Choosing not to ride

I made an unusual decision to not ride to work today, and it was the right one.

Not because of the weather, it was on the cold side at 28F but dry, and going to be 50 later, crystal clear under the stars with no wind...a beautiful day, I was especially looking forward to that warm ride home in the afternoon. So why didn't I ride?

Not because of my bike, it's working fine, and in fact I was planning to ride today and even left it fueled last night to avoid a morning gas stop.
Not because of gear, I had laid it all out in the spare room the night before.
Not because of traffic, or ice, work schedule or any other issues that were not under my control.
Because of me, my mental state this morning was not right.

What happened was I woke up at 0300 as usual, and when getting ready for work I checked my email as usual, and found out that I had a BIG problem at work, one that I wish I had known about last night, one with a potential for disaster and one that was going to take a lot of thought and stress to work through this morning. I was dismayed and wanted to go back to bed and put my head under the covers but obviously I had to go in and do what they pay me for so I got ready, rushing to get ready with my mind churning through the engineering and processes, the manpower and equipment I needed to mobilize, and all that that I was going to have to jump into as soon as I could get there while I got ready to ride. Nothing went well, I couldn't find my clothes, tripped over the dog, almost dropped my helmet, couldn't find my keys, walked into a wall, it was getting late...it was as if the world was all going wrong for me this morning.
Then it hit me.
The world was fine.. I wasn't.

I was so preoccupied with trying to work through the solution that I was not paying attention to anything that I was doing, and that's not the right state of mind to ride a motorcycle in..or drive a car for that matter but I had to get to work somehow and that was the lesser of two evils.

I reluctantly hung up my helmet, changed my boots for sneakers, and walked out to the car, and tried to force myself to pay attention to driving, it worked for a while, but then during the hour long drive my mind was still spinning and wandering and I actually made 2 dumb mistakes while driving, nothing terrible happened but these were not minor errors either, I really was distracted. That's when I was sure that I had made the right choice.

5 hours later the crisis is under control, equipment is in place, my people are working on the problem and a clear path to a solution is in sight, and I'm finally catching my breath before going back into the fray, and even though I'll miss the great ride home later I know I made the wise choice this morning. Maybe wisdom really does come with experience, or age, or something like that.

Be safe out there...