On the Eve of the First Day

It was the middle of my Senior year of college, and like every other kid in my class, I was trying to think of something to do with my life after school. As the days passed, graduation seemed less and less like a celebration of achievement and more like a fast approaching cliff...

Instead of spending my efforts lining up job interviews, researching who was hiring, or practicing interview skills I chose to bury myself in a school project...perhaps "drown" is more apt than "bury". April came and my project wrapped up. With mere weeks left in school I didn't have much time to think about, let alone prepare for, life afterwards.

My grand plan for the first year after school involved making ends meet working at a bike shop while I schemed about developing my own line of carbon fiber bike parts. I considered applying for jobs at several bicycle manufacturers nation wide, but decided that the only two companies I would consider leaving Boulder for were Zipp in Indianapolis and Cervelo in Toronto. And so, as a proverbial fisherman, I exchanged the wide net for a harpoon, crossed my fingers, and heaved blindly towards the huge whale on the horizon.

Here I am, sitting on a blow-up mattress in an echoing one-bedroom apartment in Indianapolis. In 10 hours I'll walk into the Zipp office and start a career.