The car comes out of nowhere. They have a habit of doing that. It could be any color, any car, any size. It doesn't matter and I won't remember anyway. I am slipping down a familiar descent when it appears in my lane. I'm probably thinking of something else.

It's warm: 75 degrees. I've already been riding hard for 2.5 hours and I've just completed an effort. I have an hour or so to go today. I'm happy and a little cashed as I navigate a lefthand curve. I'm safely towards the outside of my lane, but the car has gone wide. 

So there it is. In the space that I should be taking up in just a matter of milliseconds. 

This moment is a special one: terrifying and clarifying. There are no sequential thoughts. No rational progression of planning and then actualizing a plan. Whatever happens happens and was always going to happen. Your reactions are tiny things that have been waiting in your muscles for years. They fire despite your brain and the scene unfolds. You get to be a spectator in your own life-or-death moment.

Instead of assisting, which my brain cannot do, it suddenly fills with 5,000 simultaneous thoughts, which is as impressive as it is unhelpful. The sheer volume of memory and reflection that occurs in that single fragment of time is so essentially overwhelming as to be distracting. While my body saves or sacrifices me with its reaction, I get to experience a indescribable confluence of everything all at once. 

The most trivial things always seem to rise to the top. In this case, I consider the fact that I am just about to smash the $10,000 Pinarello Dogma2 that I am borrowing to bits. In three days I'm meant to meet and interview Fausto Pinarello himself but instead they will be delivering him the shattered remnants of a carbon bicycle with a small note that says, "She was learning to ride downhill very fast. She loved the bike. She wanted to tell you that her first road bike was a 1999 Surprise. She thanks you."

All of this goes through my head. And then the more important thoughts rush in, pressed against each other tightly in the crush for my attention:

I will never ride the tour.

How will they know who to call when they drag me up the hillside?

Who will make the phone call to Sal?

No, I won't die. It looks like I'll go down over the front to the left.

Shit, I already separated that shoulder.

I'm a collection of bones and skin. 

Sal is going to be so angry with me.

I should bring my mother to Tuscany.

I'm going to ruin this bike.

What was the name of that wine I had last night?

I will never ride the tour. 

Perhaps its best I die in the saddle.

I hate that car. I hate that fucking car. 

I'm not going to ride the Tour.

I'm not going to ride the Tour.

It's all so trivial and important at the same time. Life is comprised of all these little things: important and unimportant. What was clear to me as I held my breath waiting to see if I was going to live was this: 

The Tour is important.

The Tour is not important.

People (and possibly me) have referred to this adventure as the fulfillment of a lifelong dream, but is it really? I'll admit I didn't spend much of the past 34 years dreaming of riding 2100 miles in three weeks. The idea came up and wrestled me to the ground. I didn't have a lot of choice. My spirit tends to be a little impulsive: it rarely pays attention to my brain.

This project is absolutely taking over my life. It is affecting my relationships and leading me to meet people that I otherwise would not have met. It is stealing me away from home, putting a pinch on finances, creating stress with clients and challenging my ability to keep my shit pulled together. I think about it all the time, all day long. I've become so one dimensional, I'm nearly sick of myself.

And there in front of the car on the curve on a fast descent in Tuscany, the Tour dominated me again. Mixed in with wine and mom and regret and worry and the thought of breaking things that didn't belong to me. Important, but not important.

The car didn't hit me. Instead, my body steered the bike onto the rough shoulder within 3mm of slipping over the edge of the hillside. The car corrected. I corrected. When I came to a stop I was still upright, sideways on the road with one foot unclipped and a tire mark on the pavement behind me where I'd locked the rear brake in a fishtail after re-entering the roadway from the shoulder.

I checked my equipment and kept rolling. I ate a little food. I stopped for an espresso. 

At the coffee shop it started to sink in. I'm still alive. I'm going to go to France in July and ride bikes. Really, really far. Thank god I'm here unbroken. Thank god I'm not in pieces. And not just because of the Tour: it's important but not important.