Around the World in 80 Dates (22 page)

The moment I sent the email I felt relieved: I knew I'd done the right thing. The DWs would give me some perspective and good advice. The situation felt too big for me alone, and for the millionth time I was grateful to have such good friends to call on.

And, seeing that the decision was now percolating through the system, I felt free to get on with my day. Grabbing a coffee from reception, I jumped in the car and drove the seven miles west out of town to the Missoula Smokejumper HQ.

Tim wasn't there, but he'd left another message saying he was sorry he couldn't make it, he was out fielding calls. As he'd predicted, all the men were out fighting the fires, so getting me a date
(Date #57)
had proven impossible.

To be honest, I felt relieved, and that was nothing to do with my feelings about Garry. The fires were so bad, crews were being called in from neighboring states to help. This was clearly the wrong time for me to be turning up looking for a fun night out.

Latching onto a passing tour, I noticed a visiting crew were just finishing a tour of their own and were preparing to drill. Liz, our guide and a student volunteer, explained that drills were vital: From the time the siren sounded to being airborne, the crew had less than twelve minutes to drop everything, scramble into their 110-pound packs and suits, and be in position aboard the plane. To do this, the smokejumpers had to be fit (able to do seven pull-ups, forty-five sit-ups, and twenty-five push-ups and run a quarter of a mile in less than eleven minutes) as well as organized.

We walked through the locker room (a sign on the wall declaring
STUPID HURTS
), passing a couple of men at a bank of sewing machines making their own parachutes, and out into the workshop where yet more parachutes were stretched over long benches, smokejumpers hunched over them painstakingly inspecting their condition. A two-way radio sat on a shelf, surrounded by multiple containers of eyedrops and the largest collection of indigestion tablets I'd ever seen.

It was clearly a stressful life, and the room crackled with testosterone, boredom, and restless tension. The men were certainly manly, but Liz gave me a sobering insight into how life with a smokejumper would be.

Watching the visiting crew doing pull-ups on a bar, one of the women in our group asked Liz if she fancied any of the crew. “No,” Liz replied, looking uncomfortable. “I know all the wives, who spend every day wondering if this will be the day their husbands don't make it home.”

 

Back at the hotel, I logged on and was amazed to see that twenty-one of the DWs had already got back to me. All had clear and strong opinions as to what I should do. Some qualified their advice before giving it, like Paula:

Reading through the suggestions, I felt like a contestant on some kind of reality game show where everyone was ringing in and voting on my next move. There were two unanimous reactions. Firstly, thrilled I'd met someone I liked so much:

Secondly, demanding to know which of them could claim the Date Wrangler crown, having pulled off this coup:

However, on the dating question of should I stay or should I go, the DWs were split down the middle.

The No Girl—Stop Dating camp was all female, and romantic:

inventive:

and considerate:

The Go Girl—Keep Dating camp was a mix of male and female, and practical:

sensible:

and extremely direct:

Some brought their expertise to the problem:

Others brought their own problem to the problem:

It was Belinda who gave the advice that was practical as well as romantic:

The jury was split.

Which actually was fine with me: They'd given me tons to think about and ultimately it
was
my decision. So I shut down the computer, put on a pair of shorts, and went and rented a mountain bike.

I think better when I'm on the move, and now, as I cycled along the trail that followed the Clark Fork River east to the university, I mulled over my situation.

I hardly noticed the football teams dashing up and down the field, their coach sweating as he shouted instructions; or the couples—also on bikes—chatting comfortably as their dogs bounded up and away; or even the early-twenties girl dressed in black, sitting strumming her guitar in the shade of a broad tree. I was pedaling hard and thinking harder.

As
I
saw it, this was my situation. I'd presented Fate with a challenge: I'd find and date eighty men around the world (okay, seventy-nine dates with seventy-nine men and one date with twenty-five women), and in return she'd give me my Soul Mate. I felt pretty sure Garry was The One, so Fate had delivered.

