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Cancel the Wedding, Grab the Bike
One Woman's Journey Down Paradise "Rode" By Amy Montemarano
Serene is not usually a word that describes the state of mind of a soon-to-be bride.
My mind was nowhere near serenity as Rich and I prepared for our September wedding. Even though we had agreed to make it a low-key affair, somehow the upcoming event took on a life of its own. When we added up the costs (all of which were on us), we realized with frightening clarity what we had done. Over dinner that night, already feeling the slow stirrings of guilt and resentment, we were both thinking the same thing: a BMW, a down payment on that house we wanted, student loans paid, savings account.
Then, two things happened that changed everything. The Sunday newspaper travel section ran an interesting article on a bicycling tour of New Zealand. And on Monday, my co-worker returned from two weeks in Australia. He had eloped. His glowing suntan and exuberant grin said it all: "It was fantastic! No regrets, mate!"
It didn't take too much deliberation. By July, we had cancelled the wedding. By August, we had booked a 10-day bicycling tour of New Zealand's rugged South Island, to be topped off by a wedding ceremony in Queenstown.
Sitting around our meeting table the day after Christmas in a Christchurch hotel after the excruciatingly long plane ride, we su