It's 1987. I was in my second year of Hotel and Restaurant Management at Lasalle College and I was 19 years old. I was working on a year long project with 4 other girls and we were building a (pretend) hotel from the ground up. We were at the point where we were working on the restaurants, most specifically the kitchens. I was the purchasing manager thus in charge of collecting any information on all the kitchen equipment. Since my family is in the espresso machine business, we always did the yearly Hotel and Restaurant Suppliers Association (HRSA) show and so since I would be there anyway working the booth, it was a no brainer for me to get all this information. While at the show, I looked around to see where I would grab some catalogues and lo and behold, in the booth just next to ours was this very good looking guy selling all sorts of kitchen equipment. So I meander over and strike up conversation with him and manage to get all I needed to complete my project. After several days at the show, this same fellow asked me out for drink which I graciously declined since I was already involved with someone else.
Fast forward five years and it's 1992. Same show, same guy, same girl. Except this time when the guy asked the girl out again, the girl said yes. Happened to be that she was now single. Of course, the rest is history. Gord and I were married two years later and we certainly were the talk of the show. And it seemed very fitting that we would get the call from China for Cara-Li during the 2003 show. Once again, we caused quite the stir around us.
We met, we married, we had our first child at this show. It is now exactly 20 years since our first date. And this is the first year that the show has been cancelled. What a shame! We were supposed to have our first grandchild there...
