Whats the story?

Jo and I got married in 2017 while going to school at BYU. Eventually we’ll record that story, but Jo was exactly the type of future I had hoped for. While living in Provo we had a few good friends to adventure with, but we mostly found ourselves adventuring and dreaming on a life of exploring the world together. While in school we did our best to get out as much as possible. I made it a point to never do homework on weekends so that we could go and play in the Utah desert or wherever the wind took us.

Two of our summers were spent working near Zion national park as canyoneering guides which we loved. The summer between my Junior and Senior year I had an internship at Los Alamos National Laboratory. That was our first taste of New Mexico. We spent that summer trading the Utah desert for the New Mexican.

In 2020, I finished school right as the pandemic swept in. I was hired by the lab and worked remotely from our little duplex in Los Alamos. My mentor had recently returned from 7 years living and working in Vienna and encouraged me to apply for a similar position. I applied even before I was hired by the lab, but about 6 months into the new job I was offered the position in Vienna. It was an easy descision to move. Jo and I were nervously excited to try out life abroad and left in March 2021.

So started our European Era. We moved a little outside Vienna in a market town called Langenzersdorf. We bought a car, and I worked for the UN at the International Atomic Energy Agency. We fully appreciated our time there traveling nearly every weekend whether around Austria or flying to dozens of new countries. We tirelessly tried to take advantage of our time there as we knew it was limited.

After 3 years, my contract was finished and it was time to come home. It’s been sad how quickly those 3 years have turned into what feels like just a dream. It was an awesome experience, but by the end of it we were so exhausted and ready for something new.

Now what?

Now we’re back in New Mexico trying to explore and live the life we’ve come to love. I find my memory lacks and so in an attempt to hang on to the hundreds of adventures we’ve had, I’m trying to record them. Our adventures have returned to mostly just weekend trips around the Southwest. But we still yearn for another grand adventure.

We know life may not always look like this, and these are only snapshots of mostly good times, but these memories are priceless to me.