Leaving St. Paul, Minnesota

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SEPTEMBER 8, 2012

"Now it's two-thousand-and-
And I'm still kicking like old habits
Still sticking with no address or mattress."

- Black Rose by Cecil Otter

Leaving is hard.  I have done it before.  I will likely do it again, though I hope not to.  Today, I departed from Minneapolis.  Not sure I can call it “home,” per se, though it is certainly where I have lived for the last five years.  To say it was a bit of a struggle fails to properly describe the loss of sleep and years I aged during my time in town.  I started a (couple) business(es) and worked half a dozen contract jobs (CFP, tri coach, cycling instructor, yoga teacher, personal trainer and moonlight software developer), watched Cyndi fight cancer, suffered from two B & Es plus two unrelated thefts plus two vehicle fires/malfunctions resulting in about $25k in property and casualty loses, and had to bounce around from one short-term housing situation to another because of shady landlords, ghosts (seriously, I’ll tell you about it sometime), and a departure date that was put on hold twice to support Cyndi in her battle.  In my last two years in Minneapolis I had five addresses and didn’t own a mattress.  In short, it kinda sucked.

Cyndi and I pulled out of town toward Madison, WI to support some of my clients and our friends at Ironman Wisconsin.  I would press on alone to Detroit to connect with my parents before heading for Europe.  As Cyndi and I crossed the border to Wisconsin we saw this:

As time wears away the rough edges of the last couple years, this is all I want to remember – the rainbows, the blue skies and the fluffy puppies.