Saying YES

On November 15, 2008, Jen and I went up to Half Moon Bay to visit some friends. We had actually visited them a couple weeks before, right after I got the ring, so I had already showed it to my best friend (and future best man, Eddie). They were excited, especially Eddie's wife, Honami.

I didn't have a grand plan for how to propose. But I figured Half Moon Bay is beautiful, right on the ocean, big waves, sunshine, good friends, their kids. It doesn't get much better than that. So Eddie and I, genius romantics that we are, devised a plan (our only plan...not the smartest move.) Jen and I were to take Eddie's two girls to town to walk around the shops on Main Street for a couple hours in the morning, while Eddie went kayaking. Then we were going to meet up at the harbor and, "Hey, let's go look at the big waves at Mavericks!"

That was pretty much as far ahead as I was able to think.

Everything was going according to plan. More or less anyway. We missed Eddie but finally met up with him. We later learned why we missed him- Eddie had been calling our home in Culver City instead of my cellphone...7 times!. He thought maybe I had backed out or something (yeah right, that would NEVER have happened!). After we got Eddie, we set out in our car along the short dirt road to the Mavericks parking lot.

Which was full.

Oops.

Okay, let's drive around a little to see if we can find somewhere else to park. It's already a little bit of a hike to the Mavericks' beach from the parking area, so it was going to be an even longer trek from anywhere else. At one point when Jen wasn't paying attention, Eddie, in the back seat, looks at me with a "What now?" look and I said, "I don't know, there is no plan B!" We drove around a little bit, and Jen was getting annoyed because she hadn't eaten (and you NEVER, EVER EVER not feed Jen Tan, as anyone who knows her knows!).

Finally we decided to park on the road adjacent to the Half Moon Bay "Yacht Club" (that's another story altogether, but suffice it to say that a shed and a weathered picnic table do not a yacht club make).

The road we parked on terminated at a narrow beach in the harbor. There were two options to get to the Mavericks beach. We could walk around several blocks just to get to the start of the path that goes along the north side of the harbor out to Mavericks. Or option two, we could walk directly to the north along the beach and then go a little further along the beach on the other side to the Mavericks path.

We chose option two, the beach, because it was shorter. The only problem was that the tide was in so the water was right up to the rocks under the pier. We'd have to scamper over the rocks to get to the other side.

And Jen was wearing flipflops.

Oops.

Off we went anyway. Eddie made it over in about two minutes. Eddie's nine-year-old daughter, Junko, stayed with Jen and I, as Jen delicately went from rock to rock. Between the two of them, Junko was definitely the better rock climber - she was back and forth, pointing out where to step, which route to take. Meanwhile, Jen is getting pretty annoyed and at one point said something like, "Eddie, we better see something pretty damn amazing!"

Little did she know just how amazing it would be.

We finally made it and started out to look at the waves. So yeah, there they are: nice waves. Big waves. Cool. Same as every other time we've looked at Mavericks. Okay, so um, let's take a picture! (This was also part of the genius plan: Eddie would take a picture of Jen and I, but secretly he was going to use my digital camera's video function to record the moment.) Eddie and I are trying to sneak words in behind Jen's back: "Here?" "Sure." "Are you ready?" "Yeah."

Jen and I got into prime photographing position, with the sun blaring into our eyes, the harbor behind us, sailboats, kayakers. What could be better? Eddie held the camera up and called out, "Okay, are you ready? One, two, sixteen!"

This was it, the moment of unplanned truth. I was a little bit nervous and couldn't really think straight. I turned to her, said, "You know I love you, right?" and then got down on one knee. Jen started to cry as I got the ring out of my pocket.

I asked her, "Will you marry me?" Jen just kept nodding her head and she said, "Yes!" And no matter how clumsily the day had gone, what could be more perfect than that one simple word?