Five Years Later

Five years sure can make a difference.

Back on September 12, 2003 Chris and I got married after knowing each other for 20 years and spending that whole time drifting in and out of each others lives. In fact, we'd probably had the worst timing you could ever have over the course of two decades.

Two days later we left for our honeymoon on the Outer Banks (NC) only to get chased away by Hurricane Isabel. Seems like our bad timing wasn't done quite yet! Our stay on OBX lasted for all of 36 hours and we spent the next few days at home in Baltimore and taking day trips to Pennsylvania and DC as the storm got closer to home.

When it hit Maryland, and hit it hard, the honeymoon was officially over.

Five years later we thought our bad timing might be coming back to haunt us. First there was Hanna, who seemed determined to wreck our finely-tuned plans to hit Georgia for a few days before attending our friends' wedding. Luckily, her path diverted from the Georgia coast and except for one rainy day spent in Savannah, the weather was more than agreeable.

At one point we even worried that Ike might head up the coast and make a path for OBX, but I think our multi-beach travel plans confused the hurricanes and sent him buzzsawing for the Gulf Coast. Best wishes to all in his path, but I'm sure glad our travel plans have been relatively issue-free.

Sadly, it's our last full day here on OBX. Our two-week, three-beach odyssey is coming to an end and tomorrow morning we'll pack the car one last time, check out of our rented house, and head home to a work week that awaits us with meetings and deadlines, projects and headaches, naps and more.

Life is a lot different than it was five years ago – thanks in large part to a little handful named Ryan – and I often wonder how my life would have changed had fate not taken its sweet old time bringing Chris and me together for good, but I'm just glad we all got our acts together... no matter how long it took.