I was thirteen when my parents decided to escape the yuppie overtaking of Metropolitan Atlanta with a move north to the rural Forsyth County, Georgia. So badly did I not want this at the time, that I swear you can still see lines my fingernails drew in the highway as they dragged me there. Thank goodness for Brooke: she was just the friend I needed to meet to ease my transition. When I was lamenting the lack of proximity to malls and cineplexes, Brooke reminded me of my love for less superficial pleasures – baking cookies, playing cards, daydreaming on the front porch, etc. She kept me grounded, while still allowing me to keep my head just a bit in the clouds (where I’ve always done my best scheming). And I like to think that my radical and adventurous nature has enlightened Brooke; over the nine years I’ve known her, she’s become more forward-thinking, and dramatically more courageous – courageous enough to travel. A story that I always pull from our travel adventure compendium is how, within one day, we went from relishing cherry gelato in Siena, Italy to picking cherries in an orchard overlooking Florence. We’d been traveling with our respective families in Europe that summer when two of us broke free to meet in Italy, at a hostel in a hillside parish of Florence. On our first evening, we were awoken by a colorful blend of chatter in Italian, English, and Dutch. We followed the noise outside and got to conversing with Giacomo, the hostel owner’s son, and his buddies, Pieter and Enka. Minutes later, Giacomo had invited us to join them in the nearby cherry orchard the following evening, and while we’d already made plans to go to Siena, he assured that we could go there in the morning and return by dusk for cherry picking. It seemed insane to skimp on a city like Siena just to spend more time with total strangers, but we did it, because somehow we both knew it’d be worth it. We hopped an early bus to Siena, absorbed as much as possible, and only hours later we found ourselves back, eating fresh cherries with our new friends at the top of the orchard as we watched the incomparable Tuscan sunset over Florence. “Carpe diem” is the moral of this story, and it is Brooke’s and my driving force even now.