The bicycle is a vehicle for life and a microcosm for the importance of timing. Brad Kaminski/VeloNews

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. -- I could see the sun bouncing off the windshield, could see the car moving into the space I was to inhabit in a tenth of a second. And then, I could see nothing but the ground, a white top tube, and a very boorish shade of beige.

Underneath me, the bike felt like ice. My fingers squeezed the triggers of the brakes as hard as they could. My weight shifted back to stop me from catapulting forward. "Of all the times to have been pedaling in the big ring at the bottom of this descent," I thought. "Of all the times to give a damn about going fast."

My ticker-tape brain kept rolling, talking to itself, sending impulses through my veins and my skin.

This is how it happens. This is how it happens.

And then, the car cleared the intersection -- like a cloud that never happened -- with my bike convulsing below, snapping to the right, to the left and finally settling underneath me. Somehow, I was upright, pedaling, as if nothing ever happened at all.

"Dude, you almost got hit by that car," a very bright observer told me. "Are you OK?"

"OK," I said. "OK," I thought.

In this moment, cycling was every bit real life, and I find I'm seldom ready for their intersections, notably at 30 miles an hour. I've run into ex-girlfriends while heading out for rides. I've accepted jobs while on the bike. I've made some of my most important decisions on a bike, and some of my most foolish, like one that led to this fake left front tooth.

To ride, though, is to escape from this bulls---, from the rules and constraints and niceties of our real lives. Attacks are accepted and encouraged here, so long as they're executed with class. There is a code here the rest of the world doesn't care about.