Proposal

It amazes me sometimes how things can seem to be going so terrible wrong, but then turn around and end up being the best thing in the world.

It was November 17, 2006 and Cory and I were taking a weekend trip to Asheville for our six- year anniversary. It was going to be a great relaxing weekend. We had booked a wonderful little bed and breakfast in downtown Asheville called the Aberdeen Inn and could not wait to arrive and see what awaited us.

The plan was to rent a car, since neither of us thought our cars were up for that long a trip, and drive the six hours after we were done with classes for the day. The car was already booked for us, and when class was over we drove out to the airport to pick up the car. Cory just dropped me off at the door as we anticipated no problems. Things were going smoothly at first as I began the process with the counter person at the National Car Rental booth. All paperwork had been done, and I handed over my Visa debit card to make the payment. I already knew that I was going to be charged an additional $17.95 per day for being under the age of 25, but I soon found out that because I wanted to use a debit card they would also be charging an additional $21.95 per day for insurance. What using my debit card has to do with insurance on a car I am not quite sure. What ended up happening was that I refused to pay the outrageous additional charges and called Cory to come pick me up.

We spent the next hour calling other car rental establishments to discover that they all wanted to charge us even more. I finally made the call to just take my car and hope and pray that there were no problems.

Two hours behind schedule, we set off for our weekend getaway. Instead of taking the easy route down interstate 40, we took highway 64 because we had been told that that would be the best way to go. That person lied to us. We approached red stoplight after red stoplight, bumper to bumper traffic through Charlotte and the wrong directions to our destination. We finally made it four hours later than we planned on.

The Aberdeen Inn was beautiful. The old plantation-style home set atop a small hill in the downtown area with beautiful gardens and a most pleasant hostess was to be our home for the next two nights. Welcomed at the door with a bright smile and a cheerful hello followed by the offer of a glass of wine was exactly what we needed after the day we had had. After unpacking our things and checking out the house (and the hot tub on the deck right outside our room) we ventured out for some dinner.

I don't want to go on about how awful driving had been that day, but it continued. We had no idea where we were going and the map we had wasn't helping. We drove and drove, sometimes in circles, to find ourselves outside of Asheville and back on 40. This was not where we wanted to be. With me almost in tears from the frustration of the day we eventually get turned around and headed back in the right direction. We decided to eat at the first restaurant we saw, and it turned out to be a TGIFriday's type of place. This was not what we had anticipated for our anniversary dinner but at this point, we just wanted to eat.

We made it back to the Aberdeen Inn and spent the evening drinking wine by the fireplace in our room and playing a 1970's Mattel game called Palmistry. All in all things were turning out to be ok, and we enjoyed the rest of our evening. The day ahead of us was to be filled by touring the Biltmore Estates.

Our troubles for the previous day seemed to have followed us. As we left that morning to head off to the Biltmore, we discovered that I a tire was flat and off the rim. With no jack and no lug wrench I knew this was going to be awful. I stated to Cory, "Now we never going to make it there." Getting set back an hour my car was fixed and we were on our way...again.

Things improved at this point. We made it and toured the magnificent house admiring all the amazing artwork and the items that were centuries old. It was incredible. After the tour we walked up the side of the mountain overlooking the Biltmore and the beautiful Appalachian mountains. This is where the big surprise came. Cory got down on one knee and asked me to marry him. I was completely in shock as I had no idea that this was going to happen. Of course I said yes and we spent the rest of our day at the Biltmore touring the vineyard and drinking wine. I don't think I had smiled that much in my entire life. The weekend turned out to be amazing. I wish we could do it all over again.