May 15th has a habit of catching me mid-stumble. Literally, sometimes.
Back in 2002, it was a sick day that somehow still included mountain biking, because pollen counts and sinus pressure have never been a legitimate reason to skip the trail. The thought never quite got finished. Story of the day, really.
A year later, the focus sharpened into peak bagging in Vermont, racking up Ascutney, Stratton, and Killington on a sore ankle, sleeping in the car, already planning the next sufferfest in the Adirondacks. Seventeen miles. Three peaks with names nobody can spell.
By 2007, it was Missoula life, post-race wounds, chores, bills, the eternal promise to catch up on emails. Then 2008 brought a harder reckoning, with clinical documentation of what stopping costs you, muscle loss, concussion risk, the body's brutal accounting system. Around the same time, a quieter note: friends at 44, which turns out to matter quite a bit.
In 2012, a new bike disappeared into the landscape the way good equipment should. In 2013, a bear charging out of the Gallatin Range turned out to be a total miscommunication. In 2016, a thought about tagging all human knowledge with GPS coordinates emerged from somewhere between the coffee and the trailhead.
Then 2020 offered a quieter moment in time, 2022 looked back honestly at a hard Livingston Christmas, and 2025 delivered the most dramatic May 15th yet, a torn something behind the knee on a hill too steep to run, the body finally filing a formal complaint.
Twenty-three years of this date, and the throughline is pretty clear. Go hard, get hurt, keep going.