But of course, life is never that simple.

Rather than giving me my Soul Mate on Date #1 or Date #80, Fate had come through in the middle of my journey: Date #55. It was brutal timing, presenting no end of problems, but the fact was: Fate had delivered.

And maybe there was a reason for it happening this way. Maybe I'd met Garry halfway through the Odyssey because Fate had an additional purpose for my journey that I had yet to discover.

It might sound ridiculous, but my instincts told me that I had to stick to my plans, that if I didn't honor my side of the bargain, I'd lose Garry; if I reneged on my end of the deal, Fate would renege on hers.

I had no choice: If I wanted to keep Garry, I had to keep dating.

I'd need to ask Garry what he thought. I'd also need to tell the remaining twenty-five dates how my circumstances had changed (and accept that some might not want to see me as a result), but I'd made up my mind: I was going to keep dating.

 

Going back to the hotel was hard: Now that I was clear about what I needed to do, I really wanted to talk with Garry and try to explain my reasoning. I wanted to talk to him anyway; I missed him, and now that the pressure of
the next step
had lifted, I wanted to hear his voice and know I hadn't just imagined the whole thing (and that he hadn't changed his mind!).

The message light was flashing as I entered my room. My heart leaped: Even though I knew Garry was still at the festival, was it possible he'd found a way to call me?

But the message was from Chip, a friend of Tim's and a fellow smokejumper. He was getting married this weekend, had heard my story, and did I want to come and have dinner with him and his fiancée tonight? They lived a ways out of town. I checked my watch: I'd been cycling for four hours and it was now too late to go over. I rang Chip to explain.

He was incredibly friendly and down-to-earth. The wedding—a barbecue in the paddock overlooking the river, everyone drinking and dancing to a local band—sounded fantastic and I was sorry I wasn't going. Chip in turn was fascinated by my journey and the lengths to which I had gone to meet a Soul Mate. “You shoulda done what I did,” he told me over the phone.

“Oh, what's that?” I asked, intrigued, imagining a barn-raising or a moonlight hike through the forests, or maybe even a dramatic rescue from the heart of a ferocious fire.

“Go on the Inner-net,” he told me, breezily shattering my fantasies. “That's the way we meet our Soul Mates in these parts.”

Cheered by my conversation with Chip, I took my book down to the hotel bar. It was full of petrol-heads from the Mustang Car Convention, which was currently making parking impossible outside. Aware I was a date down, I let one of the exhibitors buy me a beer as a sacrifice to the Numbers God. But my heart wasn't in it: I felt guilty and all I could think about was Garry.

 

The next day was the day I was going to hear from Garry, and time wouldn't pass fast enough. I wanted him to be the one to call but feared I'd be weak and ring him first (which, as much as I liked him, was obviously out of the question). I needed a distraction: It was a good day to get back on the Dating Wagon.

First, I sent an email to my Seattle Dates, letting them know that there had been a change in my date status: one to Jason, the president of the Ukulele Association of America, and the other to Ted, a friend of Posh PR Emma's.

I know, I know: an insane amount of punctuation and far too hearty and fake-cheerful. But let me ask you this: How do you tell a man you've never met—but have been in contact with for two months because you're dating eighty men around the world—that you've met someone else but, hey, did he still want to meet up and go on a date?

And then have to do it another twenty-four times?

And I still had to tell Garry about popping across to Australasia and completing my dating tour.

I'm not asking for sympathy. Just observing that, for some, the course of true love ne'er runs smooth. For me, the course of true love had not so much failed to run smooth as mounted the central median of the highway and taken out three lanes of oncoming traffic, and was now burning out of control on top of a hot-dog stand on the hard shoulder opposite.

Or maybe it just seemed that way to me.

Next, I rang Sandy. She was my local contact and would be able to tell me where I was meeting Cleete, the rodeo rider
(Date #58).
He had apparently thrown himself into rodeo riding after his wife had left him, and I was curious as well as slightly nervous to hear more about his life.