But I feel the same...

As there are epic rides for people, this is an epic post in my opinion. Not epic to you because you should be awed and amazed by something I did, but epic to me because some big changes happened in my life yesterday. Some people may not think them to be big changes, and others may take them as huge. You be the judge on the level of “epic-ness”. I’ll start with bike related and then to family related.



So yesterday I got an email. It was one I had been waiting for, and had gotten a little worried I may not get it. The email in question was my confirmation email saying I was approved to move up to category 2. I would say that on a 1-10 level on the epic scale, this is a 6-7 for me. It’s a huge step for me to finally be restricted to only racing pro,1,2 races, but still not as epic as actually becoming a pro. I realize that from a cat 3’s racing standpoint, moving up to 2 is quite huge. Here’s a quick school lesson for the friends and family that read and don’t know. When you start racing a bicycle, you are a cat 5. This is better known as a crash 5, due to the lack of bike handling skills, although I’ve seen just as many crashes in the 3’s as in the 4/5’s. Then you move up to the cat 4’s, which to me is known as no man’s land. I was a cat 4 from March of last year to March of this year. I call it this because you usually get little to no payout in races, and it’s actually quite hard to move up due to it usually being the guys that are ready to go cat 3 that break away and win. Next is the cat 3’s, which I was from April to September this season. The 3’s are much more tactic’s-centered, and the strongest doesn’t always win. The payout is decent to good in the 3’s, and there are a lot of “career 3’s” that race there and stay there. It’s not that they don’t do well, it’s just that they don’t want to race pro,1,2. That pretty much covers me up until right now, which is the cat 2’s. Moving up to 2 isn’t like going 4-3. Moving up to 2 is going 3-2-1-pro all at once. I will now race with guys from teams like Columbia, Rock Racing, Healthnet, Toyota United, Jittery Joe’s, ect… I don’t have much else to say about this as I think it is pretty self descriptive on it’s own. This is a big move for me.



Okay, so the last being about a 6.5 on the epic scale makes this one seem huge, because I’m going with a 11 on the epic scale. So last night my brother called my parent’s house. That’s right, I said my brother. I’m 24 years old and have known since I was little that I might have a brother somewhere, but my father never pursued it because the woman that had the boy was unfaithful and told my dad the child wasn’t his. I guess in the back of your mind there’s always a “what-if” scenario playing making you wonder if you really do have the “Montel Show” “Long Lost Brother” episode going on. So anyways, he called and apparently we’re eating dinner with him, his wife, and their two little girls Saturday. For the family members reading this with jaws dropped, don’t feel left out because you didn’t know. My mom didn’t call me until pretty late to talk about it. I have since seen pictures of my “brother”, and will admit that he reminds me of my dad a bit. I had quite a bit of things to say about my other event, but this one has just literally left me almost speechless. I mean, I know it may be rude, but half of me is like “Why now?”. The guy is almost 28 years old and just now wants to meet my dad? The other half is thinking “Wow, I have a brother maybe. This could be cool”. The other half (wait, that makes 1.5) is just straight up confused and doesn’t know what to think. Regardless, there’s my epic events of the hour.