I met Nikki on our first day of college orientation. We were in the same group and the two of us and some others stayed friends throughout the first few weeks of school. I remember meeting up with Nikki and getting lunches and talking as we walked between classes. The more I talked with her, the more interesting I found her. It was clear to me she was brilliant and she had a great sense of humor. I remember challenging her, bickering, and laughing.

Nikki was always the one to organize all our friends to get us to do things together, whether this was getting everyone ready for bike night or just getting us all in the same room to figure out where we would go for dinner that first year. We started to become great friends and would go study together, or Nikki would study and I would procrastinate (I would always wait until the early morning to start my work). We would also go on night hikes up to the top of “the P” behind the dorms and sit and look at the stars. It wasn’t always just the two of us doing all these things, but most of my memories of those first-year antics were with her.

After a fun filled year, the summer was approaching and I asked Nikki out to breakfast on her birthday. We went to Louisa’s Place in downtown SLO. I remember we sat at the bar and she laughed at me trying to figure out the ketchup bottle. Apparently, I guess wasn’t super clear when I asked her because I’m not sure she considers this our first date.

As we moved through the years of college we were always there for each other. College was hard for both of us in numerous ways and we were a great support system for each other. We enjoyed our morning walks to classes or cargo bike couriering. And made sure to mix it with the occasional Costco food court and drive in movie date. I’d always convinced Nikki to bike places, much to her chagrin and she always made me laugh and challenged me to be a better person.

I remember the summer after my 3rd year I got an internship at Apple. One lunch my coworkers asked me about my girlfriend and asked if she was the one, without hesitation I replied yes. I knew we would end up together, but I also knew we had quite a bit of life change still ahead of us and we both wanted to make it through that together. My internship was hard, and again I got through it with my support system of Nikki. I would drive back down to SLO and see her almost every weekend. I would call her on my bike rides to and from the office and she was always there to talk me through any of my challenges.

Fast forward to the last bit of college we were starting to look for jobs and wanted to make sure we were in the same city. As with all things we talked this all through together and narrowed the locations in the country down where we wanted to end up. We agreed whoever got a good offer first the other would try and find something in the same area. Not surprisingly, Nikki was way more on top of it than I was and found a job first. Portland, OR was where our next chapter would begin.

But before that, we graduated, and had planned for years to do a trip through Europe together. It was a whirlwind of 3 weeks but we traveled and enjoyed the summer before moving into our place in Portland. Nikki started her job and I… hadn’t found one yet. I had tried at the career fairs, but didn’t find anything interesting and continued my search up in Portland. I still wasn’t able to find anything and started to volunteer at a bike non-profit. They shortly turned around and hired me part time and although this was fun, it was not what I wanted to be doing.

After about 6 months of not finding anything in Portland and relying on my support of Nikki we decided to expand my search radius. I decided to apply to Apple in a different role, with the plan to make some good money and figure out how to get both of us back in the same place. Shortly after that, I had a job which meant I was moving to California in April 2020… Nikki and I had planned to fly back and forth every few weekends but that little COVID thing complicated it.

After a few more bumps in the road and more and more time passing …somewhere around 5 years of dating here… we were back together in California. This is where I felt our life finally began to stabilize, our jobs were not great at times but we now were able to be together. After a year or so of this, Nikki, rightfully, began to pester me about the whole ring thing. We had of course, like all things, already talked about this and knew we would get married sometime, but there was a little bit of step that was in my court.

I knew a few things about how I wanted to propose, but one thing was I wanted to surprise her. I had to wait for some of the questions to dry up so suspicion wouldn’t be raised. I eventually came up with a plan and got a ring.

The night before Nikki asked out of the blue, “I know you know when you are going to propose, but does anyone else know?”

“No, just me” I replied. Then I walked out to ‘check something’ and called Brian and Cheryl to ask for their blessing. The next morning, we went on a hike with our little family, our dog Kona included, under the guise of taking photos for our Christmas letter. After setting the camera timer I ran over got on one knee and asked.