The story goes like this:
I had given myself a deadline of when I would have Jessica’s bike ready for her, and it was sneaking up fast. I somehow let most of the summer go by without getting much work done on the frame and fork, so as the end of August (2012) rolled around, I found myself spending just about every night in the shop, working till midnight or so. Jessica didn’t know of this self imposed deadline, and wasn’t paying much attention to what I had been doing in the shop figuring it wasn’t of much interest to her. Little did she know...
On D day, I drove to work (instead of biking) because I had to bring the frame and fork in for final prep, chasing and facing, and assembly of the bike. I worked till 4pm, and spent another two hours getting the bike ready. It wasn’t going to be painted, but it would be otherwise complete and ridable. I drove home with her bike on the back of the Subaru, and to my surprise, her car was in the driveway, cluing me in that she was already home from work. I quickly snuck the bike into the garage without her noticing and went inside. It was kind of a crummy day out; overcast and threatening to rain. However this was more than just an average day, it was also three years to the day since we had started dating. Once inside, I suggested to Jessica that we bike from our place in Northeast Minneapolis to Sea Salt Eatery to have a nice meal and a couple pints in celebration of three years together. Sea Salt has become one of our favorite destinations for a good meal, and is a nice nine-mile ride from home, typically on our tandem. She wasn’t feeling it though, mostly because of the weather. “What if you got to ride your bike?” I asked. She knew instantly I was talking about the bike I had been building her, but couldn’t believe it was (finally) ready.
We went outside, and I showed her the bike. She had never ridden a modern road bike before, so I put it in a bike stand and was going over how the shifting worked as well as all of the other features of her new ride. When I had covered it all, I pulled the bike out of the stand and said “Oh yeah, there is one thing I almost forgot to show you. You have your own custom serial number stamped into the bottom bracket shell.” I flipped the bike over in the grass so as not to scuff up the saddle or bar tape and knelt beside it, pointing at the brass plate with the serial number in it. She had to look close to read the serial number, which read “MARRY ME”.
And she thought the surprise of the day was that she was getting a new bike. Ha! So after initially laughing in disbelief, she did say yes. We never did make it to Sea Salt that night as we had parents to call and faceplace relationship statuses to change and whatnot, but we did go for a short ride to get a late dinner, and she got to ride her bike.
