Should Have Checked My Clock

This is a bit delayed, but I feel I need to tell this story.

I was planning a bike ride with The Firefighter on the morning of July 26th. I went to bed the night before already having prepped for the next day's ride. I had pumped up the bike tires, made my Gatorade, filled up water bottles, charged my watch, and I had gone to bed around 10:30 with my alarm set for 4:00 a.m.

My alarm sounded, buzzing at an insane volume, and I was up. I was not fully awake yet (which is about to be painfully obvious), but I was up and out of bed. I put in my contacts, brushed my teeth, and made my way downstairs in my bike gear. I ate my breakfast, drank a cup of coffee, and took my vitamins while sitting in front of my computer. This entire time, the sun should have been starting to rise, and the pitch-black sky should have been transitioning towards a light gray color. It was early though and the coffee wasn't working yet, and I didn't really know when the sun was supposed to come up, so I just thought I'd have longer then expected to get ready. I got a call from mother nature, answered it, and read a nice article in Forbes Magazine about the current state of Detroit. The sun still wasn't coming up...odd, though it was still too early to really care. I decided to watch some television, so I turned on NFL Network to hear more about the upcoming free agency. Ten minutes later, it was pretty boring, and I decided to check the channel guide on Direct TV to find something else. About that time, something really odd happened. If it was five in the morning, then why is the guide on television showing shows from one in the morning? After a little more investigating, I realized: Oh wait, that's because it is 1:15 a.m.

This is the part of the morning where I checked my phone, and no, the alarm hadn't gone off yet. I went upstairs and told my wife, who groggily said that she wondered what I was doing down there. I didn't have a good answer, and I was then met with laughter from my wife over how ridiculous I looked standing in my bike gear in the middle of the night having just drank a cup of caffeine and eaten a bowl of cereal. I tried to get some sleep before the real ride, but I couldn't sleep well. I called The Firefighter at 4:00 a.m. to call off my part in this ride, knowing that a few hours of sleep would mean a rough day. I also just wrote about getting enough rest just a few weeks ago. I still got up with my wife at 6:45 a.m. for breakfast, and she asked if I was hungry to eat...to which I answered, "No, I already ate this morning," even though it was around midnight. The only positive lesson I can pass on from this experience is: you might actually want to look at your clock when the alarm goes off. You don't have to be awake, but you do have to make sure it is actually time to get out of bed.