I completed the Triple Crown and joined Sea Lion in Austin, TX. Then COVID arrived and turned it all upside down. We decided to move back to our home state of Maryland (if you recall, Texas said COVID was a hoax from the very start) and I soon landed a job back in the engineering world. It was designing and building conveyor systems which was a lot of fun but the company had complete disdain for remote work. Not even a COVID outbreak in the office was enough cause to allow engineers to work from home.
I didn’t get a single day of skiing in during the 2020/2021 season and I soon began really missing long adventures. For a full year, I ate lunch outside every single day, sitting by the fence that separated my office’s industrial park from the Monocacy River. It was some fitting symbolism for how caged I felt being stuck back in a cubicle. I was working for the weekend and trying to hike and bike the nearby trails as much as possible, but I couldn’t stop yearning for the next big adventure.
Long story short, I landed a fully remote job, Sea Lion and I broke up, a lot of other stars aligned, and I decided to live full time in my Subaru Outback and move out West. I have wanted to live in Colorado since the first time I skied there in 2010! So from March 1st through October 31st I was a nomad.
33 days of skiing in the Colorado Rockies, Utah, and Idaho
Hiking 350 miles around Moab, Colorado, Iceland, and Sedona
Mountain Biking around those same areas, and a few days at ski resorts downhill bike park
Then I decided it was time to be a beach bum. I had spent LOTS of time in the mountains from all of my hikes and all of my life, but hardly any time by the sea.