Place Where It All Started

Gladys landed in Vancouver yesterday morning. Just few days after the summer abruptly ended in Vancouver.

Hootsuite on East 8th AVE, that's where we met!

I drove to pick her up at the airport and I knew I had to fill the gas, but was planning to do it on the way back. I didn't want her to wait after spending 13 hours inside a plane. I missed the first gas station by the airport (noticed it late) and then something that only happened to me once before happened: I ran out of gas.

But this time it was in the middle of a busy street and cold rain that was just starting to fall down. I got a protesting avalanche of horns from the truck behind me, who I told to chill the hell out and who ended up helping me to push my car to the curb.

Gladys stayed in the car while I went on a hunt of gas station, which was supposedly "2 blocks away" as per the instructions of the Kia Motors salesman on the corner. By then the rain was falling hard and I soon found out that 2 blocks were more like 7.

Two years ago in Maui with our lucky rainbow

When I got to the gas station the clerk told me that I can't put gas inside a water bottle, but they didn't have anything else to put it in. So I dryly announced him that I have a sick girlfriend inside a car in the middle nowhere and that I'm going to buy 1,5 litres of gas and put it in this very water bottle whether he likes it or not.

That worked. Drenched to the bone and cold and sweaty I reached the car 10 min later. Last obstacle was the security block that Audi cars have on the fuel hole. You can't just pour gas from a bottle inside. But Gladys used her comb to push it open and so we successfully refueled the car enough to make it to the gas station. I thanked the man and waved at him, he was happy and waved at us when we were leaving. We stopped in a Vietnamese noodle house on the way home and that made us both feel good. Home made noodles inside a good Pho and excellent house made spring rolls put us back into human mode.

Gladys slept through the afternoon while I worked. I picker her up at 7 to go to the event which is special for us, because we met at this very same event almost 3 years ago: Man Talks. It wasn't in the same building as the one where we met but only 1 block away from it. So when we left the event behind and decided to go for a drink instead, we made sure to go check out the entrance to the building where out lives changed 31 months ago.

How little did we know that we will fall in love with each other and stay, despite the arguments, despite my crappy beginning, despite all the challenges and distance, despite the hurt and blame. We made it and we are much stronger now, wiser, kinder, more gentle, way more secure and most of all: still madly in love with each other.

Dinner/drink time after visiting our special place

And guess what. I am moving to Hong Kong in 3 weeks. We are just looking for a place there. So new chapter of our life is about to begin.

I think that we are good with new beginnings, new challenges. We are both quite good with them, in all modestly, I have to say we are.

In Love & Faith,

Thank you for reading,

Jan
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