Is the Pope Catholic?!!

In competitive cycling it is folly and a waste to have much of an ego. 

I got a new pair of pedals/cleats the other day and took them out in the mountains on a 50 mile, 4,800 feet of climbing shakedown.  They work just fine, but it took some dialing in, of course.  The `of course' means that I was unable to unclip about 3 times and fell over when stopping. 

There is a steep 15% -17% gravelly, pot-hole filled switchback at the start and end of my usual training ride.  I typically stop and get off the bike when finishing a ride rather than a) squeeze one more ounce of effort out of me at the end of a hard ride, b) risk falling down, over or off the bike.

Today, of course, as I coasted to the stop I had a problem with unclipping and ... fell over.  A lady in her car was slowly making a turn onto the road I had fallen over on.  She stopped and said: "Are you O.K.?"  Hugely embarrassed I told her I was fine and thanks for asking. 

Then she did it. 

She said something that makes the authoritarian perfectionist in me explode into a chastising rage. 

She said: "Y'a sure?" 

At least 3 million, 47 thousand, 9 hundred and 88 bombs went off inside me.  (No.  Really, it is the deep-in-the-marrow-of-my-bones sense of original shame / sin with which I was born.  Any fault is a pretext to send me to hell, proving I am born baaaaaad.)

So, there I was, a 66 year old man, father, husband, over-educated, `doctor' laying on the road, his bike on top of him with his foot still clipped into the pedal. 

And she says "Y'a sure?"  

And I said: "No. Actually, I think I'm dead but just don't know it yet." And I slowly upright myself, hold on to the bike, staring at her with dis-mis-badly-placed anger (and shame). 

Pointless. 

Cycling gives us unlimited opportunities to, one more time, try to practice humility.