Days Seven and Eight

Truncated blog, I'm traveling. 

Action Item: Go to bed earlier. 

It is official. I need people to care for me because I am useless. My family has been driving me to the numerous destinations the Tour of the Valley hits every day. They go shopping for me. I am in withdrawal from my routine. On the plus side, my cry for help has been answered. 

I'm feeling pretty distant at the moment from my life of two weeks ago while visiting family in Ohio. No Thursday at Le Driveway, no breakfast tacos, no teammates, and lots of birds chirping off in the distance. Being a competitive cyclist takes me far away from family for extended periods of time, so I've been connecting with how the rest of the world interacts since June with their loved ones. This has been quite a transition.

Take going to the supermarket for an example. Childhood friend chooses to brush me off, perhaps because of my $200 bright red track suit in a blue-collar Sparkle market. I'm an outsider when I show up without my sidekick to smooth over my transition to the world outside of my comfortable two-wheeled hemisphere. 

Example number two has to do with the our high school quarterback from roughly 1996, who is firmly based in reality as opposed to my Austin fantasy of "the real world." The best part of this interaction is that this high school band nerd cannot remember the championship winning high school quarterback's name. I noticed him on a date at packet pick-up for this weekend's race at a winery. When the couple attempted to select a glass to enjoy on the warm evening, the date flatly stated that she doesn't like red wine and wants something pink. This, friends, is not my soul mate. Maybe it isn't the quarterback's either. To his credit, he was holding on to some fitness and was a total gentleman to the ice-in-wine drinker. 

Reconnecting with folks that last knew me as a full time bike racer is interesting as well. They're all pretty shocked that I'm married and that Emily and I are apart for a month. Yup, guys, she has what it takes to understand a bike racer.