Life On Two Wheels

Along the river and toward the mountains a morning shadow shimmers across the road. The rays of the first light jet through the trees and across a figure gliding upon the road. His breath trails in short spurts, petrified as it hits the icy air. All is quiet except the slight sound of the athlete as he summons himself for yet another days work. Soon the rest of the world will bustle with life as well and the brief simplicity of cyclist and nature will disappear into the everyday struggle of life in full motion; the errands and intervals, the appointments and intersections, and the deadlines and finish lines OutPaceTheRace

Friday, September 28, 2007

16 hours

Stuttgart, Germany
Friday, September 28, 2007

Two months ago I was at a team picnic back when Jonathan had a house rented for the summer in a little town over Els Angles. It was a team picnic, so participation was sort of mandatory. None of us had the infrastructure in place to have a car, but fortunately Kilian was down for some reason from his place in France. He had a little Renault with Michelins. It wasn’t a race car, but Alonso wouldn’t be entirely at odds with it. Danny was in the front beside Kilian and Pat, Frank, Blake and I were in the back… in other words we hardly fit in and certainly couldn’t buckle in. The road to the little town was similar to an f1 course, so Kilian took the opportunity to push the Renault to the limit. And of course when it got up to speed, the Michelins kept it on the road… according to Kilian. So we were rolling right along at a speed that pretty much made us all uneasy, with Kilian at the helm quite up in the grips of stardom & pride that a domestic make was about to break the land speed record… while Pat offered helpful advice from the back seat in regard to the tightness of the corner relative to our speed at the moment… When some crazy guy actually caught us and got his grill all up on our bumper… The thing is, we were going so fast that we all had that “we just might die” thing going, yet some dude is able to catch us. Danny rolled down the window and gave him the go ahead to pass as a joke- the road was much too technical with frequent blind corners for someone to pass, and besides, we were absolutely flying. He passes. Unbelievable. I don’t know how this is relative at all to anything, but I thought it was a good story. Maybe the lesson is that you can always go harder and push the limits further…
16 hours until the championships of the world commence. What will happen? I don’t know, but I have a good feeling.