Shortly after last year's Color Me Rad, I got an email offer for a big discount on registration for the 2015 race. I made sure we didn't have other plans for April 11, 2015, then signed us up. Since it was still months away, I marked it on our calendar, then didn't give it another thought.
The night before the race, with our car reserved and white shirts and running gear waiting by the door, I pulled up our tickets on EventBrite, and panicked. The tickets said August 1.
Stomach sinking, I did an email search and discovered I had missed seeing a race update with the subject line: "Color Me Rad Boston changed to August 1st due to record snowfall." #fail. I looked at our calendar. We would be in the Dominican Republic on August 1. The next morning I sent a quick email asking for our options, and thankfully was assured we could transfer our registrations to the August 29 Providence race.
But what to do with the rental car and our now wide-open Saturday? Ian suggested we stop by some open houses. We were close to our down payment savings target, and it would be a great opportunity to see if that target number could get us into a home we loved. We spent Saturday morning driving to a few homes Ian had scoped out on Trulia, and Saturday afternoon crunching numbers and charting our plan.
We connected with a highly recommended realtor (a fellow REUNIONer), who ran through the process with us — a mini first-time homebuyers class — and recommended a mortgage broker. By the end of May, we had a concrete budget, and by mid-August, we were closing on our first home. I'll share more of that story soon, but suffice to say, it was a busy summer. Over the next two weeks, we spent our evenings moving all our worldly possessions and said goodbye to our Brookline apartment.
Move completed, we headed to the Cape to avoid the chaos that is Boston on unofficial moving weekend (most leases start on September 1, when the city plays a giant game of upset the fruit basket). We were ready to relax and to relieve some stress by chucking colored cornstarch at each other (after a short drive to Providence). The race that prodded us along on our homebuying journey was also our finish line — one we were thrilled to cross.
See more of our 2015 race photos on Flickr. Official race photos are marked with the Color Me Rad logo. Curious about our past races? Color Me Rad 2013 | 2014