Read the full story in the Washington Post.
Last June, Nivi Achanta walked into a Seattle shop to celebrate her engagement. For most of her life, she had imagined slipping a diamond ring onto her left hand to mark the occasion. She had even sent her boyfriend of five years an Instagram-worthy montage of fairy-tale scenes, inspiration for a wedding to whichher parents planned to invite hundreds of guests.
So her friends and family were a bit surprised when she pedaled home on the Avail AR 1, an iridescent purple endurance bike “ideal for venturing further and riding longer.” Her friends mostly embraced the engagement bike, while “my parents are taking it … not amazingly,” she says. “But they’ve become more supportive of who I am.”
Who she is, Achanta realized, is someone happier riding an engagement bike than wearing a diamond ring — putting her at odds with an estimated 85 percent of brides in the United States.
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