Well that is a great question. In 2007 we met as two young adults in Bismarck North Dakota. That’s right… North Dakota. Lindsey grew up just north of Bismarck in Minot, ND and was living in Bismarck for college at the time. I had moved to North Dakota for a business opportunity with my best friend where we ran a little snowboard shop together.
While at the time I felt like I was ready to dive into something serious Lindsey had other feelings. Looking back at my state of being at that time I definitely wasn’t ready to give Lindsey what she needed but I didn’t know that.
Lindsey however had dreams! She wanted to move out of North Dakota to California to pursue her dream of working in the motorcycle industry. Specifically in Super Cross / Moto Cross. From my view she knew at the time if she committed herself to me that it would mean a completely different life than she had envisioned for herself. Knowing that I am a strong leader and someone who goes after what he wants she definitely had reservations of hooking her wagon to my train at the time.
It wasn’t long before we had “the talk” where we decided to scale things back to a friendship and move forward with our lives separately…both of us knowing that maybe one day our paths would cross again.
The years passed, Lindsey did move to LA to pursue her dream… a dream that of course she made a very successful reality! I moved to Georgia to live out my goals of owning a successful business. As time passed we stayed in touch respectfully. We both were dating people and knew that spark was still there… it wasn’t going to take much to light so we were careful with it. We even hung out a couple times over the decade timeframe with our significant others.
Our friendship was bullet proof! If I need a female friend’s view she was the only person I called. If she needed life, business or other advice I was at the top of her rolodex. The trust was unshakable, and only grew stronger as the years went by.
Fast forward over 10 years from our original dating stint, and an entire country apart… the world was turned upside down by covid. Life was contemplated, elder loved ones were lost, and significant others that weren’t best for us were removed from the picture. The very loud reality was setting in for us both that life is too short to give up on something that had stood the test of time like our friendship had.
It took one single visit with our minds open to the possibility of our forever being together. The spark was released to float with the winds of love and passion. Per our prediction when that spark landed it was like it was in a pool of VP race gas, it ignited a flame of passion built on years of mutual respect, trust and love.
5 years later, what I feel you can see in our videos is the result of that fire that still burns so hot and so deep in us both! Our dedication to one another has overflowed into personal growth and betterment. We are pursuing health, sustainability, communication, and above all peace!
We are now in the most exciting phase of our lives, building a future together as a couple. Our dream is to experience what the world has to offer, an adventure we are doing one port at a time as we explore the earth through the eyes of the sea.
I want to start this by saying that I’ve never met anyone in my life like Nathan, he’s so unique. He’s extremely smart and extremely selfless. He uses his wisdom and talents to help others every day of his life. His generosity inspires me to be a better person. I adore this man.
It was the summer of 09’, I was in college working at a bar on the Missouri river in Bismarck, ND (technically Mandan for the locals). I loved being next to the water.
I was young, happy and excited about life. I had dreams of moving to Southern California to work in the Motocross industry and be next to the ocean.. Ya know, really shake things up.
One night at work a very..shall I say..interesting man named Nathanael Cicio sat at the bar and ordered a beer from me. We chatted it up a bit and had a good connection and he ended up giving me his number before he left.
I remember thinking “Wow, finally someone didn’t make me feel awkward by asking me for my number, he gave me his and left it up to me… how thoughtful!”
But…I wasn’t quite sold, he seemed different from anyone else I’d met and it confused me a bit…so I didn’t call.
He came back into the bar a week or two later while I was shooting pool with some of the regulars after my shift. He had the sweetest but most confident smile and said “Hey you didn’t call”.
What can I say, he was pretty charming so after some conversation I agreed to go to dinner. That dinner was the start of a wild ride!
My grandfather was a car collector so I had grown up around cars. Now when you grow up in those small towns, you know what everyone drives if you’re into cars. It was like your identity.
I knew of this black Subaru WRX STi in town that I had taken pictures of because I thought it was so perfectly done. Classy and clean but FAST – best in show in my opinion!
Well GUESS who’s car that was….. YEP Nathan’s. I had no idea until that night.
Now I’m suddenly very invested in this date! So we went to get the car and Nathan literally drifted the car sideways around a sweeping corner on one of the main roads in town on our way to Johnny Carinos (fancy at the time).
So one could say we hit it off pretty quickly…but too quickly?
We spent the next year or so together having so much fun wakeboarding on the river and playing with the cars he’d build. I loved watersports and I loved fast cars, we had a blast!
It was very apparent that the water was our happy place and that we shared the same interest in doing life differently, experiencing it to its fullest.
Nathan had me at the first date if I’m honest but my maturity level wasn’t ready for that kind of commitment. I had dreams of my own and wanted to prove to myself I could achieve goals I’d set.
Once I graduated with my MBA, I sold everything in my apt except the essentials (wakeboard, snowboards, clothes and shoes) loaded it all into my car and drove to Southern California. I had enough money saved to live for 6 months and was hoping I’d get a job in the industry that was near and dear to my heart – Motocross.
My brother raced motocross growing up, my mom was a single mom and we went racing every weekend. The memories made are ones I cherish to this day. I knew I wanted to work in the sport that gave so much to our family.
I landed a job at Troy Lee Designs within a month and a half of being in Socal. I was elated, working alongside my childhood heroes.
Nathan moved to Atlanta around the same time and dove deep into automotive performance. He built an amazing company and brand on the leading edge of car performance and is one of the industry leaders to this day!
He’s a genius in the field and holds the record for the fastest street car in the world with his Audi R8 – I could go on and on about how proud I am of him and the team of wonderful people he’s built.
We always kept in touch during these formative years, checking in every 6 months or so to see how life was going. Nathan was one of those friends that if I ever needed him he’d be there no matter what. I knew he’d be in my life always in some capacity.
In 2020 when the world seemed like it was ending, I was working on the Motocross circuit and was newly single. We were racing on the East coast so I reached out to see what he was up to. He invited me to Atlanta to hang out on Lake Lanier with his brother and a few staff members who I knew.
Little fun fact about Nathan is that he’s VERY romantic and also a pilot. He flew his single engine plane to Tennessee to pick up my girlfriend and I who had been working at the track together. It was quite the “Uber” ride!
Once we got to Atlanta, we spent the weekend on the water (my favorite place). We were still friends and nothing more but there was something about him that just felt like home.
I left and his brother confronted him asking him what he was thinking! He said I was perfect for him, but Nathan and I didn’t want to “open that can of worms” and potentially ruin a lifelong friendship….but then a couple weeks later… we did.
We bought a house next to the lake together and I moved to Atlanta a couple months later, and well… the rest is history as they say.
We knew right away that we would be together forever, it just works. He’s just the right mix of spontaneous romantic who can figure anything out that’s irresistible to me! I was ready for whatever life was going to throw at us.
We kept boating on the lake and the boats continued to escalate until we opened another location of Cicio Performance in Florida. We decided it was time to take our boating to the ocean.
We learned so much in those first couple years of being on the Florida coast living on our sport yacht and taking her out as much as we possibly could but we were ready for MORE!
Which brings us to today, I’m writing this from our Nordhavn 41 on our first day in the Bahamas.
It seems like such a dream come true and when I look back at everything that led us to this moment it brings tears to my eyes. God has a plan for us and I’m enjoying this ride – life is beautiful.
Times can be hard and not make sense, until they do… I’ve learned to just hang in there and things really do come together.
Now THIS chapter is quite the wild ride and I’m thrilled to have all of you to share it with as we shoot for the moon and try this dream of exploring the world by boat. Because we all know the best places are always next to the water 😉
