Ross and Mack rolled up Ross’ driveway.

Beep!

Ross glanced down at his Garmin. The middle-age master blaster scrolled through data, his blank facial expression betraying a subtle dissatisfaction towards the friends’ 30-mile ride. Just then, his daughter bounded towards him.

“Daddy, can you play with me?” the 6-year-old begged.

Beep. Pause.

Birds chirped. A car drove past. Another one honked at nobody in particular. A man pushing his entire life in a grocery cart walked by the mailbox.

Beep.

Ross, apparently finished with his analysis, finally replied, “Where’s your mom?”

An awkward pause followed as the child contemplated his non-response and non-eye contact. Then, without saying a word, she wandered off.

“You know,” Mack said eventually. “When I was in Japan trying to set the fastest-known time on the Nakasendo Trail, I started hallucinating.”

Ross didn’t look up. He was still annoyed by the Garmin; plus, he’d heard variations of this story before.

“I started seeing little kids pretending to be knights, battling each other,” Mack continued, his voice intensifying into a whisper. “I was afraid.”

“But also,” he continued between slurps of an electrolyte drink squirting out of the Hammer Nutrition water bottle. “… spellbound, man …by the shear joy on their faces.”

Ross rocked his bike back and forth on the lumpy driveway in front of his two-bedroom house. He looked down at the ants mingling in a crack between slabs of concrete and wondered what it would be like to be in their world. Part of him wished to be part of their colony right now. He read the name on the driveway: ‘Samson, 1946’ and thought about that guy and his life, too.

“Everything seemed so real to them,” Mack chimed in again.

Ross looked up.

He hadn’t heard this version but couldn’t quite completely commit to listening as he saw no possible connection to his current ambition. Not that stupid, ultimate goal of qualifying for Boston next spring and completing an Ironman in anonymity before his 40th birthday but his present desire: to not participate. To avoid all impending parental responsibilities. Oh, and somehow solve the unsolvable problem of trying to simultaneously lose 5 pounds and enjoy a gargantuan post-ride dinner.

“I blinked and blinked. When my vision cleared up, there were more. Now, I could see boys pretending to be astronauts, girls rocking babies — pretending to be mothers — and then I saw myself,” Mack said. He proceeded to paint a bleak picture of a younger version of himself sitting in a chair at a desk. His smooth hands and elongated fingers — the ones which at some point had supposedly caressed Marcel Tabuteau’s oboe out of Orchestra Hall after drawing a standing ovation, only to abruptly dump the instrument, his livelihood and his potential down a trash can in the wings — were chained to the desk.

“I was wearing my Troy Aikman jersey,” Mack continued, steering the story down another unexpected turn.

“What?” Ross asked.

“I used to wear it every Sunday. Every Sunday. Every Sunday I’d put it on after lunch. I’d go out back in the yard if the Cowboys won and I’d throw imaginary touchdowns to no one in the corner of the end zone,” he explained. “Every Sunday.”

“But it was disturbing, man, what I saw.”

Ross stared back at his cycling buddy, this mysterious man who’d arrived in town two weeks ago.

“My pants were slacks,” Mack stated. “My shoes were these black, faux-leather loafers. I was all alone. Crying. There was a paper on the desk and it said something, but you know I didn’t have the guts to read it.”

Mack paused and looked down at the chain of the $10,000 bike between his chiseled, shaved, tanned legs. Ross briefly contemplated whether that bike even belonged to the man. Mack rubbed a faded UCI team sticker on the top tube as if to summon some sort of genie. Ross felt weird, but he was too polite to say anything now.

“For whatever reason, I realized right then there must be a difference between simply making it in this world and making a difference. Between surviving and thriving,” Mack continued. “All the satisfied, smiling people — the ones who do something to change the world in a real, tangible way — had something in common. They never really stopped playing make believe.”

-From “The Secret Life of Mack Chan” by Ryan Sederquist