Twenty-three years of May 16ths, and a pattern emerges that feels almost too honest to be accidental. This date has a way of finding the gap between ambition and reality, then sitting right in it.
Back in 2002, the day started with spam filters and neighborhood drama, but there was still a race weekend on the horizon. A year later, a mountain trip got scrapped for a pro bike race in New Haven and a hiking website that never quite launched, while separately the web host went down and took everything with it. The internet, always helpful.
By 2007, the dispatch came from an undisclosed location in Missoula, bills piling up, a Boise race looming, and a self-described imaginary cycling career requiring real financial management. Then 2008 delivered two entries in quick succession... a quiet return to the saddle, and then the news that the saddle would have to wait because a concussion had other plans. Rest is the best recovery technique. That sentence has aged well.
By 2012, the recovery strategy apparently involved committing a burger-based food crime in Bozeman with a partner whose identity remains protected. Fair enough. In 2020, a rocky trail near Spinks Creek and a Saturday squeezed between two jobs made the weekend feel smaller than it should. In 2022, a new bike arrived and Mr. Bear got right to work. And just this year, day two of a knee injury brought the familiar cycle back around... the icing, the waiting, the cautious optimism that soft tissue injuries talk loud but don't always mean what they say.
May 16th keeps showing up as a day of interrupted motion. Plans rerouted, bodies sidelined, websites offline. But what's consistent underneath all of it is someone who keeps getting back on the bike, literally and otherwise. That counts for something.