Everybody thinks, sometimes I think about thinking and wonder if the things I'm thinking about are the same things that others are thinking. I wonder if I've maybe just spent to much time thinking.
I've spent my evenings at the edge of my recliner, waiting and wishing that my countrymen and weman will bring home the coveted medallion. That weak will prefail, the underdog will get his day.
I along with you have watched as the rewards have gone to the deserving. It's been interesting to watch as the telecommunications professionals ramble about the strengths and weaknesses of the athletes.
People that have given their body and soul to the dedication of perfecting a craft. People that are willing to lay their blood on the line for country and honor.
Willing to fight though the pain to be honored the opportunity to kneel down and receive a metal that costs more to earn then it does to own.
I watch as fat men in sport coats and weman in designer ware tell us how and where their routine failed, where they tripped up and what they should have done to prevent it. I've watched as they've made a mountain out of a uncontrollable mistake, watched as they've passed down a verbal judgement, "though shalt not mistake","though shalt not be blinded by drive". I sat in auhw as announcers explained what greatness of a failure had been brought upon a country because a woman's bmx cyclists had fallen. Fallen, that is all.
I raced bmx, alot, for quite awhile, and then I didn't, that fire doesn't leave you. Then I did again, 15 years after I had stopped I started again.
It was the same, coals and embers always lingered, lingered until the gate falls. And when that happens the mind disappears into nothingness. You see nothing, feel nothing, you smell only fear and taste only iron.
You don't see the mistake when it's coming, you are simply the wolf on the tail of the rabbit. Blind and blissful to the world around you. Tasting and longing for only the hunt, the art and the craft of the quest.
The Pearl waits for the artists to rise, the craftsman to create, she waits for the process to unfold.
The craft may not all days be rubber and steel, methanol and lateral G's. The craft is the fire that drives us to our end goal.
Not everyone deserves a medal, but the Pearl will raise her sails to everyone that fought it out until the end and left everything on the battlefield.
To that we salute you!
