Our Story
We first met and became friends while attending the North Carolina School of Science and Math in 2008, which is basically a scholarship boarding school for nerds. While we had gone separate ways after graduating, we stayed in touch over the years.
In spring of 2019, a close friend, Sam (also from NCSSM) and his future-wife May, called to invite Kyle to their wedding. When Kyle told them he would not have a date for their wedding, May said "you still have a few months to find one!". Turns out she was right, and Kyle did find one.
Only a few weeks later, when Kyle was in Alaska with family, he started texting Sarah more frequently. We planned to meet up for the week of 4th of July in Sunnyvale, where Kyle was living at the time. Those action packed few days turned out to be a life changing week for the both of us.
From the moment Sarah landed at the San Francisco airport, things were already off to a weird start. Kyle's car was blocked in by neighbors who refused to answer the door. Sarah had to take an Uber and was unlucky enough to have a creepy driver. Thankfully, she arrived safely.
But we found our groove almost immediately. We saw giant redwoods while hiking in Big Basin, walked 10+ miles almost every day, toured San Francisco twice, explored silicon valley industrial parks in the peace of night time, and discovered a new sport with a Onewheel, a tow rope, and a longboard.
One day in particular that really stands out from that trip was the fourth of July. After breakfast, we walked 2 miles to the Sunnyvale train station to ride up to San Francisco for the 4th of July "cloudworks" display. This is of course done with ordinary fireworks, but combined with the low foggy cloud layer that creeps into the bay almost every summer evening like clockwork, you get a comically underwhelming result.
The train station was 5 miles from our destination view point at the Wave Organ, and we had the day to burn so we took the scenic route through city parks and shopping in Chinatown. As the sun began to set, and we started our final leg to the wave organ peninsula, Sarah's low-cut socks were sliding down and her brand new converse were skinning her heel from all the walking. Since our feet are the same size, we agreed to trade socks, and we soon spotted a free bench at a crowded public restroom. We sat down, untied, traded, and retied our shoes perfectly in sync like a well oiled machine, in front of confused onlookers. And then on we went to find a nice boulder to sit on for the show. It was every bit as crappy as we expected, and we quietly laughed as strangers around us were vocally pissed about the event.
After a bit more touristy meandering, we checked the train schedule and saw we had less than 1.5 hours to cover the 5 miles back to the station before the last train of the night, so we started power walking. On the way, Sarah mentioned she wanted Twizzlers, and hardly a minute later we found ourselves walking by a candy store, so we popped in and scanned the place in a whirlwind until we found their giant twizzlers, and we were back on our way in no time. We kept our brisk pace, jogging to cross streets, taking no breaks until we finally made it to the train and boarded. It departed only seconds later. Not even close :)
Sarah flew home, a few weeks later Kyle quit his job and moved to Boulder Colorado, and we dated long distance for a year, until spring 2020 brought the COVID-19 lockdowns. Kyle spent many weeks visiting Sarah in Raleigh, NC while working remotely, and then in May, when her lease expired, we road tripped back to Colorado to stay the last few months of Kyle's lease in Boulder. As Sarah had another year in grad school at NC State University, and Kyle's job was still full-remote due to COVID, we signed a new lease together in NC and drove back together. From that point on, we've hardly spent a day apart.
In the past few years we’ve been on dozens of hikes and campouts, Kyle taught Sarah how to poop in the woods, we bought a beautiful home in the mountains of Virginia, Sarah tamed the local deer, and we adopted our fur baby, Lily. Now we’re taking the next big step!
