The Sojourn Begins
Well we can all blame my best friend Leif for all this! 
Leif and I (Cyril) grew up in Halifax Nova Scotia. If at the beginning of 1998 you would have told me that I would soon be going from the foggy seacoast of Nova Scotia to the brown desert of Arizona, I thought you would have lost your mind! But I guess it is amazing how simple events, can lead to extraordinary circumstances. After Leif graduated from university, he accepted a position that would take him to Phoenix. That is where all the "trouble" began. 
April 15, 1998
I met Tracie during a web chat I was having with Leif on April 15, 1998. Tracie worked in the same department as Leif. During our chat Leif got called away, and asked 
Tracie to chat with me while he was gone. It’s amazing how something as simple as that can totally change your life. Tracie and I started to chat. It started out simple enough, but quite soon we were discussing all kinds of things. In fact we chatted for the next four hours! It was almost 1:00 a.m. in Halifax before we finally forced ourselves to say goodbye. All the next day I could not stop thinking about the amazing conversation that I had the previous night. I didn’t have to wait very long to see if my new found friendship with Tracie would continue. The very next night we chatted for another three or four hours! I was starting to think that there was something special here.
Summer of ‘98
Soon Tracie and I were exchanging daily emails and weekly telephone calls. Our relationship was developing into something a lot more than just friendship. Leif came up to Halifax visit in June of ‘98 and we had a great talk. It was pretty hard for me to know what my true feelings for Tracie were. After all we had never met face to face, and could I really trust what my impressions of someone who lived 4000 miles away? Leif reassured me that I had nothing to worry about. He pretty much confirmed all the impressions that I had of Tracie and I soon realized that the feelings I was having for Tracie were real.
By this point I had already made plans to travel to Phoenix and finally meet Tracie. During our planning of the trip we both realized that coming home would be a pretty difficult thing to do. During one of our conversations I remember joking that I probably wouldn’t want to come home, and that I would have to ask her to marry her to stay. I was stunned when I heard Tracie say that if I asked she’d have to say yes! Well the subject was now open so we talked about the possibility of us getting married. I have experience nothing so weird in all my life. Talking about marriage to someone I had never met. This was behaviour from unlike I had ever acted before. Yet it seemed everyone I knew seemed supportive and didn’t think I had lost it, or was acting recklessly. With no signs from anywhere that I was doing the wrong thing, the next thing I knew I found myself in jewelry store for the first time in my life and picking out an engagement ring.
The Trip
I had booked my flight back in June on Air Canada to fly to Phoenix on September 12, 1998. In August Air Canada went on strike and it looked like there would be no hope of them getting back to work before my scheduled flight to Phoenix. Then on September 2, 1998 Swiss Air flight 111 crashed not more than 30 miles from where I was living. Up until now things had been going so smoothly, were these the signs I had been waiting for that I was doing the wrong thing?
A week before my scheduled flight Air Canada finally got around to rescheduling my flight. I was to fly the small commuter airline Air Nova to Boston, then fly on America West to Phoenix. Instead of leaving on the 12th I would be leaving a day earlier on the 11th. A good sign I thought, I was given an extra day to spend with Tracie. When the day finally came, I got to the airport as early as I could to avoid the chaos that everything was in due to the Air Canada strike. I didn’t get there quite early enough. I was put on standby for my flight to Boston, and I began to think could this be another sign? When my flight was finally called I soon discovered that there was eight other people who had been placed on standby. It would be hard to find seats for eight people on a plane that only holds 24! Could this be the final sign!?!?!? I realized that I was driving myself nuts! I closed my eyes and said a quiet prayer. If I made this flight than fate was certainly on our side, and Tracie and I were meant to be together. As I heard frustrated passengers argue with equally frustrated ticket agents, and heard the pilots debating whether they could put a passenger in the jump seat in the cockpit, I suddenly heard my name called. I was the last standby passenger to get a seat. From then on my doubts were gone. Tracie and I were meant to be together.
"At Last"
Tracie and I met face to face for the first time at 5:25p.m. MST September 11, 1998. It was only awkward for about a second or two. I had tried to think on the plane ride down of something witty and charming to say when we met. But when the moment finally came, the only thing I could come up with was to whisper in her ear when we first held each other, "At Last."
We had planned to go on a trip to see most of the state. Leif and his family came along with us. (To chaperone of course!) I had already decided where I would pop the question. The highlight of our trip was to be a visit to the Grand Canyon. This whole experience had a pretty big leap of faith, so what better place to symbolize this than one the biggest natural wonders in the world. So on September 20th, finding a secluded place along side the edge of the canyon, I bumbled and stuttered my way through my proposal. To my relief she said yes! (My back up plan was to threaten to jump off the cliff behind me!
Well that is the story of how we met and got engaged. Little did we know all the frustration we were about to get ourselves into. The following Wednesday we were off to INS to get the forms we needed. That day we discovered just how long this whole thing was going to take!!