Story for Night Ride - Dura Ace cassette destroyed. How is this BS the best?!?!

[Dedicated to Erez Orbach, Shira Tzur, Shir Hajaj and Yael Yakutiel murdered by a terrorist in cold blood in the streets of Jerusalem.]
 

 

Wake up to the screaming of endless sirens. Must have been a terrorist attack. Check my phone, yup a terrorist attack, just up the road. Four dead and multiple injured. 

Don't care to read the details. Get up and check my bike for tonight's ride. I have a flat. Proceed to fix the flat and notice that there's no hole in the tire. Haven't had a flat in three months. Then the bike guy tells me the day before to raise my PSI from 90 to 100 and a day later I have a flat. 

Unless you ride at 3 AM, in all weather conditions, and know these roads as well as I do, you probably don't know what the right PSI for me is. Yet I listen to your advice? Feel like a stupid asshole.

Then I realize that all my valves are 60 mm and I need 80 mm for my new carbon wheels. That's it, I'm heading to the bike store. He can fix it for me.

Finally my bike is ready and out I go and it's so insanely cold and windy. Cars try to overtake me and I wave at them not to, fearing the wind will throw me into them. Constantly feeling like I'm not in control, but I am in control, most other cyclists would have crashed a few times by now. Every time there's a clearing of no trees, I know, I just know, I'm going to be tested and I brace for impact and bam the mofo wind slams into me with no mercy, as if literally trying to knock out all hope out of me. But I will not fall, I will not be oppressed, I will rise tall and strike with vegeance and the wind backs off and comes back again with greater force. Like a battering ram trying to breach the walls. The walls of my endless hope for a better world.

It's only been 20 kms but my legs ache as it's been 60 km. Garmin keeps yelling "Avg speed 13km!" "Well f$ck you, you piece of shit! You can't read this wind!" I'm taking such a beating. I think to myself there's just no refugee. Terrorists in the morning, impossible winds at night. What's the point. This just sucks. I can't get away from anything.

The wind and cold was such an issue that I didn't even notice the drizzle wetting the streets and I honestly didn't care. Rain used to be such an issue, ah, how I miss rain. Rain me a flood! Turn these streets into the Ganges and the Nile! Instead you turn them into blood of "kids" and walls of oppressive wind for what?

Dodging plastic bags, cardboard boxes and amputated road signs I'm in a warzone. Objects flying past me like projectiles that I can hear but not see.

"Crashing, hit a wall
Right now I need a miracle
Hurry up now, I need a miracle
Stranded, reaching out
I call your name but you're not around
I say your name but you're not around"

25 KM. I made it. 25 KM. I'm half way there. I can do this. I can beat this. And then bam, my Dura Ace casette number 4 just snaps. Apparently the wind couldn't take me out but my bike is out of commission. Can't get the rider, get his steed. Fucker got my steed.

Secretly I'm glad because I have no idea how I can bear another 25 km of this cold and wind but am also mad because this is my second Dura Ace cassette in six months to go and it's expensive. And while I can pay for it, I just don't want to. I'm sick of feeling like my bike's components can't handle what I put them through.

I swear that I will change sport. I'll become a runner. A swimmer. I'll become the best golfer. Anything! Lock my bike up in the bike room and yell at it "WTF?!?!" and head to bed on fire.

Wake up in the morning, head in silence to my bike room, grab my bike and head to my bike guy. "Install me a new Ultegra cassette. Dura Ace isn't strong enough for this climber. I know my mountains."

He agrees. 

"Look, there on the mountains, the feet of one who brings good news, who proclaims peace! Celebrate your festivals, Judah, and fulfill your vows. No more will the wicked invade you; they will be completely destroyed." - Nahum 1:15