So, in March this year I postured with the a really brief post about pushing. The reality is, I felt and knew a lot behind the scenes that wasn’t projected outwardly. It certainly was all about pushing…and a month and a half later, I haven’t lost focus.

Push.

I watched Seamus the other day. In fact studied both Aiden and Seamus but Aiden, being older, the bike and lots of things just comes naturally and easier as you’d suspect as the older brother. But I watched the little big man do this little plastic jump. Watching him watch me for re-enforcement that he was safe…and cool…and getting better…and like his big brother…and like his daddy…and getting older…and…

Over and over. I watched. And smiled back.

I was compelled to grab my camera and just shoot. Mainly to capture the essence of someone pushing so hard.  Trying to make it all right. To succeed. To please. To validate himself. I was inspired.

And I am doing this now. This pushing…still. Making absolute my conviction to support my family.

My life has changed since April 1…days before writing that brief blurb on pushing, and I am pushing still. I will succeed and create the next wave of my life in a way that ensures I spray my efforts in 360° array to absolutely enforce to all around me that I mean what I say. That I can support the three part teeter totter….make life secure…enjoyable…livable….evolutionary.

We can die now. Don’t stop pushing. Milk it all. Be greedy for life.

I hate myself for liking Boonen. No, loving Boonen. I'm a tank like him (6'2" 180) and always empathize with the big men who have to suffer like pigs when the terra firma tilts up and the waif's float away. God help them when the land flattens out again...

Anyways, oops, he did it again. The boy's definitely got a problem. This is not recreational use (WTF does that mean anyways) in my opinion and the fact he's turning to blow again...after what all thought was a rad and remarkable step back up to the peloton's 'top step' after his Roubaix win this year and with it erasing all that bad in his past from his first cocaine bust...

So how's it going to end?

It's all going to end up on Belgian reality TV. Probably right after Wellens and Me re runs or that crappy show about the Planckaerts. I can see it now: It'll be about a struggling Boonen, all bloated, working in a factory being managed by Ludo Dierckxsens, as he tells tales about depression and pressure and....(insert the 'where are they now?' TV show play book from VH1 here).

Pressure? Try growing a family, Boonen. Get laid off and push hard to continue supporting your family. Try maintaining some self respect and salvage the respect little kids have for you in Belgium while they read your own comic book.

Hit the buy now button folks...

Take a good look at this face. Study it.

What do you see? Well, I will tell you: relief. My friends, after nearly 13 years, the time has come and my employer and I have parted ways. All was done amicably and I will now take some well needed time afforded with this move to take that sabbatical I've dreamed about for many years. It's going to allow the freedom to explore the technology and business projects I've really wanted to focus on for years, but has been so hard to do with a full time job and its travel, family, bike racing...you get the picture. But it is amazing this feeling. Lightness. Awake. I am so amped it's mad. I can literally...not figuratively...take these massive inhalations of breath in my lungs and feel so relaxed. It's indescribable. I am so proud of the work I've done over the last decade+...the places I've been, the people I've met, the technology we built...all suffering and winning together. I leave that last 'chapter' behind and so proud and know the team will pour more and innovative fuel on the fire we started.

Once this news was public, so many folks have sent amazing well wishes. Ironically, many have said: "Well now you get to focus on your family." Huh? Kind of funny but it's a pretty typical thing to say I guess...and I am one of those energetic Labradors with my tail constantly wagging...always doing something fast and with passion. So it probably leaves many of my business 'associations' with that feeling of: 'man, I hope that guy tends to his family.' But you as my faithful M & C reader....having humored me for (literally) years with bitches, moans, rants, cries of "the three part teeter totter" and the balance strived for already know everything....everything...ranks behind my family. Has, does and will.

"The cage door is open Greg. It's your decision to jump through when you want to." The words of my wife for years. Imagine having that support. That is my life and I am blessed. My Amy is my compass....and engine...for so many things. If I were speaking these words to you now in person, my readers, I'd emphatically wish for you...hope for you...to have that kind of relationship in your lives. The relief is so deeply rooted in my wife's insistence on keeping us focused on many 'core' things that do nothing but set us up on a trajectory towards happiness and freedom....

a) Stay out of debt. She's the best CFO in the world and we live life with the fact that we want NO ONE 'owning' us. So never spend what you don't have. It's all just stuff anyway. Amy is such a phenomenal pilot here for me as I'd keep buying Dugasts until the cows come home. I've got a problem like that. Amy schwaps me in the head to keep me on the straight and narrow. 

b) Pursue what you want because everything else sucks. She's right. Money is nice but having freedom to explore what you feel you were meant to do in life is infinitely more important than merely putting one foot in front of the other on the rat wheel. You all remember those videos in college Psych 101 classes of Pavlov's dog. 'Ding'...run and get the food pellet. Well money..and combine that with debt, is what forces so many people to not realize until it's too late that they are hearing the ding! and subconsciously running for the pellet.

c) Ensure we are where our kids can thrive. We're here. We felt that in 2004 when we had a 2 year old and 6 week old and suddenly realized that we'd mentally...and physically...outgrown San Francisco. We chose one place: Boulder and made it happen. Our friends and family were shocked. Nearly a decade there and poof! We're gone. All in the pursuit of staying ahead. Looking ahead. Planning ahead. We believe so fundamentally in this town and what it can provide our children it is maddening to think we could ever leave...

So these things...and other core things I think I'll just keep for me....are all the building blocks my beautiful Amy has helped me realize. It's enabled the cage door to remain open and ensure our freedom. I am going to take time to think, to write, to study technology, to ride...and ultimately demonstrate again who I was...who I am...and the character I know I need to revive with this small break. You have a taste of me through reading these pixels, but those that know me in the flesh know that I am ready to blow some shit up. Large.

