A homegrown dating service promises mega-romance on the road, but one intrepid member has yet to run into the right woman.

It was a typically brisk day a few years back as I pedaled past San Francisco City Hall, which might explain my eyes catching an unusual sight in that part of town: short shorts and long, naked legs. Fractions of a second later – about the same time I realized the legs belonged to a man – I crashed into a young female cyclist in front of me who had stopped for a pedestrian.

Several years before that incident, driving along Highway 1 in Hermosa Beach, my eyes stopped on a sexy vintage car next to mine (driven by a man) as I slowed for a red light, causing me to lightly rear-end a shiny new Infiniti whose driver had stopped it 10 feet from the stripe.

If my editor had known of these benders, things might be different. But not foreseeing the dangers that may await, she told me to write about Meet My Plate, a locally-grown dating website started by Carmel resident Michael Kovac and his Bay Area-based friend and former colleague Tom Pietras (as well as a third founder who chooses to remain anonymous). The site is built around the idea of connecting with people you see while driving.

It goes like this: Sign up for Meet My Plate and receive a removable decal (like the kind you get with an oil change, but bigger) with a combo of numbers and letters (like a license plate, but shorter), which you put up in your window at your discretion. Then, when you’re driving and see someone you find attractive, and they also happen to be using Meet My Plate, you can memorize (or photograph?) their decal code.

That code – entered into the website – retrieves the profile of the mysterious motorist, and may the courting begin.

I got this assignment because I’m a single guy at the office. If I were a cast member on Jersey Shore, this is perhaps a badge I would wear proudly. But that is not the situation. Like most single folks entering midlife, I’ve loved, I’ve lost and though a man of many talents – cooking, ping pong, rear-end collisions – I wonder if relationships is not among them.

But resilience and an open mind are, so I went onto MeetMyPlate.com, began creating an account ($1.99 for the first year, to cover decal shipping), and soon hit my first roadblock: The screen button to register (and pay) appeared unresponsive. A few minutes later, email notifications informed me I had registered, twice. Still on the website at that time, the homepage encouraged me to “like” Meet My Plate on Facebook. Curious, I clicked through, and found the page only had five likes and no posts. On the wallpaper image, I was told that “Our Members Are Located All Over the Globe!” That’s less than one page like per continent.

I retained hope, of sorts, as I awaited my decal, figuring the story would be fun. I imagined myself driving around town in my Subaru, hunting down other decal-laden cars, and checking out the contents of their interiors. I got a car wash, the first in years. I kept my eye out for other decals, but saw none. After a week passed and I received nothing, I sent an email mentioning I was a journalist and had a deadline, and I’d yet to receive my decal.

Just over a week later, Pietras responded, saying my email took him by surprise: The decals weren’t yet up to par, he wrote, and the website was about to be “suspended.”

Speaking on the phone in the days following, Pietras adds further detail to Meet My Plate’s genesis, and its vision for the future. “Once it picks up steam, and people get comfortable with the idea, it will take off.

“It’s a simple concept,” he says. “You see someone in their car, you find them attractive, you make a connection.”

For co-founder Kovac, the appeal is throwback. “Years ago, when I was younger, you could wave to a girl and she’d pull over,” he says. “But that doesn’t happen anymore. I’m a happily married man, but I think back to the time where you could do that.”

But the burning question for me is, how is Meet My Plate – whose website (and service) is suspended for the next three weeks until new decals come in – going to compete? Pietras and Kovac hope that some potential TV and radio plugs will give them the exposure they need for a big buy-in (Kovac hopes they land on Ellen), and they maintain faith the idea will catch fire in traffic-plagued, stop-and-go commuting areas.

For my part, I’m all in, an early adopter, still waiting to adopt. You might even see me on the road in the coming months – I’ll be the guy with a decal in his window. If you’re an attractive single woman reading this, please get yourself registered.

But given my history, keep your expectations low, and please don’t drive by if a car is stopping in front of me.