What a Mystery

Day: 26
Dates Remaining: 19

Have you ever had a plan with someone but had no idea exactly what was going to happen? For example, you know you are supposed to see them on a certain night but you don't know where, what time or what's happening. This seems to be the story of modern-day plan making thanks to the likes of cell phones, text messaging and Facebook. But I have to say, it drives me nuts.

So when I had a date planned for last night but hadn't heard from this mysterious character in a while, I began to doubt that we were actually going to go out especially since I have been stood up a few times in the past month.

I decided to write him an e-mail to confirm our plan and when I still didn't hear from him the day before our date, I figured that he had for sure pulled the plug. In fact, I didn't hear from him until the morning of our date to find out what time I had to be ready.

Given this last minute arrangement, I was unsure about the situation. However, I was stoked on the element of surprise that Mystery had created and his date outing definitely made up for my initial skepticism.

Mystery arrived to pick me up and was the first guy of 50 Dates in 50 Days to show up with a flower. In fact, it has been years since someone has given me flowers of any sort on a date. To top it off, this wasn't just any flower, but a brilliant stuffed toy flower. This way, he said, it will never die. How corny but sweet! He won some huge points before we even got into the car.

He emphasized the fact that we were in a hurry but I had no idea why because I did not know where we were going. We had a quick tasty dinner before heading out to the main event of the night. The only clues I had regarding this outing were, "You will have to be professional and there is no healthy food."

Can you guess? Probably not. Well, we went to the hockey game!

Now, you are likely wondering why we had to be professional. This was because Mystery pulled some strings with some of his connections and got us VIP status. It was brilliant.

With this special privilege, we were able to cruise around the back hallways of the arena where we saw the players walk off the ice and into their change room right in front of us. If I had reached my arm out, I could have touched them. But I held back; I was on a date after all! We enjoyed the final game of the series where our team pulled of a fantastic win.

The traffic jam leaving the arena can be a hassle but we ended up enjoying being stuck in the bumper to bumper crawl as we joked around and got to know one another. During this time, Mystery admitted that he did almost pull the plug on the date because he doubted that it could really be an authentic date. However, in the end he said that he was glad that we went out and I'm also happy that we both had a good time.

I'm even happier that it's finally sunny today and I'm going to head out on my bike and pedal the 80km to my second date with Bronc Rider out at the ranch!