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How I proposed (it) to her…

I have been happily married for a little over two years now. After our wedding, my wife and I went to Europe for our honeymoon. Ever since then, we haven’t done anything too exciting as far as travel is concerned.

Earlier this year on one sleepless night I was up with my thoughts, my brain rushing through all kinds of ideas; job, personal projects, future plans, etc. I vividly remember, it was about 2AM and one thought stuck with me.

Travel; ever since I watched the movie Chef last year, this idea of a road trip has been stamped in my head. Travel through different states in this humungous country and capture the moments in some artistic form has stayed with me and that thought revisited me that night.

Road Trip 2016: As soon as it came to mind, I started Googling the best time to travel across USA, most scenic routes, cost, etc. Since we have close family and a lot of friends in Bay Area, it was clear from the beginning that the trip would involve driving to California and back to Michigan. At 2 AM, I opened Roadtrippers (it is my goto app for road travel plans) app and checked out the distance from Michigan to California and back. Ofcourse, we would need things to do one the way and what better way there is to experience the beauty of United States than to check out its National Parks. After spending two hours on Roadtrippers, I had a tentative plan in my head which in my opinion was doable and would be immense fun.

Road Trip 2016 via roadtrippers.com

Road Trip 2016 via roadtrippers.com

Woke up the next morning, went to work,  I was very excited about this Roadtrip idea I had the night before. The whole day I was looking forward to get back home and dicuss the idea with my wife but at the sametime I was afraid if she dint share the same excitement with me about the travel plans.

No matter how excited I was, I did not want to risk just blabber this idea to her and being shot down in case she had any questions that I did not have answers to. So as soon as I got back home, I opened Wikidpad (its like a personal wikipedia for my thoughts and ideas), created a new topic in the notebook and started typing. I created a trip plan on Roadtrippers, starting from Detroit to San Francisco and back, added 8 National Parks on our route. Roadtrippers not only gave me a time estimate, I was able to pick a car in the settings and get an estimate of dollars spent on gas for the whole trip. With most details in place, I sent an email to Ash with the following text and the trip plan attached to it.

Please read with full attention, with open mind and most of all WITH LOVE.
Nothing is set in stone and need you to do so 🙂

Regards,
Tarun Sehgal

I laid out as much information as I possibly could in my wiki. This is a snippet of my original notes that I sent along with my mail in Jan 2016. A lot has been added, subtracted and changed in my notes ever since and I will share a copy in some other post.

RoadTrip Notes

First notes and estimation about the trip

I started my elevator pitch as she read through the email (yep, I watch too much Shark Tank). There were questions, concerns and above all, contingencies (maybe I am over dramatizing this). Upon careful review and a brief chat we were both on the same page, her eyes gleamed and she said Yes!

3 thoughts on “How I proposed (it) to her…”

  1. Hey Tarun…checked out your website today..loved the blog about your travel plan! It was too much fun to read!😁
    Looking forward to trying out your recipes..

    Bye and take care,

    Aarti Shindikar

  2. Pingback: How I organized 60,000 photos in less than 60 seconds

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