Chapter 2: Courtship Part I

We left off in the last post that John and I met playing soccer. I suppose our first dates were goalie practices followed by lunch at the student union Subway. After a couple of those, John asked me to go bowling with a regular group of friends that went to Renton on Friday nights for 25 cent bowling. Given that I typically top out at a score of 65, 80 if it's a fantastic night, everyone was pretty surprised that I beat John 136-135 in our first game. I think we are still unsure if this bowling adventure counts as a date. Finally, we get to dinner and a movie! After enjoying a calzone at a local pizza dive, John and I went to see Mission Impossible 2 which had just opened. MI2 was so bad we decided we had to go out the next night as well to make up for it. John walked me back to my place where we stayed up until 4 in the morning talking. As he was about to leave I very awkwardly kissed him on the cheek, just as someone walked in the door, so I don't know if John even noticed it!

We saw a lot of each other in the last two weeks of that school year (John's senior year and my junior year), just before I moved to Portland, Oregon for the summer to intern at Intel. A little while after our second first date, I took John cupcakes in lab, where he was working most nights until 4 or 5 am finishing a senior design course (in fact, when I made plans to meet him for lunch, he would say 'just as long as it's after 11am, before 11am I'm a pumpkin', how can you not fall in love with that?!). We went for a walk around the big fountain on campus, the fountain is surrounded by a few benches, and it looks down towards Mt. Raineer and is the center of the engineering campus. We sat on a bench (this will become important later), where John asked me if I 'wanted to be more than just friends?' So I kissed him again and then said "Wait, does that mean we're dating??" So there you have it, soccer, a few dates, a first kiss, and we were more than friends.

Unfortunately, this all happened just before I left for Oregon. John graduated and stayed on at the University to do research for his undergraduate adviser. It turns out that it was exactly 190 miles from his door to my door and we made the trip every weekend that summer, alternating between Portland and Seattle. Luckily, we both had little red sports cars to keep us company those weekends, shown below, my MX6 is in the foreground and John's Mustang is in the background (and occasionally John would take the train). In some ways the move was hard for a burgeoning romance, but in other ways it was remarkably convenient. John and I spent time together every weekend from Friday night to Sunday afternoon, and it was a quick way to get to know each other. In the beginning John and I would say 'I like you!' It wasn't too long into the summer that I ventured to tell John "I more than like you" and he quickly responded "I love you!"


We had a fantastic time that summer exploring the Oregon coast and getting to know each other. I don't have digital photographic evidence, but a trip along the coast one weekend provided the first opportunity for John to work on his 'pose'. This is his classic picture pose and I'm providing an example below of what I mean (which is from about a year later when we were on a hike). We have pictures like this from literally all over the world, Washington, Massachusetts, Oregon, France, Canada, and Utah. Someday, perhaps I can build a montage.