Twenty-two years ago on this date, two things were happening simultaneously: a brand new website was being born with the lofty promise of "never writing HTML again," and somewhere out on the Skalkaho roads, a peloton was grinding through 7,200 feet of climbing. Both felt monumental at the time.
The Pintler Road Race was the kind of thing that pulls you out the door before sunrise, camera in hand, chasing something bigger than yourself. And being out there on those switchbacks, watching riders suffer beautifully up toward that waterfall and lake, was the sort of experience you only stumble into when you actually show up.
May 28th kept delivering. Snow in the forecast and nowhere obvious to ride in 2006. A smoothie, a comeback attempt, and some CarboRocket optimism in 2008. A 24-hour relay race looming in 2010, updates promised via SMS like that was a perfectly reasonable plan. Then 2012 delivered something else entirely, a 300-mile solo effort, a bike with a soul, and a finish line that didn't quite go the way it should have.
By 2020 the battles were different, mice and peppermint oil and a retreat before noon. And 2022 caught it all in a single glance backward, grateful but honest about how much had shifted.
May 28th, it turns out, has always been a date that asks something of you. Whether you answered with a camera, a bike, a mousetrap, or just a smoothie... you showed up. That counts for more than it sounds.