5 Years

Today, I am the sum total.

I am the sum total of the trillion of cells in my body that work in beautiful harmony to enable my body to perform incredible feats. I just got off of another 5.5 hour, 82 mile, anything-but-flat ride to Point Reyes Station with some team mates. Today's ride was one of celebration, smiles, and gratitude. Today marks the 5 year anniversary of my close brush with death, and in a way, is kind of a re-birthday. I mostly rode quietly at the back, taking in the bubbling hills of Marin county, the sheer sand-colored rock faces, the electric blue sky spilling over the picturesque California coast. I rode today with a smile and a thankfulness to be able to trudge up the boundless mountains north of San Francisco. Today I could close my eyes and taste the effort it took to walk my first steps in the hospital. I thanked my legs for every revolution they turned, every switchback I cornered, every foot we ascended. When I start to suffer on the bike, I often grope in the dark deep of myself, looking for something, anything to get me over the next hill. Our subconscious is a mysterious place and some people spend their entire lives trying to find what they're made of. Today, I found an incredible mosaic when I looked within.

I am the sum total of the sacrifices and support that hundreds, if not thousands of people have donated on my behalf. Even if hindsight is 20-20, I still rub my eyes in disbelief at how perfectly things worked out. I had access to some of the nation's best facilities, medical minds, nutritionists, teachers, and specialists to give me the tools to piece myself back together after my fall. It's been an incredible experience to unknowingly be a conduit that brings out the best in the people around me and I've seen that my family and friends are capable of superhuman feats. I hope that my experience taught the people around me as much about themselves and their strengths as I learned about myself and mine. As I nod to the incredible amounts of fortune, good luck, and opportunity that's been dropped neatly in my lap, I feel a desire and moral obligation to pay it forward with interest.

I am the sum total of my accomplishments, my failures, my disposition, my outlooks. I hope that I can go on to create opportunities for people in the same way that I've been renewed my lease on life. To reference my Power of Sound theory, I hope that I can help people find the music within themselves, and hear their harmony of their own strengths.

To everyone that's ever taken the time to get involved in the Life of Gavin Shelton, today's for you.

How does that sound?

As we rolled into Nicasio, CA, this little outpost dropped in the middle of nowhere that serves as a pit stop/ bathroom stop/ and food stop for passing cyclists, I looked down at my cyclocomputer and noticed something that made me smile and shake my head. My life plays out like a movie sometimes and as we climbed off out bikes for a rest stop, my odometer just rolled over the 5000 mile mark. 5 years? 5000 miles? I couldn't have written a better script myself.