Cycling

I was driving to Louisville with my wife so that she could attend a conference, and I started to think about how many times I had driven this way before. I always enjoyed the road trips through Cincinnati and down to Louisville, at least when racing I never had to go through Cincinnati during rush hour. I could not believe how many different landmarks that I remembered, and how many of the little roads and towns I had raced in throughout the years. The trip down 71 I can still point out the location of my first road race, and would know how to get there by memory, when racing my best friend was a co-pilot and a road atlas. I can also remember the exact exits of some small mom & pop motels, and local bar restaurants that we stopped at maybe only once.

I miss these things, not because I left them behind, but because they were a part of who I was and am. It is almost as if the roads and hills talk to me. I can hear and see them tease me as I go and pick up my kids from grandma and grandpa's house. When I started cycling in the hills of Sugar Grove the roads and hills were not kind. They told me that I did not belong here. They forced me off the bike by pushing the roads to the sky and shaping the wind so that it was always in my face, all the while laughing as I was forced to walk. They turned and curved thier backs constantly to make me want to turn back. They tried to send me away by flattening my tires on regular occasions, sometimes both at once, and again laughing as I was forced to walk. They would throw animals at me trying to knock me down, and they especially liked to used dogs at the tops of the hills, it was not bad enough to make me walk they had to send the dogs after me also.

It took many years of hard work and perseverance, but finally I was able to get the hill's and road's respect. They allowed me to climb almost to the point to touch the blue sky, they began to shelter me from the winds, and allowed me to move along the roads nearly to the point of flying, they allowed me to see the obstacles in the road to keep my tires from going flat, and they kept the wild at bay but visible just as a reminder.

As time past I quit visiting the roads and hills, for which they were not happy. They steepened the hills and made the winds colder, and then they told me that I would have to start all over to win their respect again, and that I do not really belong here anymore because it is not my time. They said that some day they would allow me to bring others to try to earn their respect, but that all the things that once greeted me would also greet them. You can always come if you want but it will not be easy.