The grand reveal

It looks like my date and me have a bit of a habit of doing things in a strange order. He has already appeared on the blog in the hike posts. But he hadn't been announced yet! There were some conditions not yet met for me to take that step, but between the hike and me starting to release blog posts about the hike, they were. Hence that careful readers of the blog already know that his name is Dave and what he looks like. So although that limits what is still there to actually reveal, I did think it was well worth a blog post of its own. This looks like it is turning into quite a big change in my life.

So who is Dave? He is an outdoor instructor turned software developer who only lives 10 minutes on foot away from me. He has two teenage children who both live part-time with him. He is a very active climber, and normally is also an active runner, but an injury is keeping that very limited at the moment.

In spite of the evident differences (e.g. his parental status and climbing talent) we have so much in common that I sometimes think he may not even have noticed the quirks that made me wonder if I had manoeuvered myself well outside of society and the dating pool. I know he has noticed (and not necessarily enjoyed) that my house is a bit on the cold side, but that I use my wood burner as an important source of heat, try to use as little drinking water as possible for purposes that don't require drinking water, don't eat meat, try to avoid plastic, don't watch television, et cetera et cetera are all things that I think he just considers totally reasonable things to do. And with greatly overlapping interests, we will be able to sometimes do the things we enjoy together. So I suppose it is easy to see why this seems to work! And there obviously is also a spark. Quite a substantial one. Otherwise none of that would be relevant. 

Things have been going fast. After all, our first meeting was this year, and it is only March! And we have already met each other's oldest friends. And I have met his sister. And now he has his announcement. 

There are still loads of important and even rather basic milestones to reach, but I have faith we will indeed reach them. I think I can say we are both serious about this. I hope we have the wisdom to make this a long and happy relationship. And if so, his face will be popping up here now and again for many years to come!

A beautiful picture (I think) that Dave took of us on top of Ingleborough; anonymised on request