Timing...

4am...on the road to race in some cow poke town in the central valley. I need coffee...

My good friend Seth occasionally reminds me that life really comes down to a few defining moments. I know this is one of those times...

It is wondrous how life twists and turns. You arrive at these moments where your life can take a turn, and your mood or your desires at the moment will determine the new route you take. Timing is everything, what once did not seem right, now is poetically moving in how right it is so you move in that direction. And timing makes all the difference.

Today was a matter of luck. Bad luck turned good all because of a seemingly insignificant, yet painful decision...
Today was my first race of the season. A road race. A flat, fast road race. Not my strong suit. I prefer the dirt, and a lot of vertical. So today, I was out of my comfort zone in many ways. My goals were simple, to get a good workout in, reaquaint myself with the pain cave, and stay upright. My tact...to attack early, get into a break and ride it out as long as I could for the workout then fight to the finish but stay safe. To my amazement, I executed my plan exactly as I had anticipated. I followed an attack as soon as we rolled out of the neutral zone and onto the course. That didn't stick for very long. Our group of 5 was absorbed into the main group. Soon thereafter another group of people attacked. I waited till they were clear, did a headcount to see who was in there, then I attacked and bridged up easily. This was perfect. We had 8 strong guys and we started to work together pretty well. Some better than others. We were flogging ourselves for most of the day to stay away. I don't know exactly what our gap was, but I estimated it to be somewhere around a minute or so. This could be the winning move I am thinking, and I am sitting on some serious horsepower from all of my training thus far in to the season. I was riding conservatively. As the kilometers rolled on, people started to get tired, the pace slowed some despite the efforts of some of us. With 30k to go or so, the chase group behind started to get anxious and turned up the heat. We were doomed. My own time checks were telling me that any severe effort now would be fruitless. Myself and Garrett from Olympic Club sat up and wished them well. We chatted for a few minutes before we were once again caught by the main group. Now I just have to stay in the main group (easy) and finish upright, avoiding any crashes. I was nervous. There are 90 guys hurtling down a country farm road inches from each other with tons of potholes and cow manure with only a thin sheet of lycra protecting us in the case of an "inadvertent water landing." ( ...ummmm I have one question for the airlines when they say this over the intercom during pre-flight instructions. How many "inadvertent water landings" has the pilot successfully executed???) Something didn't feel quite right. Images of friends and loved ones pop into my head...but I push them out, I have to focus if I want to survive this.
The road gets abhorrently bumpy to where you can't really focus, just pay attention to the blurry image in front of you and gauge your distance based on the size of the image. Suddenly, I hear a pinging noise...it's me...something is wrong. I try to look down at my bike to quickly diagnose, but fearing for my life I look ahead again. the noise gets worse. Okay, something is broken. I look down one more time and notice that my bike computer head is dangling off of my bars and inbetween the fork and the wheel. I manage to reel it in and place it back on the mount to only have it jump off the bar again.

Okay, quick decision time. Do I let it dangle and risk it jamming and causing a much bigger problem or do I pull out of the race, so close to the finish and fail my objective for the day. I opt on the safe side and slowly roll to a stop. A wave of anger, then sadness comes over me. I sat on the side of the road for a moment to gather myself. I slowly roll to the finish line to watch my teammates finish.

"CRASH, CRASH, CRASH" over the race radios. I turn to look down the course to see my group in a heap 500 meters from the finish. My bad luck and subsequent decision to drop out was a stroke of good luck. I avoided a season ending crash. Everyone was alright, despite the massive amount of road rash on some poor folks.

Sunrise over the Sierras

Today, like many times in my life, I made a choice that was hard to make, and initially was tough to handle, but in the end, it was the right timing that made it so significant. Just when it seemed wrong, it was right.

"Apparently there is nothing that cannot happen today. " Mark Twain