The Fault in Our Stars
Life was perfect in 2021, I cycled more than 8000 km, made a lot of good friends, and some friendships blossomed beyond what I dreamt. One of my friends even went to the UK. It was an exciting year with many memories to cherish for a lifetime.
I learned how to run a company, I created many processes and systems from scratch and saw our baby United By Cycling reaching many heights. It was great to be part of a diverse team and work towards a goal. Cycling is of course is what gets me going, we saw a lot of riders coming to the beginner's ride and participating in BRM rides and achieving the Super Randonneur Status.
The new SR season started in November 2021 and I decided to give it one more go and except for BRM 600, we were able to complete all three BRMs required to attain the SR title.
Here’s a little bit of a flashback, in 2017, I was diagnosed with Ulcerative Colitis, an inflammatory bowel disease that affects the large intestine. Although things were fine until December 2021, the symptoms were back towards the end of the year. I have been consulting Philip Augustine since 2018 and I decided to consult him again.
I was asked to undergo colonoscopy at the beginning of the year once again to check whether the inflammations are back and to my utter dismay, my greatest fear came true, two and a half years of remission slipped into relapse. In a matter of a few days, I had to take tough decisions. I decided to take a break from cycling as advised by the doctors and move out of Cochin back to Kottayam where my parents live. It is important to have home-cooked food along with tons of medicines for recovery.
So today, here I am writing this story from Kottayam, I will be mostly working from home for United By Cycling and looking for more job opportunities. It wasn’t the easiest of the decision to make, but sometimes one needs to be courageous enough to leave behind your friends, passion, and basically your entire life to fix the fault in our stars.
