The Proposal

As you may know, Molly and I have recently announced our engagement! This is the story of the proposal.

The Plan

One of the things that I've always wanted to do is to send someone on an Amazing Race-style treasure hunt, travelling across a city picking up clues for some reason. I figured this would be a good (the only?) time to make something like that happen. As things generally go, it wasn't quite as epic as I'd hoped, but I'm still satisfied with the results. There were lots of different things I thought of as potential clues - from negotiating with desk clerks to taping notes on people's doors to sending a telegram to an awesome idea involving coin-operated lockers. Here's what I ended up with:

First, a bit of setup. I took a copy of one of my business cards to my local Biggby to the street. I pinned it on the bulletin board and took a photo. This was a little nerve-wracking in itself, because there weren't any available pins. You must bring your own? Anyway I just hijacked someone else's, and hoped in the four intermediate hours, somebody wouldn't notice. I took the picture above, got an 8x10 printed at Meijer, and cut it into 6 pieces.

I hid the 6 pieces of photo around my apartment, and burned an audio CD with clues as to their whereabouts. The contents of the CD are below (any guesses as to where these locations might be?)

So, with the pictures hidden and audio clues prepared, I got out the whiteboard and wrote Molly a little note...

...and left the CD, my phone (this is important), and a little inspirational card on the table (the card played the Mission Impossible theme).

This was what I intended Molly to go through to find me:

1. Molly was scheduled to come over so we could play tennis. She would first find the whiteboard and then the CD/card/phone on the table.
2. With the CD, find all the parts of the picture and assemble them.
3. Figure out that she needed to go to Biggby, and pick up my card, and look at the back of it. It said something like "Hey you should call me, but you have my phone, so how else could you call me...?"
4. On my business card I also list my Google Voice number, which I generally don't ever use. I had my voicemail setup to play a message that said something like "You just missed me, I went to get some ice cream at somewhere that really rocks."
5. That was a hint to go to Coldstone. At this point, I would be tracking my phone's location via the Find my iPhone app, and when she arrived, I'd send her a message something to the effect of "you should come find me at the location of our first slide together!"
6. And then I would be waiting at Sharp Park, prepared to propose.

Meanwhile, I was going to be stationed at Barnes and Noble down the street with my iPad, using their wifi. I would be watching the action via a webcam and the iCam application. Also, Molly was going to have my phone, so I'd be also tracking the location of that via Find my iPhone.

What Really Happened

The first problem was I was concerned that Molly would get to Sharp Park before I would, so I drove through every parking lot in the area looking for free wifi that I could get from inside my car. I failed, and went over to Barnes and Noble as originally planned. Regardless of my failures, Molly did the first part of the puzzle pretty well. She got a little stuck on finding one of the parts, but it wasn't a huge deal. Ha, for me anyway! iCam worked pretty well, although it was a bit like watching a slideshow a few times. Setup-wise, it was super easy. Here's an example of my view:

So Molly did make it to Biggby. However, she didn't realize she needed to pick up my business card. She tells me that she was hanging out in the store, and even asked the barista if he knew what was up (he didn't).

Meanwhile I was watching her location from Barnes and Noble and I started to get a little bit worried...but, I saw her leave the area, and that seemed like a good thing to me. At this point her location was jumping around a lot for some reason; the GPS accuracy was terrible. Regardless I thought for sure I saw it jump right onto Coldstone, so I immediately sent her the message to meet me at Sharp Park, then literally ran to my car so I could beat her there.

As it turns out, Molly never picked up my business card and was actually headed back to my apartment when she got the message! The good news was that due to road construction which I failed to take into account, I beat her to Sharp Park by a long shot.

At at Sharp Park, I proposed. Technically, it was less of a ring presentation and more of a "here's a Groupon I got for a bunch of money off an engagement ring". I similarly tricked Molly on our first date, asking her if she knew anybody who could help me use a coupon to a local restaurant.

And there you have it. The whole story. Hooray!