I

Am

Flipping

The

Next

Page

As

We

Speak.

Oh my God. It's here. Exhale..................

What it is about brothers? I want to know. I study my boys so intensely...but they will never know why or the anguish and sadness I feel to the depth of my soul as I watch their relationship blossom. Jealousy? Nah. An anguish rages through me like some sort of chemical storm rushing through my veins as I watch the beauty of their relationship grow. But the anger and anguish I feel is obviously not for these sweet boys. The feeling is, however, culminated in an electrified stare through my eyes as I see what they have and the conditions in which they have...no...enjoy their relationship.

I methodically observe and study them as it's important...and I watch their bond grow not in the manner of a rubber-necker looking at a the way two people in love kiss when said rubber-necker has been burned burned burned. No. Not like that. I continue to watch in admiration as it's beautiful and SO important due to the natural and healthy course two brothers can take in growing mutual respect while having each other in their lives for the rest of their lives. It's so important for Amy and I to influence something healthy and beautiful between these amazing little people.  We sweat those details more than you know. So the days play each other out and while Amy and I rant to each other over the nonsense on some days, but we know less than discreetly that we want time to stand still even while the fireworks are going off between two little hot heads. We want it to stay this exactly this way....forever. We want the days to be just like these as the "obvious" things are seen...

The fighting: GIVE ME BACK MY TRANSFORMER'S LEG!!!

The relating: You, know, you look like mommy and I look like daddy. Yeah, I look like daddy. But you don't look like daddy. But I do.

The playing: No way! Your rocket didn't hit me! It flew right by my jet! You did NOT blow me up!

The loving: I want you to sleep in my room with me tonight ! I am not scared or anything, but want you to be in my room tonight.

And so, I observe this. And I love it and relish hearing what I hear and what I see....

"Don't worry, it will come," she said as the days ticked away over the summer break before 5th grade would begin. Mom promised this to me with everything she had in her 'mom powers' to console a son who'd been shined. Months prior his brother of 13 years difference left for his first deployment and before he left promised me contact. That's all the little brother wanted. It was clear in his leaving that he was moving away from the family in more senses of the word that can be conveyed here.....with every step up the ladder of his military career. He promised his little brother he'd send some 'real army equipment' that his litter brother would wear and be exactly like him. It was inevitable: he would follow in the footsteps of his big brother because his brother was...everything. Every single solitary thing a child growing in the 70's could want. An extension of John Wayne from the movies little brother and dad would watch together after mowing lawns on incredibly hot and humid days in Connecticut. He was an extension of the Catholic Church and what it meant to me as a boy and how a man is supposed to live with virtue...and with a sword if required to re-enforce this virtue. A man creating a family like we had. A man defending us like I simply thought I needed to do.

The package came but it was anti-climactic. To this day I will never know if the parents berated the bigger brother into 'following through' to appease the little brother's obsessiveness with his bigger brother or if this bigger brother had a natural compulsion to send the olive green utility belt and the rubber canteen to his little 'bro'.

Ah, fuck it. It's irrelevant. I refuse to burn another brain cell on it.

Now, I watch MY two little characters grow. My beautiful young men blossom. Teaching them to appreciate the nuances of their sibling in a way that is not forceful, but in some sense not unlike trying to 'assist' someone with why a certain song is great. And while we know that is not always a fruitful endeavor, it is still a way to continue re-enforcing subtly that there's beauty in everything. EVERYTHING...

Love

Respect

Family

Life

Forever side by side

For me, I will never have the opportunity I see my sons have at their life's portal. But, the magic is the way I feel about applying what I thought I could have into ensuring my sons actually have it.

I pray they haze me when we're all old and call me out on my ridculousness. And I'll laugh, as one of them has their head on my chest when I pass, at the joy we had.

I still don't understand it. Is this end-of-days? The weather is EPIC. More May than March with 65 degree temps and sun that gives off a crystalline blue sky. Priceless days, these. I suppose if I still raced hard in the spring I'd be out of my mind with this weather. Early, pre-work training is not too cold allowing the type of focus you need to really ramp up....e.g. being able to focus-in on how your body really feels when the efforts get put down versus not being able to feel your face and indescribable toe and finger pain given the cold that should be here right now. Anyways, dudes here will be fast this spring, methinks. I can not describe for you the volume of bike traffic on the roads. Nuts.

But even while rolling today on our 'cross ride in this brilliant sun.....with Dan the Man, Von and Brett....my mind is wandering. It's been wandering. It's been utterly focused on 'what now?' and 'what next'. I've spoke about flicking dominoes....and in digesting the domino-flicking concept here on the blog, It's been an amazing exercise to truly ideate on how I can ensure my hands are firmly on my life's control stick. Keeping level with the horizon. Ensuring that my family and I are avoiding obfuscated hillsides....those that could take us away from our beloved Boulder.The indescribably thick conservatism in my decision making throughout my life has in one sense kept me as a single dude....and now my family...safe and on a great trajectory. But 'what if?'. What if just a smattering of risk was employed? What if I we decided to just...

Something in this life seems to be materializing and a few exciting rivers have suddenly exposed themselves....showing their unbelievable features, their twists, turns and eddies all at once. Because of a small amount of risk taken to even flick that very first domino, breaking all my traditional risk-mitigation synapses I was born with, these deeply shaded curtains get pulled back and I get to see these rivers in all of their entirety. I am given this opportunity to evaluate their risks, their rewards...their individual rides. It's pretty unique. 

I'm not sure where this is going. It's either going to be magical or Wonka.

Flick your own dominoes.