...or is life catching up with me? It has been an interesting past few weeks. This post will catch y'all up on the latest and greatest:
Romance
Since it was just recently Valentines day and all, let's get the romantic news out of the way. And what I have to report to the world is that I guess that I am single again. Without going into details, I'll just say that there were some communication issues that caused complications in the relationship and I don't quite know who is to blame if not both. However, I think the following video summarizes my thoughts on the situation:
My Career
And onwards to my passion in life: being a slave to my job. Yes I can easily say that I like my day job to a greater extent than my bicycle racing career. There are a number of reasons and I think they are as follows:
- unlike racing, I don't have to spend money to make money and the money I do make at my job is considerably more than what I make racing.
- unlike racing, the work that I do benefits people as opposed to crushing their dreams whenever I place better than other racers.
But perhaps I'm not fully realizing my potential as it may be if I were to start a start-up company in that I would have to sacrifice near-term earnings while I built up my business into something profitable. Hmmm. Nah. Another note to make is that I see other racers such as
Eric Lagestrom and Max 'Missle' O'Neil who are young and get invited to go to these cool training camps in Southern California while the only invite I've ever gotten is to some Washington team merely because I was usually the only Guinness rider and that I may feel too lonely.
However, as it stands today, my day job is my primary funding mechanism for launching my aspiring pro-cyclist career if that is in God's will. And there was recently some uncertainty as to whether that inflow of racing money was going to continue. There was recently some uncertainty of my company being financially solvent which caused some fallout from my current company where three people I had been working with left the company. This was fairly concerning and gave me doubts about my future at that company. So I investigated whether there may be other options and I finally ended up applying, interviewing and accepting a job at TriMet - the transit agency serving the Portland area.
This is a rather huge move for me in my career. Ever since I graduated from college I have been working with the same people on mostly auto-related projects. However, my passion is transportation and within transportation my passion is basically anything but cars. Trains, bikes, planes, ships, aerial trams and buses all fascinate me. In my long-term career plans I have always promised myself that eventually I would leave the auto industry and switch to working primarily for public transit or perhaps biking. However, I thought that that would more likely occur when I was 30 after my pro-bike racing career was winding down perhaps. So, I guess that came sooner than later and now since I have pretty much landed my dream job, I think I may be officially giving up on any hopes of going pro and racing my bike everywhere. And I think that is a decision I can be confident in making.
And Bikes
So does that mean that I'm giving up on crushing all you poser-panzie-pussie-non Guinness Cycling Team-loser-racers? Absolutely not! I'm still going to bring it to you all! But in going through my rather life-changing events with women and working, I had a feeling in the back of my mind that something else bad was still going to happen. And I was correct!
Bang! Out of nowhere, or as explained through my success equation - out of bad luck and a lack of situational awareness, I hit something - I still don't know what - on Highway 26 between the Zoo and Goose Hollow at roughly 37 mph. I think that I ended up endoing over my handlebars and definitely slid for a while on my right side and worst of all bruised my knee so much that it was roughly the size of a baseball immediately afterwards. In these rare cases, I approve of the use of cars - such as the good samaritan high school kid - Cooper - who pulled over at the Goose Hollow exit and drove me back to my appartment. And later that evening, my housemate Senthil who drove me to the ER over at Legacy Good Samaratin.
The X-Rays showed no bone fracture, but I could basically not walk with my right leg. I stayed home, popped pills and iced it up for the next 3 days, but still managed to make time for 2 interviews at TriMet. I eventually did some easy easy rides, but the knee was so stiff and it didn't feel all that pleasant to ride. Then on my first attempt to do a decent ride, I was riding along and shifted down into gear 0 - the gear between the spokes and the cassette - and nearly crashed as I skidded to a stop. After yanking out the chain, two spokes were completely broken. So I just gave up and took a bus home and took it even more easy.
Unfortunately this all came during two weeks where I was supposed to be maxing out on my weightlifting and doing lots of intervals on the bike. I finally got back into the gym this week and was surprised to find that I still had some strength and even matched my previous highest squat weight so far this year. More than anything, the knee just feels tight and gets better after stretching - which I regretfully neglected for more than a week after crashing.
Waaaa :'( :'( :'''( , life is so hard
Drama, drama, drama. Man, I have felt like there have been more broken things in my life than there were good experiences. It was like, first this girl I like is falling off the face of the earth, my job is ending and I got in an off-season crash to top it all off. But on top of all that, the weather in Portland just sucks, it rains, it's cold and dark before you know it. I really guess the moral of the story is that it is easier for things to fall apart than it is to construct a beautiful situation.
But, but, it's so hard, it's not fair, things just aren't presented to me on a golden platter, God doesn't open up the heavens and rain down
mana Dave's Killer Bread. Ok, maybe I shouldn't joke about what God can and can't do, but the point I'm trying to relate to is that accomplishing stuff is not easy - it takes work. And at the end of the day, each person is responsible for their choice to work or not work. Finding the motivation to ride in the nasty, cold, dreary, dark weather has been hard for me. I am not sure how I do it sometimes, I guess I just do the working out as if it were a chore to do and just get it done. But even then, I sometimes need a little nudge in the right direction. For inspiration, I think the following video has really gotten me going the most this season:
