5 years ago today a car a bicycle arrived at the same place at the same time. One of us kept going one of us didn't. For 32 years my bicycle wasn’t just something I rode she was another limb, carbon fiber as anatomy. Morning after morning I clipped in and headed out- sometimes chasing fitness, sometimes a finish line, but mostly the meditative rhythm of one more mile and then another. One hundred thousand give or take. CA's Hwy 1 Burlington to Quebec City atatewide rides charity rides triathlons half IM's headwinds tailwinds. Long conversations with no one except the road. What I miss isn’t only the bicycle, it’s the woman who disappeared into it. The one whose body knew what to do without her mind getting involved. That effortless conversation between body and bike. The all-encompassing flow. I’ve looked for that flow ever since. Everything else is a distant second. Now my body has its own metal. Not sleek or weightless like my bike frame. Heavy. Cumbersome. Required. Imperfect. I once moved with metal. Now I move because of it. The accident didn’t only break bones. It unearthed older fractures I’d spent years riding away from. Some required a surgeon. Some required a therapist. Some became photographs. Some became words. Some became dreams. I often wonder who I would be if that morning had unfolded like every other ride. Would I have built a photography business? Would writing have become its own way of making sense of the world? I’ll never know. What I do know is that grief and gratitude are woven together, stronger because of the other. Sometimes I dream I’m riding. No pain. No hesitation. No fear. Just breath and cadence and sky. Then I wake to this body, different but still carrying me. And I remember that not everything the accident took is lost. It left me with photography and customers. With words. With a life I never would have chosen, but one I have learned to appreciate and love. Just yesterday, driving home, I passed someone gliding down the very road where my path ended. Some part of me went with them.