I left Austin with a backpack, a one-way ticket, and every intention of spending the next eleven months traveling alone. I’d recently lost my job in tech, sold nearly everything I owned, cashed out my 401(k), and decided that a prolonged absence from conventional employment sounded like a perfectly reasonable next move.
My plans involved mountains, unfamiliar countries, questionable transportation decisions, and enough time away from the usual routines to figure out what I wanted the next chapter of life to look like. Romance wasn’t particularly high on the itinerary. I was enjoying the freedom of being on my own, answering to nobody, and having absolutely no idea where I might end up a month later.
About three months into the journey, I met a woman in Spain who would eventually become my wife.
Naturally, our relationship began with a game of chess that I never got to finish.
An unfinished game in Spain
I was visiting Xàbia, a small coastal town in Spain, to meet an old friend from my years living in Australia. She introduced me to her fiancé’s sister, Espoir, who was visiting from Vienna. We spent the afternoon swimming, eating fruit, enjoying the Mediterranean, and eventually getting into a rather competitive game of chess.
We split the first two games. During the third, I had to leave to catch a night bus to Alicante ahead of an early flight to Paris. Espoir appeared to have the advantage, although I maintain that an unfinished game should not count as a victory. I suspect she remembers the situation differently.
At the time, it was simply a wonderful afternoon with someone I’d just met. One of those spontaneous travel encounters that reminds you why keeping an open itinerary can be so rewarding. We got along easily, shared a similar curiosity about the world, and seemed to enjoy the same sort of ordinary moments that I tend to remember long after the more spectacular attractions have faded.
Then I left.
That’s the strange thing about traveling. You meet people who, under ordinary circumstances, might become part of your life, but you’re both moving in different directions. Sometimes you exchange numbers, occasionally you promise to see each other again, and more often than not, the relationship remains a pleasant memory from a particular place and time.
For some reason, this one stayed with me.
A few more days in Vienna
I continued through Europe, making my way through Paris, Belgium, Berlin, Poland, and eventually farther south. The trip carried on much as I’d imagined, with new places, long days, and the particular satisfaction of having no fixed schedule beyond wherever I wanted to go next.
But I kept thinking about Espoir.
When I realized my travels would take me near Vienna, I reached out. She invited me to visit, which gave us an opportunity to spend a little more time together and perhaps settle the ongoing chess controversy.
She met me at the station, and over the next three days she showed me around her city. We rode scooters through Vienna, ate ice cream, swam in the river, and consumed a rather impressive amount of fruit and hummus. There was nothing particularly extravagant about our time together, which was part of what made it so enjoyable.
I was drawn to how naturally we seemed to fit into each other’s company. We could spend a day exploring, talking, or doing relatively little without feeling the need to manufacture excitement. She was curious, adventurous, and present in a way I found refreshing. The sort of person who could appreciate an extraordinary experience without needing every experience to be extraordinary.
Of course, there was a fairly obvious complication. She lived in Austria, I lived nowhere in particular, and I was still early in a trip that had no immediate end date.
Not exactly the ideal circumstances for starting a relationship.
So naturally, I invited her to join me in Albania.
Twelve days in a rental car
A few weeks later, we met again in Tirana, rented a car, and spent twelve days exploring Albania together. We made our way north into the Albanian Alps around Theth, traveled along the coast through Vlorë and Himarë, found quiet beaches, and wandered the stone streets of Gjirokastër.
Albania turned out to be a rather effective way to get to know someone.
There’s something about spending nearly two weeks together in a rental car, navigating unfamiliar roads, changing plans, and figuring out where to eat or sleep that strips away a lot of the usual formalities of dating. It’s considerably harder to maintain some carefully curated version of yourself when you’re tired, hungry, mildly lost, and sharing a confined space with another person.
You quickly learn whether your approaches to life are compatible. How someone reacts when things don’t go according to plan. Whether they can laugh when something goes wrong. Whether they’re curious about the world around them or simply waiting for the next planned activity.
What I discovered was that Espoir and I seemed to approach life in remarkably similar ways, despite growing up in very different circumstances.
She was raised in Austria as one of twelve siblings. Her parents ran Vienna’s oldest gym, and her family had spent years living aboard a catamaran while traveling through Central and South America. Movement, exploration, health, and community had been part of her life long before I met her.
I had spent much of my adult life searching for those same experiences through travel, mountains, and different ways of living.
