Funny how life can bust a mirror into your face once in a while to let you get a glimpse of yourself. It’s only now sinking in that the voice calling me an asshole may not have come from the car stopping at the light.

If that’s all it was I would have dismissed it as I darted left in front of it. Had it been just the asshole in the car I would have rode on blissfully on the maiden voyage of my new bike I just built. But no, at the moment I thought to ignore and crank around him, my left pedal took a chunk out of the pavement, and sent me flying up and over the bike onto my right shoulder. Then moments later realizing that me, my bike, and my water bottle were spread out in center stage of the intersection all alone except for all those cars right in the middle of their five o’clock commute home.

Right now I’m thinking that even though I collected my shit and hobbled out of the way, part of my brain is still dwelling on that spot. What the fuck was I doing out there? I am 200 pounds and have only been out on a bike maybe 5 times this year. And three of those times I’ve managed to drag the exact same parts of my body along the road, rashing then re-rashing again and again. I got hit head on by a truck a few weeks ago. And had the audacity to think that somehow I could pull off a double century by substituting a dilusional self-image for training. And despite this, for some reason I made timeand spent money to build yet another bike. Maybe I’ve been ignoring this message longer than I thought… I have now fully realized that I am definitely not who I was last year. I have let things go like a landslide. While trying to hold on to an identity that fits as well as last year’s bike shorts.

This has been by far the toughest year of my life. From my own persistant medical problems, to the loss of our son. The downward spiral of my business and then the miscarriage of our recent hopes to start again. And so much more that I could write one heck of a country song. But the point is that I am here feeling sorry for myself like an asshole. I have always believed that there is never a way to put things back the way they were. Life would be too boring if that were possible. Only an asshole would dwell on that instead of growing into life as it moves forward.

As I sit here reflecting I think that this latest crash might have been what it took to smack my brain into letting go and getting back into the here and now. My identity on the bike as a small metaphore for a larger picture.

But, metaphore or not, I really need to stop scraping my body and my bikes along the fucking pavement.