"Phil and I met with the help of Match.com. I had changed my profile slightly as I had been on Match for over a year and not met anyone special. This change brought Phil's profile to my attention and I printed his description and sent him an email to read my profile and 'join my adventure'. Phil and I have many areas in common, but the most important ones to me were that we both exercise several times a week and that we have diversity of interest.Phil answered my email and sent me his phone number to call him. Our phone conversation, was a great 'get to know you' call, which much mutual laughter. He asked me to have dinner with him that weekend and I accepted even though Saturday was my Birthday. Phil had plans for Friday; so we met on a beautiful Saturday night in July, my birthday, at the very romantic Dearborn Inn for our first date.
"I was a few minutes late as my brother Bill had called from Colorado to wish me a Happy Birthday while I was parking the car. To complicate matters, when I walked into the lobby of the Inn, there was a wedding reception gathering with at least 50 people. But I found Phil sitting under an antique clock (he collects them, I later found out!). I explained my birthday call and Phil seemed honored at my choosing to meet him on my birthday. I found him very attractive and articulate from the first moment and it has only gotten better with time.
"Over a drink in the bar, we talked about our mutual passions of travel and exercise and then drove to his favorite Italian restaurant. When we walked inside, Phil told the hostess that this was my birthday and that it was a blind date from Match. I was embarrassed, but after Phil left to go back to the car to exchange his sunglasses, the hostess told me that I was lucky as he was so cute and I agreed. After we had finished a delicious appetizer, entrée and shared a terimesu, the owner came by to wish us well and Phil again told the birthday and blind date story and she looked at him and said, "You are so lucky!" He agreed and I laughed and then told him how lucky the hostess thought I was.
"We dated often in the following weeks, with dinners and biking outings. Although Phil is a runner, he was able to join me on my Saturday/Sunday five hour bike rides. After three weeks, Phil asked if he could join me on my bike and barge trip to Austria in mid September; Phil had grown up in Europe and wanted to return. We worked together to get him a seat on my plane and a cabin on my barge. We had a wonderful time biking along the banks of the Danube, sightseeing and eventually becoming engaged and planning a May wedding in Detroit.
"When we returned from Austria, we planned a winter holiday in January in Hawaii to see Phil's friends and we talked about going to Venice in May for our honeymoon.
"Unfortunately, on October 30, I took a nasty fall from my bike and tore up my left shoulder and broke my left arm in 2 places having to have surgery including pins and 20 weeks of physical therapy. Phil took very good care of me for the four weeks that I was off work and during that time; we started working on wedding plans, quickly realizing that there was no way that we could keep our wedding as small as we wanted in Detroit.
"I started researching weddings in Hawaii on the internet and I convinced Phil to move our wedding forward and marry on Lanikai Beach on Oahu with his friends there. I found Linda on the internet to marry us, as Linda had broken her ankle finding the perfect site for one couple. Linda helped me with the last minute details and we had a beautiful romantic ceremony just as I had planned with my brother, Bill, coming in unexpectedly at the last minute.
"After the wedding on January 20, we left for a week on the Big Island and moved our Venice honeymoon to March 12 to celebrate marriage #two with two special honeymoons!
