Erika Christensen is an avid cyclist, and she started dating Cole Maness in 2011 after meeting him at a race. “He knew who I was, and I knew who he was, so both of us were playing it cool and wouldn’t talk to each other,” she recalled to Genlux Magazine. But Maness left enough of an impression on her that she decided to reach out to him on Twitter. When he still didn’t make a move, Christensen came up with a plan to gauge his interest. She sent him a text that read, “I wonder if I can trick Cole into asking me out to dinner,” presumably under the pretense that it was meant for someone else and she’d sent it to him by accident. This finally did the trick.
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Maness is a Memphis, Tennessee, native who discovered his love of cycling while running a store there that sold bikes and various outdoor gear. In a profile by the cycling apparel brand Rapha, he shared, “I got into commuting at first, then I’d go out for the Sunday Shelby Forest training ride which led me to racing.” In 2009, Maness partnered with Rapha for its ambitious campaign called the Continental, per The Oregonian. To promote the brand’s products, he and a group of fellow cyclists chronicled their adventures as they rode across America. Their scenic rides were hundreds of miles long, and some of the stretches were brutal mountain climbs.
