Picture the perfect, married couple. They’ve known each other for, like, forever; in fact, their parents knew each other before they were even born! They went to the same preschool, had a total crush on each other in grade school, and began dating in high school. They, for some magical, romantic reason, ended up in the same college and, once graduated, moved back to their hometown, got married and had their first child about a year later.

Now, take the total opposite of that and… SHABAM, you’ve got my parents! My father grew up in scorching Kaunakakai, Hawaii. Population: very few. My mother grew up in freezing Anchorage, Alaska. Population: a lot more! How much more different can you get? I’ll tell you, not much!

My mother was a cross-country skier (she even made it into the Olympics) and went to Dartmouth, an I V league school. My dad, on the other hand, was a surfer who went to UH Hilo, then UH Manoa and finished college at Washington State. When finished with college, my father went back to good old Kaunakakai and became a Special Education teacher, while, simultaneously, owning and running a bicycle business.

It was on a summer vacation to Molokai that my mother first met my father. My mom (being the pro athlete that she is) wanted to bike for her trip and called the local bicycle business to ask for assistance in assembling the bicycle she had bought. My father went to her house at the “Teachers’ Cottages” and things just fell into place. They married the very next summer and had me a month later!