Deja vu is arguably one of the most misused expressions.

It does not mean you’re repeating something you did before.

Instead, it refers to the feeling of having experienced a new situation before even though it is completely novel.

I always thought it was malarkey at best.

I ended up changing my attitude about anyone being able to experience something for the first time while having a haunting feeling you’ve been there before although you hadn’t.

All it took was for me to have:

*collapsed bicycling up Sonora Pass on a 90-degree day.

*almost drown in the middle of Highway 108 about a mile east of the Kennedy Meadows turnoff.

*four IVs and part of a fifth fed into me as I was out cold for 12 hours sleeping on a metal emergency room exam table at the now shuttered Tuolumne General Hospital in Sonora.

*asked the attendant at a three pump Chevron gas station across from the feed store in Oakdale about how I could get to Highway 99 to go toward Sacramento.

And all of that was within a 20-hour period on July 19, 1990.

The guy at the gas station said heading west on Highway 120 and taking the French Camp Road was the quickest.

But since I wasn’t familiar with the area, he said it might be a better going all the way to Manteca and getting on Highway 99 there.

I’d asked my mom to keep an eye out for the French Camp Road sign as I was — despite 12 hours of sleep and the IVs — still completely zapped. Worse yet, she let me drive.

I guess I’d better explain how I ended up driving my car that had a roof top for three bicycles when I was supposed to be on the sixth day of a seven-day fully loaded bicycling trip.

The first leg was from Lincoln to Truckee. Then it was Truckee to Topaz Lake on Highway 395.

The third day it was Topaz Lake to Lee Vinning. The fourth day Lee Vining over Tioga Pass to Sonora. The day I went down was Sonora over Sonora Pass to Topaz Lake. The next day was taking Monitor Pass and then Ebbetts Pass down to Jackson and the seventh and final day back to Lincoln.

The mileage covered was right around 740. The net climbing was somewhere in the neighborhood of 21,000 feet.

That wasn’t  the crazy part. I agreed to take a pair of 19 year-olds with me.

They had racing bikes with handlebar bags. I had a full-loaded touring bike that by itself weighed almost 30 pounds

That was before the front and rear panniers and a rack that allowed me to pedal with five saddle bags that held everything the three of us needed plus additional water besides what was on our down tubes.

It added close to 35 pounds. Add my weight at the time which was 190 pounds and was pedaling 255 pounds uphill on a summer across Sierra passes.

Sound crazy?

Not by my yardstick which is my cousin Larry Wyatt who taught and coached football at Del Oro High.

He ran the Western States 100 mile endurance run from Lake Tahoe to Auburn. He trained so he could eat peanut butter sandwiches on the run to keep weight on as they sat you out at checkpoints until you got your weight back up.

You had to finish the race in under 24 hours to get the coveted belt buckle. Those that finished it in longer than that and before 30 hours got a half buckle on a plaque.

Twice he missed crossing the finish line  at the Placer High football stadium under 24 hours by a matter of minutes. One time, it was right around a minute.

No, we do not have family reunions at insane asylums although Larry’s personalized plate on his Suburban was ‘MECRAZY’. Larry’s wife Kris’ license plate was ‘ICRAZY2’.

It was clearly a nod to a family tradition.

At any rate, the day before arriving in Lee Vinning, we ran out of water cycling Highway 395.

Both Brian and Rob forgot to fill their water bottles at what was our last chance after leaving Topaz Lake. I ended up giving them my water.

Making matters worse, they were almost zombies.

So after getting some food in them from a convenience store, I let them crash first in the hotel room before hitting the restaurant.

By the time they woke up, the restaurant was closed leaving us with the option of a sparsely stocked general store.

There was not a lot of good calories for someone like myself who is a lacto ovo vegetarian that needed to burn through upwards of 6,000 calories to power through the ride.

The next day I clearly had misjudged how quickly we could cover 131 miles and ended up at the Sonora Best Western at 9 p.m. We practically emptied the vending machine.

It was not good.

The next day shortly before 3 p.m., I met my Waterloo. I couldn’t conquer one of the 21 percent grades with the weight I had been pedaling. Again, they had bummed water off of me and went ahead to the pass.

I got off the bike and started walking with it. I hadn’t had any water for an hour and I was already in a big time deficit.

When they came back down from the pass, I mumbled something along the line of “thanks for staying with me” as I tried to remount the bike and collapsed instead, landing on Highway 108 with my head downhill.

I do not remember anything until I was in the ambulance.

What happened was shared by Rob and Brian.

Brian was in a major panic and had taken his water bottle and started pouring it into my mouth believing that it would revive me.

A minute later, a nurse heading back to Sonora from the Marine Base in the other side of the pass, pulled over, got out of her vehicle, took the water bottle from Brian’s hand, and proceeded to roll me over on my side to get water out of my throat.

Apparently, it’s not a wise move to pour water into the mouth of an unconscious person.

At the ER, the attending physician said it was the worst bonk he had ever seen.

At one point, I had a nurse call my mom to have her bring my car down as it had a bike rack to pick me up as well as the two guys that ended up spending the night at the rangers station at Dardanelle.

My mom brought her twin sister along.

After we retrieved Rob and Brian and had breakfast in Sonora, mom said she was too tired to drive and Verlie was leery about driving my car with the three bicycles on top.

So there I was ready to turn right on French Camp Road when I figured I better play it safe and head toward Manteca given the gas station attendant sought it would be dicey for me.

I was struggling to stay awake when I saw the SSJID office, PG&E yard, fruit stand and Calla High on the edge of what was Manteca.

I had this weird feeling I had been here before.

I had passed through Manteca a number of times but never ventured off Highway 99.

As for East Highway 120, I had been only on the segment going through Yosemite and to the  Sonora cut off on a less ambitious bicycling trip the year before.

For some reason, I was wide awake after seeing those four “landmarks” that are still there today.

My deja vu moment must have been a subconscious wake up call.

Seven months later, I had accepted a job with the Bulletin and moved to Manteca.

 This column is the opinion of editor, Dennis Wyatt, and does not necessarily represent the opinions of The Bulletin or 209 Multimedia. He can be reached at dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com