Visions of Glory

The first time on my new mountain bike, which was last October, I struggled up a slight hill.

The first time I rode with some friends they waited for me as I huffed and puffed.

But over the months I spent more and more time in the saddle. I began to conquer hill after hill and slowly moved to the head of the pack.

You could say that I began developing a slight case of Hubris.

Late one night while perusing mountain biking web sites, while I should have been blogging, I came across a site for a mountain bike race. They billed the event as the perfect way to get into racing. Although it was held on the same venue as a famous race that happens once a year, it was a much smaller gathering than the big race.

Hmmm.....

I thought about it for several weeks - while I trained just a little bit harder, wondering.

I started asking friends if they would be interested in signing up with me for the race on June 21. But with school just out everyone had a busy schedule, except me.

So I registered on-line and got my confirmation.

As Mindy can attest I was a little annoying as I spent weeks preparing for this race. I even had to promise her that if she let me do this one race I would "chill out" about this biking thing.

The night before the race I got myself organized.

I left the house at 6:45am for the 1 hour drive to the race site, planning on plenty of time to arrive, register and warm-up before the 9am start time.

There was an eerie calm when I arrived. Instead of banners and registration tables I saw one lone truck and a guy pulling off his mountain bike. When I asked him about the race he shrugged his shoulders and rode off. I knew I was in the right spot because I recognized it from the pictures on the internet. So for the next hour I drove around asking everyone if they new about a race.

But 9am came and went without anyone showing up.

I did finally get on my bike and go for a ride - all by myself.

I still don't know what happened.

When I called Mindy and told her what happened I could hear the disappointment in her voice. After a moment of silence she blurted out:

"Does this mean you still haven't gotten this out of your system"?

Nope. Not yet.