3 elusive cats, finally found...

Monday morning at 6:55 a.m. with tired eyes and strained consciousness I roll over, sit up and open up the laptop. It had been another long weekend, topped off with falling asleep on the couch...again. Lovely. I check my emails, check the weather, log onto Face Book and contemplate posting something silly and witty, with just the right amount of cynicism/sarcasm about my weekend, but reconsider, and refrain. I log onto my Twitter and hold the same internal debate about posting...I'm tired. I'm drained. I need coffee, but don't feel like making any.




Sunday morning started insanely early. Up at 4 a.m. Shower, wake up AJ, make coffee, load the car, wake up Dawn and roll out for Chico. Again, we're running late. I mean really!?! Waking up at 4 a.m. and still running late!?! Gimme a break! The Jr's race starts at 7 a.m.!?! C'mon! Gimme a EFING BREAK! Luckily, AJ's not signed up for it. But, we are trying to get him there in time to do the E4/5's which is the very next race that starts at 7:40 so we're pushing it. Hopefully they're running late.

I'd sent in his CAT3 upgrade request first thing Monday morning following the Folsom Cyclebration weekend and hadn't heard anything yet. According to everyone I'd spoken to, including my own experience, I should have heard back by now. It was Thursday. There were a few Jr's races where they'd raced the 15/16 together with the 17/18's but scored them separately. I'd combined the fields when sending in his upgrade giving him the best chance at earning the most points. If they were going to be fickle about it, then AJ only had around 18 of the required 20 points. If not, then he was sitting on around 23. Being that I hadn't heard anything, I decided to go ahead and sign us up for the Chico Downtown Crit. The last race of the season and the last chance at earning upgrade points. I went ahead and registered both of us for the E3/4's because if he didn't get it, I'd be able to race with him and hopefully have the opportunity to lead him out for a podium finish or at least a top 5. Since I was there anyway, I also reg'd for the 35+123's. It would be a perfect encore performance for me. Knowing that I didn't have any teammates heading up, it would also afford me the rare opportunity to race for myself as well.

We roll into Chico at around 7:25 after I'd taken the long, short cut by driving in to Sac from Davis, only to then take I-5 up through Woodland. "I know where I'm going!" "Ieeeeee know where I'm going!" Duh! We park, take AJ's bike down, Cody's there and helps air his tires up, and we make a mad dash to registration to find that they are in fact running late, about 15 min late. Whew! We get AJ rag'd, pin his # on, and send him off to get in a warmup. Neither of us had done the race before so there was a bit of added nervousness to it. I run back to the car, grab his spare wheels and get them over to the pit. I hate signing him up for any 4/5 races due to the fact that there's always a bunch of newbies that just don't have a clue yet pulling stupid moves. Not their fault, we've all been there before, but it's just a little different when you've got to sit on the sidelines watch your son have to deal with these idiots.

3 laps to go. I'm sitting in between turns 2 and 3 as they round the corner. AJ's sitting around 15th wheel or so. I yell out for him to move up and before hitting the corner for turn 3 he jumps up about 5 wheels. Looking across the park I could see him coming through the Start/Finish sitting around 8th wheel. Good, but bad in that the group is all together. Not a good thing in a 4/5 race. I hear a "BANG!" echoing off the buildings and through the streets. I ghasp. Holding my breath I watch as rider after rider rounds the corner of turn 2...but no AJ. "F&#%!"... "F&#%!" I'm yelling as I run full speed up and around the corner to turn 1. Rounding the corner, I hear, "Medic!" "Medic!" The shock of a full on Cortisol dump hits my body as I look up to see my son sprawled out across the sidewalk.

I've had my EMT-1A certification, I've done ambulance ride along's, and I've done ER internships, not to mention being raised by a cop, so I understand the importance of keeping a level head and emotions in check. But when you're standing there, looking down at your child who's writhing in pain, bleeding from several locations, and may have serious, even life threatening injuries, for me at least, it's one of the hardest things I've ever tried to do. I've never really been good at it. Even when he was little, I'd get so upset.

