How We Met: The Courtship

If you’re curious about how we met, it all began on a boring Wednesday afternoon in the middle of October 2013, I received a blinking instant communicator message on my work computer from someone named Rubilyn. (Yes, we work together at the same company)

The message stated: “Hey, I have a vacation planned from Boxing Day to New Year’s in New York City. Are you going to be in the office during that time? Just checking so we aren’t out at the same time.”

And that, my friends, is how we met and began the courtship of Ruby by a guy named Peter

Our first date was at St. John’s Town Center, a huge outdoor shopping mall in Jacksonville, and went to Barnes and Noble to look at travel books. That was my first introduction to Ruby’s beautiful and relentless passion for travel. She kept picking out which places she would love to visit (hint: all of them) and made fun of me for mispronouncing British city names and words, such as Leicester (hint: it’s “Lester”, not “Ley-sister”) and Derby (something along the lines of “Daaahh-be”; don’t ask me why).

Other dates included:

• Fort Clinch in Jacksonville, where we witnessed cannon fire and a Civil War history lesson
• A local bookstore, Chamblin’s, in downtown Jacksonville, where we spent a few hours looking at dusty old books
• Castaway Island Preserve, a beautiful park on the water

We both realized that we both enjoy traveling and doing things away from the house, even though Ruby had to prod me repeatedly to become more active (something which I thank her for)

Ever since, we plan where we wish to go every year for weekends, holidays, and vacation days. Thanks to Ruby’s travel hacking tools, we’ve visited over 30 places (domestic and international) in over two years of traveling, all the while holding full-time jobs, and doing everything on a budget (hello McDonald’s dollar menu, nice to see you again).

If I step back and look at our relationship from a higher angle, then it seems quite amazing that we met given our respective circumstances: I was born in Slovakia, came to Sarasota, FL, went to Orlando, FL for college, and ended up in Jacksonville, FL for my career.

Ruby was born in Manila, Philippines, worked in Manila, went to London, went back to Manila, and had a choice to go to either Jacksonville or Birmingham (England) two years ago. She chose Jacksonville, and the rest is history. Even in our current hyper globalized world where people movement is at an all-time high, I think it’s pretty fascinating.

In the next 10 years, we would like to save enough to become financially independent, or at least be in a situation where we can work remotely in a location we both really like, and we wish to keep traveling because nothing beats the experience of visiting a new place, seeing a new culture, tasting new foods, and meeting new people.

So please join us on the next chapter of our lives, which involves a little thing called marriage and taking care of little Rosie, all the while traveling the world and experiencing adventures big and small.