This week marks the third wedding anniversary for me and G. We met at the 2004 Burning Man Festival – not unheard of around these parts, but the story has a unique twist.
G. had just moved into a new house in Seattle, and one of his housemates had an extra ticket to Burning Man. He had been focused that summer on finding his mate, as he was tired of the seemingly endless dating scene in Seattle. He stayed with a massage camp where he offered massages to folks. On Friday evening, he ventured out into the fray and found himself at the Hookadome, a large geodesic dome equipped with a swamp cooler, plates of fruit, belly dancers and shisha pipes. And there he relaxed, for many hours.
I had traveled to Burning Man with my sister, J. She suggested that some time in the desert would be just the thing I needed, to re-energize and re-focus. I had just left a fiancé in New York City and was pretty down, and J. was right. It was exactly what I needed. On the drive into the festival, I turned to her mid-sentence and said, “I’m ready to meet my soul mate” and it didn’t phase her – she nodded and answered “Are there any qualifications I need to know about?” and my response was “taller than me and close to my age”. And with that proclamation, we returned to the previous conversation.
We camped by ourselves, true tourists. (We couldn’t find any of the camps we were going to hook up with.) On Friday night, she said, “If we are going to find this soul mate of yours, we’ll have to get out there” and I knew she was right. So off we went, riding our bikes into the wilds of the Black Rock Desert. We met all sorts of crazy characters that night – at one point, we were searching for the Center of the Universe (and were quite unsuccessful) when someone mentioned we should go to the Hookadome instead.
So off we went, we arrived on the Esplanade and parked our bikes together, and joined the line that formed out front, waiting somewhat patiently to get in. Forty five minutes later, we were still in line. Since we were at Burning Man, the last thing we wanted to do was wait in line, so we walked back over to our bikes, prepared to head off into the night in search of more adventures.
Or we tried to.
Julia’s bike was exactly where we’d left it, while mine was nowhere to be seen. After some searching, my bike was found, twenty five feet away from where it was originally and there was another bike lying on top of it. I picked up the other bike, and as I was turning to toss it aside this guy walked up and asked a bit defensively, “What’re you doing with my bike?”
I started to reply, “Your bike?! Your bike was on my bike!” (imagine the old Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups commercial line: “Your chocolate is on my peanut butter! Oh yeah, well your peanut butter is on my chocolate!” I sounded something like that.) but as I was forming the words, I registered a few things about this stranger…
One, he was tall. Two, he had the most amazing blue eyes. Three, the rest of the world seemed to be disappearing around him. So I quickly dropped the affronted attitude, and asked, “What’re you doing right now?”
His demeanor changed instantly. He looked a little confused, slightly disarmed, and replied, “Well, I got disconnected from my friends”.
“Then you should come with us!”
I couldn’t believe the words came out of my mouth. I couldn’t believe I was hitting on this guy, a total stranger, someone whose bike happened to be lying on top of mine. I certainly didn’t know what to expect, and was delightfully surprised when he said, “Okay!”
We rode off into the night, weaving in and out of the carnival-like festivities going on all around us, sharing little snippets of our lives, finding that we had quite a bit in common. We had both traveled in India, both enjoyed the outdoors (specifically scuba diving) and both lived authentic lives – politically, socially, and ecologically minded.
It wasn’t until the next day that I heard the story of the bicycles from G., but it turns out that he left his bike about fifty feet in the opposite direction of my bike three hours prior to my arrival at the Hookadome. He had been inside, enjoying the cool air, mellow music and belly dancing and came out to find that his bike was not where he had left it.
It had, in fact, traveled mysteriously about thirty feet north and ended up piled on top of my bike. When he approached me in that moment, in those three seconds that I was holding his bike, he had approached defensively as if I might be stealing it (from his perspective, I was!).
In those three seconds that I held his bike, our lives changed.
So that’s the story of the two bicycles. We parted ways at the end of the festival, and neither of us thought we would see each other again. After all, G. lived in Seattle, and I lived in San Francisco. After several emails and phone calls, G. bought a plane ticket for that coming weekend to San Francisco, just to investigate what seemed to be ignited at Burning Man.
After three days in San Francisco, we were so inspired by what we saw in each other that we decided to get married. Not so much decided as realized what had already come to pass – the universe arranged our marriage, the timing was divinely perfect in ways a web page just can’t communicate. After ten days of knowing each other we were betrothed.
Ten months later we were married in a grand ceremony in Seattle, all because two bicycles entangled themselves with each other at an arts festival in the middle of the Nevada desert, a thousand miles away from home.
Happy anniversary baby! It’s been three years of marriage, almost four since meeting you, and I still love you tremendously. I am the luckiest girl in the world.
