As many of you know, John and I met at UT Austin in an Ornithology class during my last senior semester. I had one last biology elective course to take to graduate and all that was left to register for was Ornithology. Scrambling and concerned, I looked up the word and thought sarcastically "great this will be fun". I never would have thought I'd grow a love for birds or enjoy the class as much as I did or what a special gift it would give me later in life. My impression of John: he was charismatic, cute, a goofball, and way too interested in birds, haha! We got to know each other and became friends through our class birding field trips. Yes, college classes have field trips or at least the best ones do! Hook'em! We had a blast in our class and outside of it, but we really were just friends at the time. Not knowing my career path, I moved back home to San Angelo after I graduated college. Years passed. Later, John and I reconnected when I made a trip out to Denver with my sister, Erica's, encouragement in February 2016 after I was in a recent breakup. I was still friends with John on social media and I admired all his outdoor photography posts and thought he's living his life. So I messaged him saying we should catch up while I was visiting Denver for the first time. We planned a simple meet up at Punch Bowl Social to grab a drink. I was in a hoodie and jeans and John was dressed up in a button up shirt. It was just supposed to be a one to two hour get-together to catch up since college, but we had so much fun exchanging what had happened since we last saw each other, the hang-out lasted six hours long! After my Denver visit, John must have been hooked because he continued to pursue me. We started dating long distance from North Carolina to Colorado for a little over a year until finally, I moved to Denver and that is all she wrote!