Twenty-three years ago, June 26th opened with a blood vessel bursting in one eye, which sounds terrifying but turned out to be mostly cosmetic. The transplant was fine, no real damage done, just a lot of explaining to do about why it looked like something out of a horror film. As noted at the time, strange things do have a way of piling up. Around the same period, there was also apparently a philosophy forming about the journey mattering more than everything else, which tracks for someone who would spend the next two decades chasing races and trails.
By 2009, the date brought a different kind of hurt, the weather-cancelled 24 Hours of Rapelje, a week of post-race depression, and a hard-earned appreciation for the people who show up anyway. Then 2012 arrived with a broken bike, a tired body, and that particular stubborn optimism that shows up when you're coming out the other side of something.
In 2018, the date delivered peak chaos: a Bluetooth keyboard rebellion, a mouse flying out a third-floor window, and a complete pre-coffee breakdown on an apartment floor. Somehow, a normal workday followed. Crankworx and a beer finished the evening. Priorities intact.
And then 2022, quiet and stunning, just red canyon walls and open sky at Cathedral Gorge, the kind of place that makes every busted keyboard and blown blood vessel feel like it was somehow part of the route here.
June 26th has always had something to say. Mostly, it says: keep going.