I turned 40 this year, the age by which I thought I'd have it all figured out.  (SNORT)

In preparation for 40, last year I started running.  I liked it and all, but then I started cycling.  I dropped that running like a hot potato.  Biking is freakin' awesome and fun.  I was talking with the big kid Stan about running v. cycling, because there are advantages to running, of course.  You just go run.  Maybe put on shoes, okay, and an ipod, but you can just go.  And you learn to rely on your own body and power, you listen to your neck and quit hunching forward, you listen to your heart and lungs and realize you can go a bit faster, you pay attention to your feet and how they hit the ground.  For some of us who might have a bit of a control issue  (coff coff me coff coff), it's pretty heady stuff.  (Cue ET, the older brother Michael using his Yoda voice: You have ultimate power.)  So that is the kind of conversation I wanted to have with Stan, about why I loved cycling so much even though running had really touched something inside me, but I'd hardly opened my mouth when he replied:

Wind in your hair.  Duh.

Well yeah. 

Wind in your hair, cycling down a long slow curve, it's like ...flying.

If running is self-reliance, cycling is freedom.  Cycling is payoff, too.  You pedaled up that gdmfsob hill, you get the downhill in return, wheeeee!

But a week before I turned 40, Stan and I and Shelby, the everlasting mini-van, were hit by a guy in a bigass truck who forgot to look before he changed lanes.  Totaled the van.  We got hurt.  Stan got better and went on to join the JV tennis team (and as of this week, is trying out for the basketball team).  I did not get better but have gone on to dr's and LMT's and x-rays and MRI's and now, PT, which is finally giving me some kind of hope.

Meanwhile, I haven't been on my bike since that night we got hit.  I suffered through JULY and AUGUST in this blasted heat we had here and am missing the best cycling weather in the history of Nebraska.

And I'm so FRIKKIN mad I just want to scream.  I want my almost-40 life back, before the accident, when I could have sailed into my birthday on a downhill curve, showing off my awesome new clip-ins not to mention my awesome new hard calves.  Oh yeah.  Another benefit of cycling....

Soon, I think, soon I can get back on the bike.  It's scary.  It's not going to feel right, and then of course I've gone the past 5-6 weeks with no exercise whatsoever.  I'm back to square one.

In real life, I can't moan and cry about the tragedy of not being able to ride my bike.  The tragedies of the real world far outweigh my little whine.  But this is xanga!  Where it is all about me.  Wheeeee!