Not That I Recommend Everyone Retires Immediately, But...

Cycling is a sport based on rote repetition. Pedal stroke after pedal stroke, hour after hour, day after day, year after year, a career in the sport of cycling isn't a mistake or coincidence. Rather it's the result of stoic patience and a tireless discipline. The mere definition of the word "cycle", unrelated to the two-wheeled sport, drives that point home: a series of events that are regularly repeated in the same order.Cycling is as rhythmic as it is mechanical. A watch, with its circular face and repetitive mechanism, shares similarities to the bicycle. On the bike, the crank arms turn over, driving the chain to the circular cog-set, turning the wheels, thereby propelling the bike down the road. I'm no watchsmith, but a battery powers an initial watch cog, which turns another cog and then to another, which turns the second hand, which turns the minute hand, which turns the hour hand. Voila, you know what time it is.Somewhere over time, it became the norm for a retiree to bid farewell to his or her company and earn a gold watch as a retirement gift. The assumption being, "You gave us your time, now we are giving you ours". Poetic. But this day in age, people keep track of time with their telephones. So with my ten year professional cycling career coming to a close, and with the final five of those years happily and proudly riding aboard a Cannondale, it's only fitting that the fine people of Cannondale bid me a much more functional and exciting retirement gift in the form of a gold bike.The timing was perfect as I  was completely taken by surprise. We were literally just seconds before starting the fifth annual Krempels King of the Road Challenge, I had just finished offering my welcoming words and gracious thanks to the hundreds of riders, families, and supporters, then as we lined up for the 9am send-off, my good friends from Cannondale took the mic and made a this surprise presentation. It was pretty incredible timing as if I were walking into a surprise birthday party bash. In a word: awesome.I admit, I had to research why the gold watch became the go-to retirement gift and had to laugh that the majority of the resulting Google articles are titled with something to the effect of Gold Retirement Watches Go the Direction of the DoDo Bird -- i.e. towards extinction!Anyway, the gold is self explanatory, but the blue on this beautiful steed has a little history also. In the early 2000s, my brother Robbie got me into this zany sport of cycling and just as younger brothers do, I started following in his footsteps and ultimately inherited Robbie's hand-me-down Cannondale R500... which is this exact blue. So with an evolution spanning from the back of the bike to the front, from a 15 year old blue Cannondale on into my golden years of the future, this bike is perfect. It even has my name on it.Also of note, the painter, Death Spray Custom, is the same artist who painted our 2014 Tour de France bikes.Even though I'm entering retirement, I'm not leaving this sport just yet! I just won't have a number on my back and won't be found racing. So keep your eyes peeled for the flashiest Cannondale this side of the Pacific, and thank you THANK YOU to Cannondale for this sweet new whip!