With careful planning, the endurance of an experienced jogger, a map of Portsmouth, and a GPS jogging app, British jogger Ben Chudley pulled off a rather elegant marriage proposal via his favorite activity, The New York Daily News is reporting .
And by the way, she said “Yes.”
The avid jogger told The BBC that after carefully mapping out the route for his proposal, he jogged the route, turning the GPS on and off as need be. He said the total proposal route was about 15 miles, but in order to spell the words properly, he only had the GPS turned on for about 5.7 miles of his total route.
Next, he uploaded the image to Facebook , tagged his girlfriend, Olivia Abdul, then produced some flowers and a ring, according to The Express .
“Olivia cried for about 45 minutes, I think somewhere in between the muffled noises she said yes.”
The future Mrs. Chudley says that the proposal, which came complete with a 9-carat diamond ring, was completely unexpected.
“He came home and I didn’t register he had only been out for five minutes, he asked me to look at my phone but the message hadn’t come up yet. Not long after, I looked again and there was the proposal. I had a meltdown, I couldn’t say anything. I cannot believe he kept it a secret, I’m very proud of him. I’m just completely overwhelmed.”
The health care company manager says that he got the idea for his GPS proposal after looking at pictures of his, and other joggers’, routes on his Facebook group, Urban Pictionary UK . Posters to the group post screen shots of their routes after deliberately running routes that create specific shapes. The page started when Chudley noticed one of his routes looked like an image that he very British-ly describes as “rather rude.”
Chudley and other runners have posted GPS-created pictures of Spongebob Squarepants, dinosaurs, stick figures, the word “Mum” (for their mothers’ birthdays, of course), and a seahorse, among other things.
Although Mr. Chudley’s GPS proposal is impressive, it’s not nearly as impressive as that of Japanese artist Yashushi Takahashi, who biked, hiked, drove, and ferried his way across Japan to spell out a GPS marriage proposal across the whole of the country. His proposal can be seen here.
As of this post, no wedding date has been set; undoubtedly Ben and Olivia will spell out the specifics via their GPS jogging app and post it to Facebook, making sure to tag all their friends and relatives.
[Images courtesy of: iMore , New York Daily News ]