Allow me to set the stage. The year is 2015, the setting is Colorado Springs. Home of the rockiest of mountain ranges, and the staunchest of republicans. Endless blue skies and breathtaking panoramic vistas, unspoiled but for 500,000 or so old white conservatives inventing things like purity balls and focus on the family. Voted to have both the most beautiful public park, and the least fashionable population in the country. Myself and my girlfriend Ariel lived 5 minutes from the Planned Parenthood that was shot up by a crazed anti abortion gunman, and then subsequently picketed by anti abortion protesters while still shut down following the attack, we did not exactly fit in. Oh sure, there were other young people to hang out with, if the thing that really gets your wheels turning is spending every day hiking up a fourteen thousand foot mountain before clubbing at the “Thirsty Parrot” in the heart of the four square blocks that is downtown, before, presumably, going to picket Planned Parenthood. It was time for a change.
We decided to quit our jobs and take a road trip that summer from Colorado up through Utah, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington, before cruising down the whole west coast, with the express purpose of finding a new place to live. A place where we fit in, a place we could be proud to call home, a place where we were not afraid to be picketed while being shot to death for attempting to not have a child.
It turns out that place was Seattle. While we did not originally even consider Seattle as one of our options, we quickly fell in love with the city during our four day stop here. So in late January of this year, we installed a trailer hitch on Ariel’s tiny Honda Civic Coupe, packed all of our worldly possessions into a small trailer, and fought our way through blizzards and black ice, listened to over 20 hours of podcasts, and crossed four states to make the House on Holgate the place to hang our hats.
If you want to see our adventure for yourself, you are in luck because we filmed the whole thing and edited it into something watchable, which you can indulge in below.
Also, check out the rest of the youtube channel if you want to see the road trip that led to this move in the first place.
~Addison Pond
