The Journey to a Texas Ironman

The wind is blowing, the leaves are quickly changing colors and the time has been turned back an hour to ring in the cooler weather months in North Texas. One drawback to this much welcomed change of seasons is the absence of the sun after the work day.

I have been so good on multi sport expenditures so it was about time to pick up another toy. Naturally, the toy is for when Celeste and I are out and about when the sun sets. After combing over every cycling headlight on the market. Comparing virtually every make and model then drilling down to what options I –REALLY- need and slowly depart from the “sexy must have” on the device, I now have on order my choice of helmet lighting and look forward to it’s delivery next week. ;)

Next, I have to harp a bit to everyone who has a driver’s license. I had the worst “near miss” incident this week by a passing vehicle that swerved over to the right lane. I was riding in the right shoulder and had literally inches of distance between me and the speeding car. When I caught the car in the corner of my eye coming at me, I immediately thought, okay, this is it, you are going down and you may not be getting back up….yes….it was that close. The speeding driver was less than 500 yards from a stop sign to turn left. Here is the kicker, I caught the driver texting.

I am sure virutally every cyclist has their “close calls” and likewise, drivers have their “annoying cyclist” stories. No matter what, ultimately the driver will always come out ahead as far as injury than the cyclist. As we are on the bike and are then thrown through the air by impact, we are seriously injured or we die. The driver on the other hand has damage to the car yet they walk away unharmed.

The next time you are driving, think about turning off that cell phone or place it in the glove compartment. When you are driving, your job is to safely operate a vehicle….do your job! I absolutely refuse to answer my phone while driving as I absolutely refuse to be the cause of inflicting harm to someone on the road. Do you think you could refuse as well?

Talk to ya next week!

Janet