VA, BV, SVU, BFF

I have told this story before, but here's a brief backdrop: I met my friend Laurs as randomly assigned roommates as freshmen at SVU in the fall semester of 2004. We both ran cross country and track for SVU, and we quickly became good friends. After Jeff and I got married in 2006, Laurs had a different, non-Shaina roommate for a semester before she left SVU to serve a mission. Laurs did not end up returning to SVU due to marriage and moving and life. Fast forward 18 years: Laurs recently finished her degree!! 

Last year when Laurs told me SVU graduation was on May 9th, 2025, I knew I wanted to be there for her. How could I miss it? We started at SVU together 20 years ago, and we've been best friends for 20 years! Even graduation was during the thick of track season, I booked a plane ticket six months ago. Some people are worth missing three track meets (one middle school meet and two high school meets) and team pictures for. It turned out to be SO MUCH FUN playing hooky on track season to play in the Appalachian Mountains with my dear friend! 

During the week before I left for Virginia, several things went wrong and left me hoping this trip wasn't doomed! One week before I left, my Airbnb host cancelled on me out of the blue. Buena Vista, Virginia is a tiny town with very limited lodging options. I reserved the Airbnb six months in advance because I knew it would be hard to find a place to stay over graduation weekend. I was extra excited to stay in this particular Airbnb because it was the house my college coach used to live in! But the host cancelled and I was left scrambling for last minute lodgings a scant week before graduation. 

There was nothing left for the three nights we needed but a nasty looking ancient brown 1970 RV parked in someone's backyard, for $100 per night. Yeah right! I got creative and after much scouring of the internet found one place to stay for 2 nights and a second place to stay for the final night. I also booked an airport hotel in D.C. for Saturday night before my Sunday morning departure. So, for a 4 night trip, we stayed in 3 different places! And we had to share a bed for all but the last night. Both Airbnbs in Buena Vista were a single room with a bathroom that we shared with other guests. All of these changes were nearly twice as expensive as my original Airbnb too. But we were so glad that we didn't have to outsource our lodgings to Lexington, VA which is 15-20 minutes down the road from SVU. 

So the Airbnb kerfuffle was the biggest issue, but it wasn't the only problem. A few months ago my flight times changed. Thankfully that one was the least awful of the trip! The third pre trip barrier that popped up was my HIP injury. It has been doing great until I tweaked it during the track meet lockdown 6 days before my trip! I could barely walk for 2 days afterwards and I was so worried I'd be too hurt to enjoy the beautiful Virginia outdoors on foot. Thankfully I dutifully did my PT exercises, learned how to apply stretchy K tape to support my hip, and I took time off from running for the entire 6 days before I left. All of that plus constant pleading prayers did the trick: my strained hip muscle didn't hurt at all during the trip, and I was able to run a total of 10 miles and hike 15 miles during my 3 days in Buena Vista.

I was so grateful to overcome these three nearly devastating, potentially itinerary-mangling pre-trip obstacles! 

My trip was from Wednesday, May 7th-Sunday, May 11th. It took all of Wednesday to travel from Sunnyside, Washington to Buena Vista, Virginia, and all of Sunday to travel home again, so I was only actually in Buena Vista for 3 days. But what a 3 days it was! Laurs and I made the most of our time together in our old college stomping grounds. We walked around campus, hiked, ran, and of course Laurs graduated! It was three days of soul filling scenery, sweet nostalgia, and intense physical exertion. Basically, my favorite kind of trip!

My sneaky little "travel trial demon" must've been peeved that I overcame the pre trip obstacles that he set up, because he sent his evil twin during my journey to Buena Vista in the form of car trouble. On Wednesday, I flew from Pasco to Minneapolis to Washington DC, where Laurs picked me up and we drove 3.5 hours to Buena Vista, VA. On the way, Laurs' minivan started making a weird noise. I said a few silent prayers that the van would be easily fixed so we could drive where we needed to go on our trip. Then I Googled nearby car mechanics open after 7pm. We pulled over at a Mario's Auto Shop in a sketchy part of DC. An old man who I assumed to be Mario drove the van around, shined a light under it, tapped it, and shook it, but couldn't find anything wrong. So we thanked him and drove away. 

The van was completely fine for the rest of our visit! I felt a flood of gratitude for this immediate answer to my prayer, followed by a sinking sorrow that I didn't know if I could share this sweet tender mercy moment as such with my dear friend, since she no longer likes church/religion. I didn't know if me sharing that would bother her or if she would deny that it was a miracle, and I am sorry to admit that I chickened out at even telling her I had prayed for help. We are very open and honest in our friendship, but I know that people pushing church-y-ness at Laurs can trigger her or bug her, and I didn't want to dampen our fun chatty happy friend reunion. I simply dubbed it a minivan miracle and left it at that as we drove towards Buena Vista, talking and laughing together the whole way. 