We shared an appreciation for ambition and adventure, but also for the quieter things. Good conversations, shared meals, being outdoors, and enjoying the people around us. Neither of us seemed particularly interested in constructing a life that looked impressive from the outside if it didn’t feel meaningful on the inside.
Somewhere during those twelve days, our connection began to feel like something more substantial than an enjoyable travel romance.
And for the first time in a while, I started thinking about a future that involved planning around someone other than myself.
The unexpected difficulty of being open
I’d spent years becoming comfortable with uncertainty. I’d traveled alone through unfamiliar countries, climbed mountains, and made all sorts of decisions without knowing exactly how things would work out.
But there’s a different kind of uncertainty that comes with allowing another person into your life.
When you’re traveling alone, most of your decisions affect you. You can change direction, stay somewhere longer, or leave tomorrow without much explanation. There’s an extraordinary amount of freedom in that, and I’d grown rather attached to it.
A meaningful relationship introduces another person’s feelings, dreams, and priorities into those decisions. You have to communicate honestly, make room for someone else, and occasionally admit that you care about something you have very little control over.
For all my enthusiasm for adventure, I found that vulnerability could feel considerably more intimidating than arriving in a country where I didn’t speak the language.
I think we talk about vulnerability as though it’s some admirable personality trait you can simply decide to possess. Be open. Be authentic. Take chances. All wonderful advice until you’re actually standing in front of someone whose opinion matters to you.
Then it becomes a bit more complicated.
What made the difference wasn’t some dramatic realization that I needed to abandon my independence. It was recognizing that I genuinely wanted to see where this connection might lead, even if it meant allowing the trip to unfold differently from how I’d imagined.
That felt like a risk worth taking.
From Albania to Thailand, and eventually Austin
We kept finding ways to spend more time together. Eventually, Espoir joined me in Thailand, where we spent two months living and traveling side by side.
By then, the relationship had moved beyond the novelty of meeting someone in a beautiful place. We were sharing everyday routines, making decisions together, and discussing what life might look like when the traveling eventually came to an end.
That transition fascinated me. Meeting someone while traveling can create an unusual sense of freedom. You’re away from familiar responsibilities, seeing new places, and experiencing life in a way that feels different from home. But eventually, you have to figure out whether the relationship belongs only to that particular chapter or whether you’re willing to build something beyond it.
For us, the answer became increasingly clear.
We eventually moved to Austin, began building Gevity together, and got married.
It’s amusing to look back at how those decisions unfolded. I left Austin after losing my job, intending to spend the better part of a year exploring the world on my own. Somewhere along the way, I met someone who not only changed the direction of that journey but became my partner in nearly every sense of the word.
Today, we’re building a private wellness club together, navigating the usual excitement and occasional absurdity of entrepreneurship, and trying to create a life that makes room for the things we both value.
Not a particularly predictable conclusion to an afternoon playing chess in Spain.
Although I imagine Espoir would argue that she saw the potential much earlier. She was winning, after all.
The life you don’t plan for
One of the things I’ve come to appreciate as I’ve gotten older is how little of a meaningful life can be planned with any real precision.
You can set goals, choose a direction, and work incredibly hard toward something. I believe in doing all of those things. But some of the most consequential experiences of my life happened because I was willing to entertain an opportunity that hadn’t appeared anywhere on the original itinerary.
Meeting Espoir was one of them.
I’ve often talked about the value of curiosity and being open to unfamiliar experiences, usually in the context of traveling. But I’ve come to realize that the same willingness matters just as much in relationships and the different seasons of life we move through.
Being open doesn’t mean abandoning your values or following every passing possibility. Sometimes it means recognizing when something meaningful has entered your life and being willing to give it the attention it deserves, even when the timing is inconvenient.
I could have kept moving through Europe, treated that afternoon in Spain as another wonderful memory, and continued the solo adventure exactly as planned. There would have been nothing particularly wrong with that.
But I would have missed an entirely different kind of adventure.
And while I’ve been fortunate enough to explore extraordinary places, climb mountains, and experience parts of the world I once knew only through photographs, I’m increasingly aware that the people we share those experiences with often become the most important part of the story.
I still want to keep exploring. Espoir does, too. There are more mountains to climb, unfamiliar countries to wander through, and enough adventures ahead to keep us occupied for quite some time.
The difference is that somewhere along the way, the person I wanted to tell all those stories to became the person I get to experience them with.
All because of an unfinished chess game.
Which, for the record, I’m still willing to finish.
