THE RIDES

It was the birthday of A, who is in her twenties. Her parents, her grandparents, and her three siblings who were also in their twenties, were celebrating her birthday at home with a sumptuous dinner. It had been the tradition of the family to celebrate family members’ birthdays at home for decades. After dinner, the family would chat in the living room, and everyone would take turn to share a story, an interesting event, a humorous anecdote, etc. This time, the grandpa told the following story.

A man rode a bicycle to work every weekday morning from his house. The ride took him about 15 minutes. Since a certain morning, he would see a lady riding a bicycle from the opposite direction along a small path in his journey to work. After a few mornings, he started to smile to her, and she returned a smile. This went on for a few weeks, and he began to look forward to seeing her during his ride to work. He noticed that the lady's smile seemed to increase in intensity and her eyes seemed to communicate to him some kind of message, but he could not decode the message.

Then, he was sent by his company for an overseas assignment for a week. When he returned and resumed riding his bicycle to work on weekday mornings as before, he noted the lady did not smile as charmingly as before and her eyes seemed to ask why she had not seen him for a few mornings. He tried to use his face and eye expressions to explain that he was overseas, and he was then back resumed riding to work every weekday morning. Interestingly, the lady seemed to understand the face and eye expressions and she resumed her charming smile from the following morning.

About one month later, he did not see the lady on his ride to work for three consecutive days. This never happened before. Before that, he would occasionally not see the lady, but it happened only for one morning, and when that happened, he would assume the lady might have got up late that morning or was busy due to some reason. When the lady returned after three days, her face and eye expressions appeared to explain that she had been sick for a few days, but she was fine then. The man got the message from the lady’s face and eye expressions. The man and the lady continued for over six months communicating with face and eye expressions every weekday morning during their rides to work. They had never stopped and talked to each other. Then, the man was assigned by his company to a subsidiary workplace some distance away from his original workplace. He now had to decide whether he would take a bus or taxi to work or he continue riding his bike to work which now would take about 1 hour. He decided to continue riding to work because he wanted to see the lady every weekday morning. After the initial 15-minute ride where he would see the lady, he had to continue cycling very fast in order to arrive at the subsidiary workplace on time. However, due to the distance, he would sometimes still be late for work, especially on rainy days.

His work performance started to deteriorate because he had to get up earlier in the morning and was stressful to try to reach his workplace on time in the morning. His company superior began to get unhappy on his poor punctuality and quality of work. He was not as happy as before and smiled less when seeing the lady during the morning rides. He noticed that the lady also began to look less happy than before every morning. That went on for a few weeks. One morning, he decided that the situation could not continue any more, and he stopped his bicycle to talk to the lady. This was the first time they stopped and talked. They introduced each other. After he told the lady what happened since assigned to the subsidiary workplace, the lady said that she had faced similar predicament. A few weeks before that, her family moved to a new house located some distance away from her previous house. She could find a job near her new house, but she decided to stay in her job so that she could continue riding her bicycle and see the man every weekday morning. However, she would need to ride for 50 minutes from her new house to her workplace, instead of 10 minutes from her previously house to her workplace. Similarly, she had to get up earlier each morning, struggle to arrive in the workplace on time especially on rainy days, and she also needed time to take a shower after arriving in the company, and all these affected her work performance and health to some extent.

That day, after they shared their affection for each other, they decided to take the afternoon off from work, and rode their bikes for a date. That day was the 14th of February.

Two years later, they got married and lived happily ever since. They still keep their bicycles till this day.

After the grandpa told the above story, the birthday girl in the family said, “Let me guess, the man and the lady were you and grandma, right?” Grandpa and grandma smiled, charmingly, like what happened many decades before.

“Happy Birthday! Happy Valentine Day!” The family shouted in unison. The girl’s birthday was also on the 14th of February.