When we arrived in Buena Vista (affectionately known as BV for short) at 10:30pm on Wednesday night, my little travel trial demon buddy made one final dig. Our Airbnb had a keypad code for check-in, so no human was needed to let us in. But when we entered the code, the door wouldn't open! The knob turned but there was clearly a locked deadbolt separate from the keypad. It was late at night and we just wanted to sleep! We entered the code a dozen times, pushing the door and rattling the doorknob. We were about to try contacting the Airbnb host when another resident in the shared Airbnb came to the door and let us in. I think we woke her up. Thankfully the keypad code to our room worked.

The queen bed we shared in this creaky old building was back-wrenchingly hard, the pillows were massive boulders that hurt our necks, the road outside was loud, and light from the hallway streamed through the old fashioned high window above the door. It took us hours to fall asleep. We both got t-shirts out of our bags to drape over our eyes to block the light. I turned on a noisemaker app to equalize the sounds from the street. Around 1:00 am, we heard another guest trying to get in with the outdoor keypad. The person who let us in must've locked the deadbolt again! So we paid it forward and let the next guest in after asking through the door to make sure they weren't axe murderers. We left the deadbolt unlocked. Then we went back to our rock solid bed and boulder pillows, draped t-shirts over our eyes like we were in some kind of demented masochistic spa, and laughed till tears streamed, out of pure exhausted punchiness. 

The first thing we both said when we woke up a scant few hours later in the morning was "ow." That's the poetry of a painful mattress on a middle aged body. I did some pre run PT exercises and then went on a gentle tentative trot through the achingly familiar dear tiny town of BV. I limited myself to 4 miles but I was riding such a high when I got back! My hip felt fine and I saw so many beloved sights during my run! Joy is returning to my college town after 18 years away.

I'll stop here to put up some pictures, because this is already long and I still have a lot to say about my three days in Virginia!

I had my face pressed to the airplane window as we made our descent to D.C. those gentle green hills own a shard of my heart.

I took this picture in the gray wee hours of the early morning when we were still trying to sleep. 

Our first Airbnb was very cute and convenient, and cool: it was in the upstairs of an old general store with original creaky wood floors. It was so close to SVU, we forgave most of its flaws, and I'll go to the chiropractor to take care of the rest.

View from our window on Thursday morning! The outdoors were calling to me! So I went on a run.

I was a total nostalgic fangirl, running around town on all of my old favorite streets that we ran endlessly every day back in college. This picture is taken on Camden Field, the gravel/dirt track that we often did workouts on since SVU didn't have its own track. (SVU still doesn't have a track).

The track at Camden Field has not changed at all. I think even the tire ruts in it are the same. It was crazy!

Even the local high school had abandoned this track by the time we were using it back in my 2005 college days.

I think I remember that puddle too.

From Camden Field, I ran over to another college cross country workout hotspot: Glen Maury Park.

Across the Maury River.

I didn't have time to run around the park because I was limiting my mileage so I'd have legs and ability for the rest of the week, but from here it looked the same.

Annnnd the beloved River Walk flood wall path. We ran this endlessly back in the day as a warm-up to Glen Maury Park workouts.

Peaceful River Walk.

The Penny Park: Jeff and I sometimes walked to this tiny park on dates and swang on the swings.

Running past Coach Wright's old house and waving-- this is the Airbnb that the host cancelled on us last minute.

I ran up to SVU via Chestnut Road, where I always felt like I was going to die an early death at the end of every run in college.

A peek at SVU's Main Hall motivated me to run up the hill.

My heart squeezed at this sight. My old house-- Main Hall used to be women's dorms back in my day. 

I took this picture to send to Jeff, waving at him from SVU. I missed Jeff so much on this trip! He is PART of my SVU memories.

Just a crazy 38.5 year old fangirl in nothing but shorts and a sportsbra, running across the front of Main Hall snapping too many selfies!!

Looping down the other side of the hill back to our Airbnb.

For some reason the Airbnb people painted the old general store black. It looked like a fire survivor. There was a Subway restaurant downstairs so the Airbnb smelled like deli meat.

It's going to be so fun going through the 300 pictures I took in 3 days and creating 3 more blog posts out of them! I still have a week and a half of middle school track though, so hopefully I can find time and energy for the blog too!