As you know, I stayed with my lovely friend Fareed.
I have a bunch of little sweet Fareed stories – such as the time he planned a whole birthday night for me of all my favorite stuff, but suffice it to say, he is awesome.
Sometimes I feel as though all I do on this blog is blabber on how about how wonderful everything/everybody is. What can I say? It’s been an amazing (seemingly never-ending) vacation. I’m stopping by a bunch of my favorite people/places/things. How can I not love everything?
Don’t worry. I’ll be a little less starry-eyed beneath rose-colored glasses once I get home at the end of the month. But, we are forbidden from thinking about going to back to Los Angeles for now.
Fareed has such a fun apartment. He and his two great, friendly roommates have inspiring quotes written in chalk all over the walls. It’s super cool.
Speaking of cool, I forgot how much I missed singing with him. He grabbed his guitar off the wall. I was a little hesitant to sing in front of him (I just don’t do it nearly as often as I should nowadays, and he’s super talented), but before you knew it, we were singing “Rolling in the Deep” in harmony. Goodness, can that boy sing!
Fareed had to work on the day of the half marathon, but we still had plenty of hang out time while I was there. We spent a little time at the National Air and Space Museum. (Did you know that Washington DC has tons of free museums? (As I said in a post a few days ago, Washington DC is dope.)
We went out to dinner with Fareed’s huge extended family Sunday night. (It was almost Persian New Year.) I made two wonderful new friends. Shadi almost ran a half marathon once, but ended up not doing it. I know she of course can though. Now, she and I have plans to run a marathon in Antarctica in a few years. (Super tentative plans, and a few years may mean many… but we’ll see what we can do.)
Nima and I are going to run half marathons (maybe full marathons) in every country in Europe. Of course, I started looking up my adventure with Nima right after dinner. (How could I not? It sounded so fun.) Here’s the problem. Apparently, many European countries do not host a single marathon or half marathon. I suppose we’re just going to have to organize a bunch of half marathons throughout Europe. It’s gonna be hard, but probably wildly fun – and we’ve got time.
I started my conversation with Nima saying, “What’s your dream in life?” He asked if I wanted the realistic one or the crazy one. Obviously I wanted the crazy one. I had a feeling that the “crazy” one was going to be the awesome, fun, and still possible. And it pretty much was. He said he wanted to walk (or bike) through all the countries in Europe, continue through Asia, and down into Africa.
We started looking up mileage, and thinking about how far you could go in a day. These are just estimates, so don’t let these numbers plan your big quest through 3 continents, but we came up with the idea that it could take anywhere from 3 years (if you bike a good amount every single day) to 30 years (if you walk the whole way and take a lot of time to sightsee.) 3 years sounded stressful, always moving and maybe not seeing a lot. 30 years sounded really long. That’s why we just compromised on the one year of lots of running through Europe.
It kind of seems as though this year of small adventures very well may lead me into many more years of adventures. I’m looking forward to seeing what happens.