One year ago this morning

I was having the ride of my life. In front of me was Mike, our CFO. Behind me, Robert another coworker/teammate. We we doing about 24, wind swirling around us, hitting us from all directions. It was the worst morning I'd ever ridden in, but it was most together I'd felt since I'd taken up cycling 10 months before. The sky was dark gray. Clouds overhead were bombing us with tiny droplets of water. There was no sun, but I was wearing my dark cycling glasses to keep my eyes from getting wet. Water was spraying up from behind the bicycles. It was chaos, but thrilling, good, powerful chaos.

After a month of slacking off after the MS ride, I had read a book about European bike racing that had totally re-invigorated my enthusiasm for riding. I had read Lance's training manual cover to cover. I had learned about your different energy systems and how to train them. I had changed my diet, and begun doing longer rides during the week. Before May, my greatest week had been 120 miles total. I was now topping 180.

We were dropping Robert. He was slowly falling off the pace, and we slowed down a little to let him catch back up. We were now about 5 miles from where we had parked. We had decided to meet that morning across the intracoastal from the beach. There was a parking lot just over the bridge, and it was a good central location for all of us. We had gone about 35 miles so far, up and back on A1A, the road that parallels the beach.

Robert was lost. There is a point in every group ride where if you can't keep up you get dropped. It was nothing personal and he knew it. Mike and I had to press on, and we did, committing ourselves completely to the wind and rain. All of my training was coming together. We made a right on Commercial and as we headed towards the bridge and our cars, we pushed ever further. We attacked the bridge, pushing up the incline, our bikes side by side, water falling, water flying, and everything around us a blur. We hit the metal grating going 22, intercoastal water visible 20 feet beneath. We were flying.

It would be the last thing I would remember.

I had never really played sports in high school. I loved soccer, and played when I lived in France, but it was too much of a culture shock when I got back. Sports here were so tied up with friends, and dads and sons and weekends. So I never really got into it. I was skinny, uncoordinated and content to read and watch movies in my room. In college it didn't really matter, and when I started working, I was a dark creative guy. I drank coffee in the morning and wine at night, smoked cigarettes and listened to imported CD's. There was no place for sports in my life. However... I'm competitive. When I took up cycling, I realized I was really good at it. The fact that I wasn't a lumberjack made me very light and very fast. I could compete with my friends. And with myself. It was a good outlet for a lot of things, and it was making me so much healthier as a person, both physically and mentally. But not that morning. I just didn't know it yet.

I was dreaming, so peacefully, about riding, about people, about my cat. I had gone to bed the night before, and it was so warm in bed. Why would I ever...

"Stay still!" Mike was over me. Then another head. And another. "You're going to be okay."

Where was I? Mike? I'd been riding? I tried pushing through the cobwebs some more, but no luck. I couldn't understand how I had made it out of bed and onto my bike. I didn't feel okay. There were paramedics. There was a towel around my face, and they were putting some sort of brace around my neck. Even though my brain didn't understand what was going on, my body knew.

As the paramedics were putting me on a stretcher, all I could think was, "I know I'm going to be okay. God has so many more
plans for me." I was quite positive about that. I loved God. I loved my paramedics. They were so wonderful...I had so much love...

"Slow down!" one of the paramedics yelled at the driver. "We're not in a hurry" That was promising, I thought. At the hospital, they scanned me, xrayed, me and finally sowed me up. My cousin Michelle was only family member in town that morning, and she held my hand through the entire thing. There were others that gave me a tremendous amount of support... if I had seen me in the condition I was in that morning, I don't know that I would have been able to be so positive as Michelle and Linda and Mike and Brad and Cliff.

I had lost traction on the metal part of the bridge and gone down, sliding over it on my right side. I had pretty deep wounds
to my knee, my hip, my shoulder, my right palm, my right cheek, my right chin and jaw, and my left upper lip, with a side of
road rash. Both knees were badly hurt, but the right was much worse than the left. I was very very lucky. No broken bones, no neck problems, head totally okay. Thank God for helmets.

All in all it was a rookie mistake. One of the first things you learn is that wet metal and half-inch tires don't go very well together. But there are always circumstances that can lead to dumb mistakes.

I spent three days in the hospital, and three weeks with family, leg in a brace, nursing my way back to health. My Dad came and watched over me for a week, and my mom did the same. When the hurricane hit, we went to LA, and spent the remaining week and a half there. All I could think about the whole time was how long it would take to get back on the bike. Estimates varied. Two to four months they had said, from the time of the accident.

It would be seven weeks.

After three weeks of rehab and four weeks of rehab, I got back on the bike. I was surprised to find that the rehab had made me stronger. I continued to go to the gym, bought a new bike, and started to train again. It was very good to be back.

You know sometimes you wonder to yourself, do I really make a difference in this world? Does what I do really matter? I cannot tell you how many people came to visit me in the hospital. Or called. Or sent flowers. My church prayed for me. My parents' church in LA prayed with them on my behalf. My co-workers came to visit. The president of the agency (and cycling team leader) called and yelled at me for being so irresponsible. (In a nice way.) People I hadn't spoken to in years were calling me.

I realized something very important that day. One, that cycling was a part of me and nothing could stop me from getting back on the bike. And two, that I had so much more of an effect on the people around me than I realized. It was a huge lesson. Not so much an awakening, but a reminder that no matter who you are or what you do, you can have a profound effect on people's lives, sometimes without even knowing it.

Thanks to everyone that had such a profound effect on me that morning and the weeks after. My family, my church and my Z teammates and co-workers. I'll never forget the extraordinary things that each of them did for me. There was so much love during that time, and it really made some of my relationships a lot stronger. People can't understand when I say that the whole experience was a positive one for me, but it's so true. So many good things came out of it, and I'm really glad it happened. Much love... Matt