The Pyranees Mountain Stage

I was watching the tour de France and accidentally had an epiphany; a rider began his attempt to outrun the peloton too early and was soon caught and passed by everyone...he thought he was ready for something that was still ahead of him and he should have waited for it.

As I watched this I realized that I made the same error last year. I thought I was ready to simplify my life and head towards retirement...I was not, and the peloton went flying by. I was a little down about it when I realized that I may have as many as 25 years left to prepare for retirement, so I spent a few months lamenting things...forget about lemons, anyone can make lemonade; life gave me spikes so I made a spike strip. I don't think I'll ever use it, but I felt that I had to do something productive with the spikes I was given just to put a positive spin on it.

In the tour there is always next year; in life there are decades worth of next years, so my minor misjudgement isn't that significant except for the pain of reprogramming my expectations. But, in the process of simplifying things I learned a lot about what's important to me, and one of the choices I made took me far from the most important thing... my kids. There isn't anything I can do about it right now; I'm almost caught up with the peloton and I don't care. I feel like quitting this race and just saying "hey, this wasn't important to me after all...my bad. By the way, can you have a mortgage annulled?"

I'm going to drag my spike strip out in the night and leave it on the road in front of the peloton...in the ensuing pileup I'll slip off the side of the road and through the woods; no one will notice I'm gone. No, I know what I'm going to do. I'm going to go to work and pay my bills and enjoy seeing the kids when I can; that's what adults do...stupid adults, stupid peloton. I think this analogy is played out so i will bid you adieu.

Adieu.