Saturday morning, meOwnHero and I were talking about bicycles. She's done with her BikeE RX (hers is red)

--it just is NOT an ideal bike for her.

She's been thinking in terms of a Bacchetta Giro 26 for a while, but had not ridden one. At the store where I do my part-time wrench-pulling, teaching, and consulting, we have one in stock, and I was going to the store to build a wheel for a customer/friend, so she tagged along to test ride the bike.

She now has a shiny new bike:




After she decided she liked the bike, and as I was gathering the parts and pieces for building the aforementioned wheel, she sidled up next to me and said she wanted to ask me a question, but I had to promise to not get upset at her for asking. I was not sure what was coming (some of you have figured it out by now), but said I'd try to not be upset. That wasn't quite enough, so she repeated that I had to promise to not get upset (more of you have figured out where this is going by now). Focused as I was at the time on the wheel I was getting ready to build, I repeated that I would try, but as I didn't know what she was about to ask I couldn't be sure.

For those few of you who haven't figured it out by now, I'll tell you: She asked me to marry her. Right there in the bike shop. None of the three or four other people in the store heard her.

A little background: I've never been married. I came close a couple times, but pulled back, realizing at some point in each case that marriage to that person would have been a bad idea for one or another perfectly valid reason. I sort-of figured it was inevitable that Jenn and I would eventually get married, and she was teasing me about having already chosen a date (which happens to be two days after the two-year anniversary of the day we first met face-to-face), but I was still in a little bit of shock.

I was in enough shock that my concentration on the wheel was blown, and I laced the darned thing with the long spokes on the wrong side (rear wheel has two different lengths of spokes). I had to totally dismantle my work, start over, only to find that my spoke counts were wrong, and I had to dismantle it AGAIN, measure all the spokes and get them in the correct piles before starting a third time. Fortunately, the third time was a charm, and the wheel went together beautifully. By then, I was through the worst of the shock and aggravation of having to redo work.

At some point in the final assembly of the wheel, after Jenn had helped some with the parts preparation and spoke measuring (she felt a bit guilty about wiping out my concentration), I called her back from the sales floor (she was eyeing accessories for her new bike), and told her yes. No dummy, she, and she figured out quick enough that I had found a way to pay her back--she couldn't very well go jumping around in the store making gleeful noises at that point.

So, yes, we are getting married. We've told my mother and stepfather, my sister, Jenn's parents and daughters, and a few friends so far.

...and I've now told you.

...and yes, it's a good thing!