Saturday, July 11, 2009

The sun setting tonight in Arizona!

Kinda like the "welcome to" sign? :)

Hey! Rick & Hilary have made it to Arizona!

Now can we make it to Albuquerque? According to the GPS (yay! Finally
have GPS!) we'll be there at 3am. Oy.

Rick takes the driver's seat!

We just got gas in Needles! Pricey there... Hilary is enjoying the
passenger seat for a little while!

Throw my ticket out the window

Just hit 20,000 miles on the Fiesta! :)

Old fashioned wedding road trip

Fiesta in the air!

Ready and waiting for the new tires! Yay!

Heading to Bob Wonndries Ford

We're packed and on our way...will leave directly from the dealership
for our road trip!

Hiccup!

Ordinarily I'd be a few hours into my trip at this hour (10am), but yesterday I brought the Fiesta to the dealership for scheduled maintenance and they thought it best to put on some new tires.

Great that they want us to have a safe trip with no incidents! And great that they (fingers crossed) can get those tires to arrive this morning (fingers crossed)! But too bad on the timing...

If all goes as planned, we should still be on the road by early afternoon. We may or may not get as far as Albuquerque - originally we had planned on getting farther than that on Day 1.

The car is just about packed. I cooked up all the veggies left in the fridge. All our batteries are charged. Ann-Marie has offered to water our plants while we're away - Rick has been taking such good care of them and we were very sad at the thought of just leaving them to fend for themselves. :)

Now we wait for the call from the dealership saying they're ready for our arrival!

Let's go! Let's go!

Rick & I are getting married!

Happy anniversary to us!

Today is the 1 year anniversary of Rick and Hilary's first date!

That night he picked me up at my friend's house (I was only visiting LA and staying with my friend Sean), where we were face to face for the first time.

Maybe I'll back up a little.

We met on Flickr first and had begun corresponding daily - emails, phone calls... One day he mentioned that he would be coming to NY in the fall for business. He asked if he could take me out on a date. Well, yes, but...did I really have to wait until fall?! That seemed a little silly. So when my friend Sean emailed me and said "Hey! You should come visit me in LA!" I had more than one reason to say yes. Maybe I made Rick a little nervous when I announced I was coming to LA. But I think he got used to the idea pretty quickly... :)

Back to the date.

We were happy and excited and a little nervous too. I remember seeing him for the first time and giving each other a big hug in the driveway. We went to Guelaguetza Restaurant for a Oaxacan dinner - mmmm - mole! Actually, the plate of chicken was a bit huge and I couldn't concentrate on eating. There wasn't much to do while waiting for our car to be returned from the valet, so our first kiss also came in a parking lot. We then went up to the Griffith Park Observatory for a view of the city.

We talked and stared at each other a lot. We knew.

The rest is history?

Oh, so I guess this is also an official thank you to Sean, for speeding up the process. ;) Here we all are together!

Rick, Hilary, Sean

Thursday, July 9, 2009

Why Tennessee?!

Many people have asked us "why Tennessee?"

Well, lots of reasons!

1. Rick once took a road trip from CA and made it only as far as Memphis - we wanted to continue where he left off!

2. We both have an affinity for old-timey country music. (And we're sure we could be country stars in another life - Porter Waggoner/Dolly Parton?)

3. Who can resist a place called Lover's Leap? (Okay, we thought it was in Tennessee, but Lookout Mountain is apparently shared by TN, AL and GA. Lover's Leap is, as it turns out, technically in Georgia.)

4. It's green. We like green.

5. Oh and, DUH, Elvis. Geez.

Elvis & Hilary

What the heck is going on?

It may be news to you, but not so much for us: Rick & Hilary are getting married!

It all started a year and a half ago or so, when they noticed each other on Flickr. (See Rick here! See Hilary here!)

After several months of favoriting and commenting on each other's work, adding each other as friends on various social media sites, emailing each other, and long telephone conversations...well, they had their first real live date in Los Angeles. That was 7/11/08.

Rick & Hilary

The date lasted a weekend and it was pretty obvious that something special was happening. There were trips back and forth between NYC and LA for visits until Hilary decided to up and move across the country. That was 11/15/08.

There has been quiet talk of elopement for a while, but we've now set the date and have a whole road trip all planned out for the occasion! Although we'll be alone on our wedding road trip, we would love to share our 9 days on the road (7/11-7/20/09) with all of you! It will look something like this:


View Larger Map

Yay! :) :)