A Modest Proposal

So, a little background:

a) IF you know who Evelyn and/or I am, go ahead and skip this paragraph.  Evelyn and I met in our 10th grade English class.  As the story goes, we went to junior and senior proms together, went to separate colleges (and stayed together), and met back up after graduation in DC.  In total, we’ve been dating a bit over 7 years, so I may have glossed over just a bit.

b) IF you know what a Garmin Forerunner is, skip this paragraph.  I have this fancy watch.  I wear it when I run and it keeps track of how fast I go, my heart rate, and even a map of where I’ve been.  Every few seconds it records where I am using GPS.  As the dots connect, it shows where I went.  Super cool!  I’ll give you a moment gather yourself…  I can then hook it up to my computer to look at all the data.  Information overload: check.

Anyway, the morning of Evelyn’s birthday, I went for a run (much to her disappointment, I’m sure).  But not any old run.  No sir/ma’am!  I had big plans for this one.  I headed down to The Mall to find a big area to use as my canvas.  I would be my paintbrush.  It was all the more amazing doing this in the shadow of the Washington Monument.

I bet I looked like a crazy person running in the dark (I started at 6am) in zig zags (totaling about 2 miles).  I retraced my steps, crossed the street a few times in the same place, dropped my water bottle to mark where I need to run back to, maneuvered through trees…it was chaotic to an outsider (aka everyone).

I got home before Ev returned from the gym, blew up some balloons (lightheaded: check.), and uploaded the running route to my computer.  She got back, showered, and then sat at the computer.  Here begins the awkward endearing short story I tried to get out to explain why I needed to show her this run.  Something along the lines of “Hey Ev, so I was running today, and it felt strange how I was running back and forth in the same places, but I just went with it.  I didn’t think anything of it, but then I put it on the computer and here’s what it looked like.  And I have something for you that I found on my run.”  That’s when I showed her the map and while she looked a little puzzled, I got down on one knee and asked her if she’d marry me!  And, I wouldn’t have written this otherwise, but just in case, she said yes!

She admitted that she didn’t quite get it that I actually ran the path on the screen, so I had to explain it real quick, but then all was good.  Also, she thought I brought her back like a rock from my run (not too far from the truth!).  We made a quick decision that we wouldn’t tell anyone until we told our families in person, who were coming to visit 10 days later.  Thus, no one could know!  Sorry to everyone who was duped, deceived, or misled.  Don’t take it personally!  And here is what the map of where I run looked like:

For you skeptics, I didn’t follow a path or map this ahead of time.  I just followed my heart (awww.  swoon.  love.  yay.  puppies.)