the land of plenty
Mike and me in the hills of the Santa Ynez Valley
This winter break has been fantastic. So far, I’ve hiked, walked, jogged, and just generally enjoyed the beautiful outdoors (something you can’t really do in Columbus in the winter). Soon enough, I’ll also be playing in the snow when I head up to Tahoe. This picture is one of my favorites so far — the scenery is so beautiful that it almost looks fake, like a movie backdrop or something. 
It’s a shame that I didn’t really get into the outdoor activities until I moved to Woodland, CA in 2005. Before then, I was living in Santa Barbara (1999-2004) and Moorpark (2004-2005), both of which have easy access to the ocean, the mountains, rocks to climb, trails to hike, etc. I easily could have biked around Santa Barbara if I had been into cycling at that point, and there is so much mountain biking around Lake Cachuma and Santa Barbara that I would never have had to worry about running out of places to go. But now I find myself in Ohio, which is very flat, geographically speaking. If I was the same person I was during my first few years of high school, this would be fine as I wouldn’t really miss doing the outdoorsy stuff…but now that I’m in love with mountain biking, hiking, rock climbing, and all the other stuff you can do outside it’s not really a good lifestyle match. The good thing is that the people at OSU are amazing, so I spend my days with people I really like. Also, there are some really cute places within the city that make it a lot of fun to be in. I’ll always love having tea and sweets at Mozart’s, and eating the signature pizza at the Surly Girl Saloon, and enjoying a brickette at La Chatelaine. But I miss the wild abundance of nature that California has to offer. There are many things I’m looking forward to about these next couple of years in Ohio, but I’m avoiding thinking about our return trip because it’s just painful to leave all this out-of-doors glory behind for another several months.
