Anniversary plans

The Wife and I will celebrate our anniversary in just over a month, and this weekend I started committing to the plan. Of course for those romantics with thoughts of fancy get-aways in some exotic or semi-exotic location they do not know The Wife all that well. This is the woman whom, when we first started spending time together outside of work, told me that she was not fond of girly gifts like perfume and jewelry but was rather more inclined to things like sports equipment. The first real gift I gave her was a complete gruppo for a bike she bought, and she was thrilled.

Our first anniversary fell just a couple of weeks before her first road race, the Wente Vineyards RR. But rather than sit on her laurels or train for the race she decided it would be fun for us to do a century ride together (actually it was supposed to be a 200K ride, but we opted at the cut-off to make it just a 100M event). For a while it looked like those plans would be rained on, literally, but the skies cleared and we had the first dry day in a week or two for the event.  And it was a wonderful ride.

Our second anniversary fell near the time of Sea Otter, and the wife was committed to do the circuit race the Friday of that week. So our anniversary was a weekend together in Monterey with the circuit race and the Sea Otter tour (a century) as the bookends. Fortunately Friday and Sunday were good weather, but on Saturday ‘Laguna Seca’ was threatening to become a real lake again as the skies opened and the rain poured down.  The Sea Otter tour was a fun group event with members of her team and club joining us for that nice loop of the northern end of the Santa Lucia mountains.

This year the anniversary falls just before the Madera Stage Race, so guess what we are going to do for our anniversary? I have a motel room booked in beautiful Madera and I am registered in the 55+ (open) category. There was some talk of me registering in the 35+ 4/5, but that field was full within a few hours of the opening of registration. The Wife still needs to register, but since the number of W4 entrants at this point is 0 that should not be a problem.

I wonder what we will do for the next anniversary?