Russ you've no idea how right you are and its pretty much what happened to a work colleague of mine.
I worked for a company called COLT Telecom, I was there from the start, we all got 15000 options at £2.75 in 1996, company did a share split a couple of years later so it became 60,000 options at £0.68. The COLT share price peaked around £46 but we still had a few months of vesting to go. the day my shares vested I sold at £39. my colleague said "nah I'm not selling the price will go back up", next two days it goes down to £30, "nah its going to go back up", some time after he sold at ten quid something.
I was actually close to doing what he did but was lucky in that I needed cash to buy a house at the time after that I decided there and then when in the black sell - free money is free money and with every share since award thats exactly what I've done.
Neil.