I am in River City - for real!

Longmont, CO

Richmond, VA

Fast Forward to Spring 2010.






I flew into Richmond on a  rainy spring morning 4 days after my Big Day back home -  this time on Phase 1 of my actual relocation! My relocation itself would not be complete until the very beginning of June but atleast I had visited this place before and had been driven around the city, shown a few suburbs etc. However, everything from the names of roads to directions seemed very new and confusing to me ( I blamed my jet lag and definitely not my sense of direction or lack thereof for this :-))! On the ride from the airport, I told myself - this place should be called the Rainy City or the Cloudy City and not the River City; its either cloudy and dull or cloudy, dull and raining! The humidity and jet lag were getting to me, I was feeling pretty out of place and missing Colorado.  For the next few days, I spent getting over my jet lag and extreme tiredness and moved on Phase 2 of my relocation. I had to go back to Colorado and decide what I wanted to do with my job. I had worked out a few options in my head but on April Fools Day 2010, I informed my bosses at the company in Colorado that I had worked at for close to 9 years, a place where I had gone from being a recent grad / new employee and being bossed around by quite a few people to managing people and technology across the world; a place where I had enjoyed going to work most of the times, a place that had been kind to me most of the times, a place that had shown me its most ugly face at the lowest point in my life, a place where I made some friends for life, a place which taught me that career growth in the corporate world happens by associations as much as sheer hard work and talent, a place which made me realize that I would never belong in the old white boys club, a place which surprised me with very good bonus pay checks but a place which I felt by the time I left had a strictly one way loyalty street!! The resignation process was quick, painless and without any excitement. Infact it was so low key I almost found it surreal. I had never worked at any other place. This had been my first real job. Something inside my head was telling me at the same time that I should take a couple of months of break and then decide what I wanted to do with my career. I was back in River City a couple of days later with a suticase of mostly clothes to settle in my new home. GREAT!
The third and final phase of my relocation would happen over the Memorial Day weekend in 2010 to bring my car which was still in Colorado, so my goal till then was to take a break from work, relax and catch up on some much needed rest which I did in good proportions. But I was also getting to know the city (or not!) that would be my new home. It was a little challenging without my car but with my husband's help, his GPS and google maps, at least I was starting to know the name of the roads.
I quickly realized that directions in Richmod were very CONFUSING. Almost no roads went east - west or north-south!! Coming from a small town where pretty much every road was on a grid to this bigger city where most  roads went in all different directions,  many streets; even major ones not having a sign and the same street known by two different names depending on where you were didn't make my life easy!!! How can a gal who was brand new in the place and pretty challenged directionally make it in this city? The only good news for me was - any place I needed to reach was less than 30 min drive from where we lived!The bad news was I didn't have my car yet to actually test my knowledge of directions in this city.