What REALLY happened in the Alpes. A love story…

One perfect day (about 2 weeks ago) Amber and I traipsed around the stunning Alpes Maritimes of the the France/Italy border. Col de la Lombarde- 2500m alt. A perfect day: A week off training, gigantic mountains, green grassy hills with pretty little flowers, the fresh smell of soil, blue skies, and of course Amber’s deep green and yellow eyes. The sights were so amazing we took our bikes to explore a little. The moment became too overwhelming and right there, sitting amoungst the veld flowers and green grass overlooking Italy, I asked Amber to marry me. She said “YES”

I always wondered when where and how I would ask her, but as the story book day in the beautiful mountains progressed, it became pretty obvious it was to be D-Day. The big question was not a total surprise, but it definitely was spur of the moment. Hence the dazzling ring. True Caveman genius - a twirled Mars bar wrapper. On the flight home we bought a more fitting ring in Houston airport. An Amber ring.

Word has gone round, (Facebook is a powerful thing) and of course, everyone wants to know “when and where?” Early 2010 in South Africa.

Do you blame me?

The lack of recent blog posts is due to the Honeymoon atmosphere we are experiencing. We are really happy- the “racing holiday” in Europe was refreshing, we had a week off training and feasted on fine French cuisine, spent time with new friends Jacky and Vanessa Everaerdt in Antibes. Of course the travel back to the US was hectic, but once we landed in Reno we started packing all our belongings (from storage and Amber’s moms garage) and within 2 days we were in our new home: Bend, Oregon. (I lived in Bend for 3 summers before I moved to Reno to woe Amber) What an amazing feeling to have our own place to stay. It truly feels like honeymoon. I already have a herb garden going, we are cooking home cooked meals. A rented apartment, sure, but we have not had our own place to live in since Dec 07. We have been living out of boxes, bags, cars, storage units and countless friends. And strangers’ homes! Thanks to my parents (Lydenburg, South Africa) Hendrik,(Stellenbosch, South Africa) Sonya,(Amber’s mom in Reno, Ed from Avia for the huge RV in Temecula, Casey in Alabama, Spike in Richmond, Gareth (Xterra Wales organizer) Michel Pilousek and the Gertz family in Czech, Jacky and Vanessa and XTERRA France’s Xavier in France.

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 20th, 2008 at 6:50 am and is filed under Amber Monforte, News & Events. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.