"But There's More. There's MUCH More!"

So the lovely Amy K. Ballard and I have been engaged for about two months now, and for those of you who haven't heard the story and would like to, here goes:

We'd been looking around at road bikes for Amy ever since she moved up to Idaho in January, usually by stopping by bike shops and taking different styles out for a test ride. Bike shop owners are surprisingly cool with letting you ride out of their store on $5000 worth of equipment with nothing but your driver's license as collateral/evidence.

I'd had the idea of proposing on a bike ride for a while, and had even thought about the one-two punch of surprising her with a bike, going for a ride, and asking the Big One midway through. Not finding any good deals and wanting to have done the deed before we both went to Wisconsin, I opted for the test-ride freebie deal. I suited Amy up in one of my racing kits from UI, she hopped on a Giant OCR-3 from Paradise Creek Bikes, and we took off down the Latah Trail towards Troy.

The ring was tucked into my jersey pocket and I'd hoped to find a nice spot in the wheat fields to stop. We turned off of the trail and headed into farm country 7-8 miles from town. Amy was doing so well, and really enjoying the views along with the challenge. We started climbing a good sized hill that I was a little worried about, but she powered up like it was nothing. A bit longer found us on another hill and Amy mentioned it starting to get pretty hard. I suggested turning around after we got to the top. to which she agreed with a laugh.

At the top, we got off our bikes stretched a bit, and I started getting the Nervous. I repeatedly told her how glad I was that she liked biking, and scratched/rubbed my head. I then told her that I wanted to buy her a bike, which she thought was great. This not being the climax of the afternoon, I threw my hands in the air and said,

"But there's more. There's MUCH more!"

Boom.