Preparing for a two-week Grand Canyon rafting trip should have been simple: follow the packing list and buy what I needed. Instead, I found myself overwhelmed by mandatory hats, questionable underwear fabrics, biodegradable soap requirements, and a husband who approached REI like an Olympic event. A story about adventure, procrastination, and discovering that packing may be harder than rafting.

Back in my flatlander days, Garrett discouraged me from big mountain bike rides in Colorado’s high elevation. Last weekend, after years of acclimating to mountain life in Durango, I took on my first Iron Horse Quarter Horse ride. Turns out… flatlanders can eventually mountain.

Before Google, there were stamps, pay phones… and at least eight letters to a popular college basketball player who never wrote back.

A teenage cleaning job. A small-town library. And the kind of lesson you only learn when adults choose not to say a word.

click. click. click.

The sound of Uncle David’s Nikon blended with carnival music as our ferris wheel seat rocked high above Main Street. At seven years old, I gripped the loose guardrail for dear life, caught between fear of falling and the thrill of being photographed like a star.

In 1985, at just seventeen, I found myself swirling a glass of chardonnay in a downtown Sioux City restaurant—my first taste of upscale dining.

It started with driving lessons around Remsen, Iowa, and ended with quiet moments that said everything. Grandpa Gib wasn’t just teaching me the rules of the road—he was showing me the road of life.

On graduation day in 1985, I ran two miles through my hometown chasing a future I couldn’t yet imagine. Forty years later, I’m still running—but now I see the value in everything I once left behind.

I pulled my watch off its charger and onto my wrist in sleepy grogginess. Barely awake, I realized I was lying in a bed in Paris. And then I noticed the time.

“Oh, my God! Garrett, it’s 9:05!”