A big wheel with plastic tires on a hill in the rain.

Life is full of metaphors. Sometimes they're right in front of you. Sometimes they're obvious. Sometimes they take a week or two to hit you.

Sometimes you're sitting right on them.

Lately, life is a big wheel with plastic tires on an asphalt hill in the rain.

I have to go back about three weeks for this to start to make sense. This was the time Stacie and I purchased a couple of Trek Hybrid bicycles. We decided in Ft. Lauderdale that we liked to ride and that we could get into that as something we could do together for fun and exercise. While searching for the bikes online I noticed an ad on Richardson Bike Mart's website for an Urban Assault Race.

It caught my eye, and though I knew there was no way we'd be ready to race in the short two weeks remaining until this race I wanted to check it out. It looked awesome.

Basically there are 6 checkpoints in the Dallas area that they give you. The other 3 are secret checkpoints that you have to figure out based on clues, the first of which is given the week before the race. You race in two person teams to the checkpoints in any order, but you have to get a bead from every checkpoint saying that you were there and that you completed the obstacle at the checkpoint.

At this point I was sucked in...we had to do this. It sounded too fun to pass up. The estimated mileage for the race is 25-30 miles. No problem, I think. If we can ride around White Rock Lake (approx. 9 miles) about three times by the time the race arrives, we're golden.

Well, I entered us in the race. We got our bikes, helmets, flat fixing equipment, water bottles, etc. Took a class to learn how to fix our flats along with some common safety tips. We're rockin' and rollin' at this point. We even rode the bikes a couple of times (we didn't quite reach the goal of 3 complete times around White Rock, but whatcha gonna do..?)

I start checking the weather about 4 days prior to race day and it doesn't look good. It looks rainy. At first this disappoints me, but then I realize it may actually be to our advantage...you see, when I entered the race it was, "Let's do it Stace. It'll be fun. Who cares if we win, let's just have fun and finish." Well, she cared. My wife wanted to win. And by this point she had convinced me that if our strategy was spot on, we could win this sucker. So, fun and finishing went out the window, naturally to be replaced by fun through winning.

Come race day, I was nervous. I mean, it had been a while since I had been in real competition. It felt like a Friday night, many, many moons ago. Right before walking out the field house door down to the sign with the velcro gash in the middle that my teammates and I were about to demolish. It felt good. And to be extra dorky, I even had trouble sleeping the night before.

Once we get to the race site, Stacie and I start sizing up the competition. We only have to be better than the other co-ed teams. Aside from a couple of teams, I feel extremely confident in our chances based on my snap judgements. And just as I expected, right before the start it begins to rain. Pretty consistently.

The powers that be decide to go ahead as planned. It's just rain. No thunder. No lightning. Unless you count my left and right quads, flexed and ready to barrel out of the gate...

Anywho. The air horn sounds and off we go. Our strategy was to head to to the western most checkpoint first because we were fairly confident with our knowledge of Dallas that the two mystery checkpoints we had yet to uncover would be back towards the starting line. We make our way to Chipotle on Lemmon Ave. At this checkpoint, we have to walk on plastic stilts a certain distance to receive our bead. Plastic stilts in the rain...tricky, but manageable. We get our bead and head to our next stop, Subaru of Dallas.

We weren't allowed to ride on Lemmon Avenue so I had mapped a route that kept us on a road one off of Lemmon. What I hadn't accounted for was the big wall that they conveniently don't show on the map that blocked pretty much all the streets in my planned route. Finally, after 5 or 6 lost minutes we decided that the sidewalk on Lemmon is not technically Lemmon.

At the Subaru dealership is where our metaphor is found. I wouldn't realize it until days later, probably because I was embarrassed and pissed off. Pissed off at the big wheel. Embarrassed at the shouts of encouragement and advice through laughter.

You see, in my haste, I apparently picked the smallest big wheel. Which, just because it has one wheel larger than the other two does not make that wheel "big". You had to stay on the big wheel with your feet on the pedals for your lap to count. I started out fine. Straight for about 10 yards. Then left down a hill. You see, at this point I should have realized that if you're riding in a circle and you go down a hill, you have to go back up at some point. Nope. Just thinkin' about finishing and how awkward and uncomfortable a big wheel is.

Straightaway. Left turn. Straightaway. Left turn. Straigtaway...Oh crap. Hill. Okay. Get some speed. Thunder and Lightning mustered as much speed as they could to prep for this hill. This asphalt covered hill. This slick, rain-soaked, asphalt covered, unsurmountable, might-as-well-be-made-of-ice hill. I made it about 5 feet from the finish line when my feet let me down. As the plastic tires spun out on the slick surface, my feet slipped off the wet pedals. And down the hill I went.

I backed up, got some speed and tried again. Same result.

Three more times I attacked. Three more times my assault was denied. Laughter. Advice. Encouragement. More laughter. Camera flashes. More laughter.

Finally, I see my escape. If I can make it up the hill just a few feet, I can bail off the asphalt and onto a grass and dirt covered knoll. It's my only hope. Sure it's out of bounds, but if they don't give me the damn bead because of that, I might make sure they're riding this big wheel permanently, if you follow.

I gather my speed. I tell my feet not to fail me now. I hit the apshalt, I climb to the edge of the knoll and make my way onto it. Just a few more feet...tires spinning out...feet holding on...the nose of the tire just inches past the plane of the cones. Count it. Let's get outta here...

And that is like life. A big wheel with plastic tires on a hill in the rain. It is for me anyway right now, but maybe it's time to look for my grass and dirt covered knoll. If you know what I'm talking about, you know. If you don't that's cool...you can probably find some metaphorical genius of your own in there somewhere.

Back on the race route, Stacie and I know we have to make up some time since I have cost us several minutes now. If you're keeping score at home that's: Lost Time for Ty: Getting Lost 5 min, Big Wheel Mess: 8 min. Lost Time for Stacie: None.)

Stacie knows uptown very well and maneuvers us down to Dick's Last Resort, the first mystery check point. We get our bead and the clue to the second mystery point which we immediately recognize as a mural in downtown. As we head to this mural the skies open up. It's raining buckets. Thunder and lightning are frequent (not my quads this time, the actual thunder and lightning.) We get our bead from the second mystery checkpoint and the clue to the third. This clue was not as obvious to us so we head to Fountain Place to get out of the rain and make a couple of phone calls to figure it out. We finally decide it is either close to West Village (which is where we started and where we'll end) or the Arboretum (which we have to go by on our way to another checkpoint.) So we begin to head through downtown to White Rock Lake to hit the next checkpoints.

I'll spare you the details but if you're keeping score at home: Lost Time for Ty: Getting Lost 5 min, Big Wheel Mess: 8 min., Getting Lost Again: 6 min. Lost Time for Stacie: None.)

Once we get onto La Vista Drive, I know exactly how to get to our next checkpoint. We are making some really good time. The rain has slowed down which is good (turns out, rain's probably not so much of an advantage for us) when we hear someone call out to us. And then they say, "The race is cancelled!"

We pull in and find out that proabaly 20 minutes ago when we were lost in downtown someone sent out the notice. Disappointed, we all return to the starting point to eat some free food and hopefully win some door prizes.

Well, we ate free food, but we won no door prizes. We did have a really good time though. And we were chock full of awesome the way we rode around Dallas in a downpour. We probably rode a total of 20 miles.

And if you ask me, I'll tell you we were winning. And would have won. Everybody else was just glad it got cancelled. Or something like that.