The Beginning of the Lasts

With May upon us, I have started to get a little bit sentimental. It's hard to believe that Brian's graduation is this month; when we met, the end of his time at WP seemed light years away. What would happen when he was done in New York didn't come up until almost a year after we started dating. Now, here we are.

This past weekend, I took my last trip up to New York before graduation. It was weird to know that it was the last time I'll make that drive alone; I'm riding up with Brian's mom for Grad Week and coming back, I'll sit in the passenger seat as Brian drives away for the last time (at least for quite a while). Weird, and a bit surreal.

Brian was done class on Friday around lunch time, which made our weekend together feel so long. We went over to Central Valley, checked into our hotel and relaxed for a while before venturing over to Chili's to grab dinner. The Quesadilla Explosion salad is my absolute favorite! Brian was fighting a nasty sickness, so we took the rest of the night easy.

On Saturday, Brian woke up feeling a lot better, so we ventured out to Woodbury Commons and the Palisades Mall (seriously one of the hugest malls I've ever been to) to do some shopping for summer clothes! It was sunny and in the 90's all weekend, which definitely put us in the mood for summertime. I got a really cute dress at the J. Crew outlet, and Brian picked up a couple pairs of shorts. Now that he is going to have to dress himself every day instead of just grabbing whatever the uniform of the day is, he needs to start putting together a decent wardrobe. :)

That afternoon, we met a group of Brian's friends at the Orange County Fair Speedway in Middletown!

Everyone had pulled their cars into a field overlooking the track...I have never seen so many pick-up trucks in one place! For a minute, I forgot I was as far north as New York.

I had never been to anything like it, but it was so much fun to hang out at the dirt track watching the races, grilling hot dogs and toasting marshmallows, enjoying a couple of drinks, and spending time with Brian's friends.

Later in the night, the cars were much faster and so loud! We are so bummed we only made it out to the dirt track once; if we had known about it before this weekend, I am pretty sure it would have become a tradition! :)

On Sunday morning, we woke up with a mission. There were a couple of last minute things to accomplish in our last NY weekend. Brian has been wanting to visit the headquarters of Orange County Choppers for a while, so when we woke up on Sunday we headed over to  Newburgh to check it out.

OCC is the custom motorcycle company featured on the TLC show American Chopper, and a lot bikes built on the show are actually kept in the shop. Brian's favorite was the Comanche Chopper, designed to look like the RAH-66 Comanche Helicopter. On the show, they actually debuted the final bike design by riding it side by side with the airborne helicopter!

I don't really know anything about motorcycles like Brian, but I really liked this one. It had the space shuttle Discovery on it, which is the one we saw launch from Cape Canaveral in March 2009.

Later that afternoon, we grabbed some lunch to go and scouted out a place we could watch some airplanes land. This is one of my favorite pastimes, and there was a perfect place near Stewart Airport/Air Force Base in Newburgh to park my car and have an airplane-watching picnic.

 They were doing some practice runs with the C-130's, so we got to watch them take off, do a quick loop, and then land. It was so cool, and probably the closest I've ever seen an airplane that wasn't parked!

After our picnic, we drove back towards WP in an attempt to find a place across the river that Brian can see sometimes when he is running. We ended up finding Cold Spring, a cute historic town right on the Hudson. Walking down Main Street and looking into all of the shops kind of felt like traveling back in time. You could even see all of the buildings of WP across the river! We grabbed a couple of ice cream cones and sat outside on a bench enjoying the beautiful weather before I had to head back home.

When I left, we said our last ever goodbye in the parking lot of Arvin. I have such sad memories of that place, having to end our fun weekends and prolonging our goodbyes. I have really treasured these weekends we have together when I go up to visit him; they are a lot like mini-vacations for us, and this weekend was definitely one of my favorites. I know that we'll look back fondly on the time we've spent together at WP, but I'm glad the next time we will be leaving together!