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Laura's Story
It was the spring of 2009 and I had just finished my Planetary Surface Processes class in my second year of my Ph.D. at Cornell. The class had just spent spring break hiking all over northern Arizona and New Mexico in some of the most beautiful/adventurous places I had ever been. I learned a bit about geology, a bit about how much you can abuse a rental minivan, and a lot about how much I loved being out in nature hiking and exploring.
Yet when I returned to Ithaca, I couldn't find anyone who wanted to recreate these grand adventures with me. While I wasn't ready to drive my Sentra through dubious desert washes, I spent many days trying to convince anyone that it would be fun to go hike the highest mountains in the northeastern ranges, or something. To be fair to my friends, this is "spring" in Ithaca:
William's Story
It was actually in May 2009, a week before I even met Laura, that I found out that my proposal was accepted....
Well, I mean that my very non-romantic application to fly a research project on a NASA microgravity flight was accepted and I would be sticking around campus that summer to do all of the work that winning a proposal entails - designing specialized hardware, operations planning, and recruiting the right team. Little did I know that 5 years later I'd be putting those skills to work again for a much more important proposal. (Just read our engagement story.)
The weekend after I found out about winning the microgravity flight was the weekend of my Master's graduation. Since I was going to be around all summer, I met up with some people at a collegetown bar, looking for new friends to hang out with. I ended up playing doubles pool with a girl who was interested in doing a hiking trip to the Adirondacks, but didn't have a lot of the camping gear that would make the trip doable. Luckily for both of us, my family was coming up to Ithaca the next day for the graduation and had lots of hiking gear, so we quickly sorted out plans to pool our resources and make it happen. It turned out that this was Laura, the same person who was soon assigned to take over the microgravity research project after my graduation. As we started to work together closely in the weeks that followed, we started hanging out after work and on weekends - including a quick trip up to Mt Marcy for our Adirondacks hike.
After enduring Marcy, Laura mentioned that she was going to be doing a 5k race at the end of the summer, and asked if I was interested in joining her and a couple of friends for the race. I was very excited by Laura's invitation, and offered to train with her a few times a week. Though she hadn't planned on a training routine that summer, Laura joined me every couple of days after work. We spent the summer working together on the microgravity project and doing fun trips in the local area. We had a great time at the Dash and Splash race that August and a crazy week in Houston on the microgravity flight.
So, yeah. As summer started to roll around, most of my friends had found out-of-town internships, so I wasn't going to be able to organize a hiking trip to the mountains with them anyway. That's when Nimita invited me to a gathering at the local grad student watering hole known for its billiards and free popcorn. I wasn't exactly going there to recruit friends for a hiking trip, it just happened that way. When I got there, Nimita already had a table filled with some other friends of hers and William. I had actually met William about 3 days before in my lab - he and I were going to be working on a project together all summer - so I slipped onto the bench next to him. In short order, the conversation became an advertising pitch about how the Adirondacks were only 5 hours away (er, one way) and were beautiful (well, I had never been there but the internet says it is lovely and the internet doesn't lie) and how GREAT it would be if we organized (did all the work to put together) a hiking trip that summer!
I stayed on at Goodrich the following fall, while Laura and I worked on the next iteration of our research project in hopes of another microgravity flight the following year. Outside of work, not only did we run together, we often made meals together after exercising and began to plan activities together every weekend. We biked, ran, skied, and swam around Ithaca, we did trips all around the northeast, and we kept working on the microgravity experiments together. We started dating after a year or so of being best friends and expanded our trips to the whole country. When Laura got a job at JPL in California after graduating, I went along with her out west. After a few months, I too got a job at JPL, where we both continue to work together on several projects. Last summer, after finishing a series of the most challenging hikes in southern California, and dodging the poptart dude (read more here), I proposed on the way down from Mt. San Gorgonio:
<-- Mt. Marcy internet picture
I was prepared to have to do a lot more convincing, but William was all for it. Before we even left the bar we had a plan to hike Mt. Marcy and had even divided up who would bring what camping gear. Two weeks later, I was huffing up the highest mountain in NY in the rain, seven miles into the mud slick they called a trail with a 40 lb pack and a fever. I learned a great many things that day, including some life lessons about appropriate pack weight, but the most important thing I learned was that William was awesome.
<-- Mt. Marcy actual pictures
Sick with a cold, everyone in the group quickly outhiked me. Nimita had never really been hiking before and was happy to match my snail's pace, but I was sure I was going to turn around/collapse/beg for mercy before making the top. This was NOT how I envisioned my first NY adventure. Even though we were being passed by everyone and their 3 year old on the trail, William stayed with Nimita and I, saying that he'd see us both to the top if that's where we wanted to go. More times than I can count, I picked out a rock on the trail and decided that I was going to sit on it and just stop moving. But each time, William was there with a joke or encouraging story and I kept going. We made it to the top, eventually:
She said yes!
<-- The top of Mt. Marcy. Laura is not amused that this is the halfway point.
...but I was ready to give my right arm for a helicopter lift to the bottom. William stayed with us the entire (slow) way back down the mountain and made every effort to lift our spirits and stay positive despite the rain, impending nightfall, and disgruntled company. Despite not making great hiking company, just two weeks later William invited me to go hiking with him again- this time on the highest mountain in New Hampshire. Delighted, (and far less sick) I accepted! Our friendship quickly became the source of adventure that I had been craving since that trip to the southwest. (The weather didn't really get better in subsequent hikes, but I had great company so it was awesome).
<--
These are all diff.t mtns I swear
We expanded to biking, running, swimming, skiing, video gaming, cooking, watching James Bond, and other entertaining ways to pass the time in Ithaca. All of our friends knew we were in love well before we did, and they celebrated when we (finally) started dating. The rest is history. We now live and work in Pasadena and are making the most of our adopted home - still hiking and exploring, our mountains are just taller and drier now! Last September, once again on a mountain, William proposed (in the long saga describe here):
And of course I said yes!
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