Who Are These People? or Our "First" Date

This is Salty at a cyclo-cross race...
On his Mountain bike. Personal photo

Next time: Our real first date!

Do you and your fiance have any disagreements or grey areas in regards to your first date?

Hello Hive! You are probably wondering who we are and why you should care. Well I will answer the first question easily enough in the coming paragraphs, and the second one really depends on what you are looking for. If you happen to be planning a wedding, looking for fun/ cheap crafty ideas, and/or are a sucker for a Sweet (and Salty) love story, stay tuned! The Aardvarks have quite the adventure for you!

I have been looking for a creative outlet for awhile (because my ever growing list of wedding crafts just isn't cutting it??) And decided since I have something of interest to blog about (my upcoming wedding and subsequent marriage) that I would let go of my techno-phobe ways and get into this new-fangled blogging craze. Ok, so maybe its not that new...but I am a bit of a Luddite and am slow to jump on some (but not all) bandwagons. I am only slightly less behind the curve than Mr. Aardvark who does not have a Facebook (gasp!). However, he works in IT and I can't really blame him for not wanting to spend any unnecessary time in front of a computer.

Besides being slow to the social wonders of the internet we are very outdoorsy type people. We met over 3 years ago when we both joined the same cycling club. At the time we were living in the vast prairie space of middle America where "towns" consist of a gas station and a grain elevator, and cities are like islands in a sea of corn/soybeans. We actually met on Valentines day at an indoor bike race (it's about as exciting as it sounds).

The whole spring and summer, driving back and forth across the US, in search of bike races, proved a good way to get to know each other and by fall there were some serious sparks flying...

The fire did not start right away though, you see, Mr. Aardvark was a bit shy. I had been (shamelessly) flirting with him for most of the summer to no avail. I even went as far as to profess my like to him via e-mail in late august...Only to receive a brief and somewhat awkward reply, followed by radio silence.  I had all but given up on the idea of dating him when, in October, in a last ditch, "going down swinging" effort, I posted to the team boards asking if anyone wanted to go mountain biking at "such and so" state park. 

Now, it just so happens that Mr. A was the only one on the cycling team who lived anywhere near said park. He was also one of the few on the team that rode mountain bike at all. If he did not put the dots together on this one, all hope would be lost and any chance of our couple-ship would vanish forever! Spoiler Alert: you are reading our wedding blog. He accepted the request! And we went on what he considers our first date. I do not consider it a first date, however, because, I was so unsure of his interest/intentions. Also there was no food involved (a date needs food right?)  I almost bailed thinking it had been a pity play on his part. Thank goodness I didn't!

*All photos personal.