The Couple:
She's a girl-gamer-gadget geek and he is an application architect aspiring to be awesome. She adores her two cats and they have won him over. They enjoy the outdoors and physical activity yet appreciate modern technology and computers. To them, life is an adventure; that was how they met, and that's how they'll spend their lives together.
The meeting in October 2007
He said:
I determined that it would be a good weekend to go hiking, so I asked Viktor if he had any plans. "Sure, we're going to Yosemite, would you like to come?" I hesitated, knowing that Yosemite would be a good hike but unsure if I wanted to drive for five hours to get there. "No, we're flying." he said, "It should only take an hour."
So I got up early to meet Viktor at his house, and we went to the Palo Alto airport where he and his co-pilot, Radu, owned a plane. In the parking lot, there was a beautiful girl looking lost. It turned out she was the co-pilot's friend, and we were heading the same place. Radu wanted to get some more hours of flying time logged, so Thu and I were crammed into the back seat together and we hit the clouds towards Yosemite.
The hike went well, but Thu tricked me into staying close to her by making the hike take enough time that it was dark on the way down; and she had the only flashlight. I didn't mind being close because it was getting chilly, and even the small plane seemed like plenty of room after the warmth of the sun had gone down.
She said:
My coworker, Radu, had asked me a few times to fly on his plane. Aware of the relative crash statistics of small planes, I refused each time. One day, Radu invited me to go to Yosemite with a bunch of people at work. Some people were planning to drive early that morning for five hours or so, and some were going to drive up the day before and camp overnight. Neither options appealed to me. However, the option that Radu gave me was to fly to Yosemite in his four-person plane. Despite my previous reluctance, I accepted the opportunity to fly to Yosemite, which I loved to visit.
To alleviate my fears, Radu gave me the opportunity to ride in his plane the night before the trip so I could get a feel for what to expect without committing to a long trip. Since the back seat had very little leg room--and to enjoy the better view--I wanted to be able to sit in the front seat on the trip to Yosemite. However, Radu said I could not because his friend's friend, Troy, was coming and since he was over 6 feet tall, he would get to sit in the front. I resented Troy before I met him.
On the morning of the flight to Yosemite, I could not find the plane so I called Radu. As I was making the call, I saw two guys approach and one was pretty tall (to my chagrin) so I figured that those guys were going to Yosemite, too, and they confirmed it when I asked. We walked to the plane together. I went to the restroom while the guys were preparing the plane and when I got back, they had reconfigured the seating arrangement. Troy was going to sit in the back with me so that Viktor could give more training to Radu.
On the trail, I was out of shape so I lagged behind the three guys. Troy was nice enough to stay behind to keep me company. Because we had a late start to the hike, and I slowed everyone down, we ended up not completing the hike before sunset. Fortunately, I had bought a headlamp right before the trip. The two co-pilots did not want to mess up their night vision so they walked way ahead to avoid my light. Again, Troy and I were left together. I had to watch my back, though, because he kept threatening to push me off the mountain so that he could have more room in the back of the plane on the way home. In the difficult spots, I would have him hold my hand so that if I fell, he would fall, too.
Once we made it back onto the plane, we had become friendlier since we all survived the adventure and he did not push me off the mountain. It was a chilly ride so I could not help but try to steal some of his warmth by taking advantage of the tight quarters to sit closer.