I run up, and right off I notice that his helmet is securely fashioned to his noggin and is in place. I exhale. I put one hand on his chest, the other on his knee and ask if he's O.K. Before I could tell him not to, he yanks off his helmet and sits up. I give him a quick once over as I grab his helmet and closely inspect it. Not a scratch on it. Cool. He's complaining about his lower back. I pull up his jersey and see that he's got a pretty nasty raspberry, but no deformity. I'm watching him breathe and listening intently. He tells me that some dumbass cut the corner and took out about 8 guys. I yell out as I'm glaring over at the other 6 or 7 guys laying in the gutter and on the sidewalk in pain, and bleeding, "When the F*** are you IDIOTS gonna learn not the cut the F****** corners!?!" They just look up at me and say nothing. Yeah, nice, just what they need right? Like I said, I've never been really good at reeling in the emotions when it come to my boy being injured. I immediately regret yelling at them and turn my attention back to AJ. I ask if he's hurting anywhere else. "My elbow." He's got a pretty good gash with a steady stream of dark Burgundy blood flowing out of it. "Anywhere else?" I ask. "No!" I start to breathe a little easier. Just then another rider pulls up and says he saw the whole thing and that he was a medic. He'd pulled out of the race just to lend a hand. I think he was either a Sierra Nevada guy or a Chico Velo. I'll know him when I see him for sure and will do my best to help him out in any way I can in the future. He starts to give AJ a full assessment. An ambulance rolls up and the medic takes over. I watch as AJ responds to all the questions and seems to be doing fine. They patch up his elbow and turn their attention to the other riders. The organizers don't have any medical personnel what so ever. These guys were just eating breakfast and heard the accident and immediately responded without being called. Awesome!

We get him up and on his feet. Cody and Dale are there, along with Freddy and Dawn. I'm holding his bike as we're checking it out trying to make sure it'll at least roll. Busted handlebars, both wheels are bent, and just when Freddy says, "Lets get him on it and just roll him back to the car," Cody looks down at the chainstays and says, "Whoa, what's that!?" I look down and can see that the frame is broken right at both chainstays...damn! AJ completely deflates and almost looses it. "It's alright!" I say. "Don't worry about it!" "It'll be just fine!" "The good thing is is that you're O.K...it's just a bike!" It takes me all of about .30 seconds to realize that our day is done. We get back to the car AJ sits on the back of the car, looks up at me and says, "Dad, you should still race." Dawn agrees and I start to entertain the thought. But quickly snap out of it. "The only reason we're here is so that you can earn enough points for your upgrade bud." I say. "That's the only reason I even registered." "No, forget it...we're done." There's no way I could let AJ sit on the side of the road, all banged up, being forced to watch as his Dad races his bike. Having to explain what happened a hundred times over to concerned people wondering why he wasn't racing. Having to dwell on the fact that his frame was broken, that he wasn't able to get his CAT3 upgrade before the end of the season...I don't think so.

We roll over to Riteaid, spend $50 on first aid supplies and head to the park so that we can properly patch my boy up. Bandaid has this wonderful new antiseptic wash that has Lidocaine in it. The gash on his elbow is fairly deep and I've got to look and make sure there's no debris in it. The wash has a little hole in it which allows you to irrigate wounds really well. I squeeze and proceed to deep clean the cut. It's pretty deep. It might need a few stitches. I finish cleaning and patching him up and we hit the road. I call JB who lives in Yuba City to say hey and tell him what had happened. Without skipping a beat he asks, "How tall is AJ?" "6' 2"" I reply. "Me too!" He says. "AJ can use my Orbea that's just been hanging in my garage." Sweet! Man...we've had the good fortune to come to know some pretty wonderful people in the past few years, and J and Diane are two of them.

We're just about home and I look back and ask AJ, "How would it have felt, sitting there, watching from the side of the road as your Dad raced his bike?" He sat there for a few seconds looking out the window, turned to me and said, "It would have sucked Dad."

So, I'm sitting there, first thing in the morning, the sun wasn't even up yet, blinking, trying to open my eyes and up pops this little email;

Your upgrade request has been approved and the USCF database has been updated to reflect you are now a Cat 3 on the road. Since the road season is almost over and I will not send you an upgrade sticker but when you go to renew your license it will show you as a Cat 3 on the road. If you will be racing again this season you can use a copy of this message as proof of your category

Casey

Sweet.....but a little bitter too...if we could have only got it a day sooner...oh well...he's got it...finally, and I'm proud of my boy.

Thanks for reading.