When I ventured onto eHarmony several years into widowhood, I said I was looking for “a poet and an adventurer.”

It made perfect sense. I like poetry, had vowed to read and write more of it myself, and who doesn’t like a good adventure?

I had not considered that gentlemen in search of … might try to oblige by sending their original poetry. Let’s just say that the English major in me was not bowled over.

As for wished-for adventure, I got plenty. I’m not sure if the gentleman who suggested we could slide by handrail all the way down a viewing tower at a state park was bucking for first prize, or slightly daft.

At first, I became the supplier of vicarious adventure for others. Girlfriends who said they could not imagine dating online were eager to know every tidbit.

“Take good notes!” they urged. “This could be your next book.”

Happily, before I collected enough material to fill one, the wished-for poet came along in the form of my Significant Other. He can recite Robert Frost, write beautiful verse on a dime and perform it for admiring audiences.

He also outdid himself in the adventure department. He came complete with a “bucket list” of must-have experiences. The most recent – a glider plane ride over the White Mountains of New Hampshire – prompts me to pass along two pieces of online dating advice.

Absolutely do it.

And be careful what you wish for. Adventure can be –uh- pretty darned adventurous.

The glider ride is a case in point. “Sounds great!” I said at first. But closer to the departure date, I Googled glider plane.

For the uninformed, a glider has no engine. It floats aloft thanks to a tow rope attached to a tow plane (with an engine) that pulls it along a runway and into the sky. At some point, the rope disconnects, and whoosh! The glider’s on its own to float several thousand feet and eventually land, theoretically on the runway.

“It’s actually very safe,” said the SO. “An experienced pilot is flying the glider.”

As someone who once took a hang-gliding lesson, I was in no position to object. But I have to confess I hadn’t counted on the stress that goes with being a bystander to adventure.

The fun began before takeoff, when the tow plane had “a little mechanical difficulty” on the flight just before the SO’s.

“Oil all over the windshield,” said Henry The Tow Pilot. Seems a gasket worked loose, and he couldn’t see where he was pulling the glider. To his credit, he requested repairs.

The five guys who descended on the plane (one allegedly a certified mechanic) figured that a trip to a hardware store two hours away would yield a few flanges and wires to fix the problem.

Despite my best efforts to lure the SO away to the safety of a Robert Frost Museum, located conveniently down the road, the adventurer part of him was determined to wait it out.

Unfortunately, his son and his family, who had also come to watch him soar, had to leave and transport bicycles for a triathlon the next day, leaving me as a sort of unofficial next of kin.

His son’s parting words – “If you crash into the museum, I hope they add your name to it” – were not particularly comforting.

Neither was the fact that the SO handed me the keys to the rental car “in case you need to get to the ER.”

And it didn’t help that the repair team, back from the hardware store, started pulling from their pockets bits of wire and duct tape and filing down non-fitting parts to make do. All this while the crack glider pilot busied himself mowing the runway.

Happily, in the end, Robert Frost did not have to share memorial honors, and the SO, though slightly green, emerged with great stories of “riding the thermals” (aviation talk for bouncing up and down like an elevator).

“I would do it again!” he said.

Fine by me. But no rush. How about 100 poems first from the inaugural ride?

Copyright 2013 Pat Snyder