A Not-So-Quick Recap

Helen Clark, Adam Collins

30 Jun 2025 — 7 min read

Superman that... [beautiful woman] (context for those who don't understand the joke)

I'm sure many of you have been wondering what we've been up to for the past 6 months. So this is going to be a not so quick recap of the planned leg of our year-long sabbatical. It's truly been an incredible year packed with memories we'll never forget. We both feel infinitely fortunate for the experience.

Dec 2024 - Jan 2025: Friends and Family Roadtrip

On December 5th we flew back to the United States. Our appetite for foreign travel was satiated and we were ready to reconnect with family and friends just in time for the holidays. Our first stop was a long layover in San Francisco. We stayed in Palo Alto with Susan (Helen's sister) and James (Susan's husband) and tried to make time to say hi to a few friends.

Adam and Peter playing a rousing game of turd shuffleboard; Adam found turd-shuffle in a Tokyo boutique

Happy to be back in beautiful California!

Grabbed some drinks with Matt and Ali, our Korea biking buddies. We crammed into a photo booth for a quick pic at Elixir

Next we flew to Chicago to pick up our beloved Subaru Crosstrek, Blue, sporting his new snow shoes in preparation for our winter road trip. First stop: Cincinatti, Ohio; to say hi to a few friends from Adam's college tennis days at Case Western.

Helen, Phil, Lauren, and Adam. Centered: the most delicious empanadas east of the Mississippi

Second stop: suburbs of Philadelphia, PA to hang out with Helen's high school friend Mia and her family.

Next we drove to Alexandria, VA and spent Christmas with Helen's family. We made sure to explore the Smithsonian; checking out the National Air and Space Museum, the Museum of Natural History, and the museum of African American History and Culture.

View of the Washington Monument from the African American History museum (Helen's favorite architecture of all the Smithsonian museums). The lead designer David Adjaye encased the museum in a metal lattice that honors the craftsmanship of enslaved African American iron-workers of New Orleans. He says the pattern creates shadows meant to mimic sunlight dappling through the trees.

After a lovely Christmas with Helen's mom and sister, we met up with her Dad and drove southwest to Chattanooga, Tennessee to pay a visit to grandmother Sally in Chattanooga. Chattanooga surprised us with its charm; we enjoyed our visits to the aquarium and the Hunter Museum of American Art; we ate delicious food, and we took in the beautiful sights.

A cool mirror display at the Hunter Museum of American Art

After Chattanooga we made our way to Texas, but not before a short detour to New Orleans, one of Helen's favorite cities that Adam had yet to experience. We stayed in the French Quarter, eating our way through their creole and cajun cuisine. Adam was particularly impressed with the jambalaya. No offense to anyone's cooking, but he didn't know that jambalaya could be this delicious.

New Orleans is the birthplace of the Sazerac. This one from Jewel of the South (a James rec) changed Helen's life

The beignet gave us a sneak peak into Adam's future salt 'n pepper beard. So handsome and distinguished!

After our detour, we parked Blue in Dallas, Texas to stay with another one of Adam's college tennis friends, Fred and his fiancé Denisse. We would share pictures, but we gotta keep this blog post moving: to our next stop Austin, Texas. And to our surprise the night before we left Dallas, it snowed several inches (a blizzard by Texas standards)! All of Dallas shut down, but Blue, probably the only car in the city with winter tires, drove like a champ and we made it to Austin in no time.

Group photo on the river in Austin. From left: Adam, Helen, James, Fred, Kevin, Lauren, Phil, Denisse, Maggie

Helen posing with our homemade dumpling feast!

The Austin finale concluded our friends and family road trip tour of the USA. We are so lucky to have all these wonderful people in our lives!

Jan 2025 - April 2025: Ski Season

Ski Season began with a bang at Telluride! (Taken hours before the fever hit us)

We started our ski season with a quick trip to Telluride, Colorado. Despite our flu and COVID vaccines we caught something of the like, and spent several days too weak to leave the couch; bouncing from cold sweats to uncontrollable shivers. But what a beautiful place to be sick!

After Telluride, we drove through Moab to Park City, making a couple of new friends in Canyonlands Nation Park:

Two big horn sheep that were hanging out with us on a hike in Canyonlands

In Park City we met up with the Evanston ski crew for more skiing. We timed it so that we could sneak in a couple viewings at the Sundance Film Festival. We watched a series of 7 short films and a feature length film, The Virgin of Quarry Lake, all of which surpassed our expectations.

A nice staircase photo at the Park City ski house

From Park City we meandered up to the Canadian border to make Whistler our new home for the next two months. In Whistler we had a blast (and there were many perfect days).

An out of control skier collided with Helen. She sported a badass bruise for a couple weeks. This was our only injury in ~50 days of skiing--not too bad!

The family came to visit and we all discovered the unexpected joy of cross country skiing. From left: Mookie, Helen, Rose, Karen, Sally, Adam.

Making time to FaceTime with our friends Jaqueline and Peter, who happened to be in Hawaii

April 2026 - June 2025: A new Home

While we were in Whistler, a new nephew entered the world: Howard Clark Cody and we had to say hi. So we drove down the beautiful West Coast to Palo Alto for some bonding time and to secure our rightful place as the Favorite Aunt and Uncle.

Meeting Howie was a heartwarming experience and many photos were taken, however, we are unable to share them at this time. Howie's a quick study, but he's still learning the ins and outs of contract law. At the time of writing, we were not able to come to a legal agreement to use his likeness in the making of this blog.

After a tough see-you-later to Howie, Adam did a marathon drive back to Chicago and Helen flew with our cat, Kovu. Since then we've mostly been in Chicago as we work to reintegrate ourselves into society. We say mostly, because we have done a few trips—we returned to Dallas for Fred's wedding, Helen visited friends in LA, and we did a quick trip to Italy for Adam's cousin's wedding (blog post coming soon, spoiler alert: Italy is beautiful).