time
Whoa oh oh

It's not in the words that you told me
It's not in the way you say you're mine
It's not in the way that you came back to me
It's not in the way that your love set me free
It's not in the way you look or the things that you say that you do

Hold the line
Love isn't always on time
Whoa oh oh
Hold the line
Love isn't always on time
Whoa oh oh

Nope, it isn't. Or it doesn't always feel like it is. But when it comes, when it fully arrives, ooooohhhh baby, it is worth every second of waiting, every moment of heartbreak, every tear -- it's so freakin' awesome!

Africa

Making my way to Berkeley on BART

I landed in San Francisco at about 8:45 pm tonight. I'm here for an Ashtanga yoga workshop, and when I signed up I thought it was going to work out super perfectly because one of my Ashtanga buddies from Madison moved to Berkeley just over a year ago.

I got in touch with her, she and her partner were excited for me to stay with them, everything was working out great. And then, last week, she told me that she was leaving for Africa the day I arrived.

That's right Toto, Africa:

I hear the drums echoing tonight
But she hears only whispers of some quiet conversation
She's coming in, 12:30 flight
The moonlit wings reflect the stars that guide me towards salvation
I stopped an old man along the way
Hoping to find some long forgotten words or ancient melodies
He turned to me as if to say, "Hurry boy, it's waiting there for you"

It's gonna take a lot to take me away from you

The view from my friends' house in the Berkeley Hills

There's nothing that a hundred men or more could ever do
I bless the rains down in Africa
Gonna take some time to do the things we never had

The good news is she got a new job that she's excited about that will help teenage girls in Malawi get a secondary school education, something only six percent of them do right now.

The bad news is that she left her house at 9pm tonight to get to the airport, and I arrived at 9:50 pm...