Conquering Cancer on a Bike

On Sunday, October 19, I will wake up early in Greenville, South Carolina and prepare to embark on a journey to Austin, Texas as a crew member for a 4 person women's team riding their bicycles on a cross country relay ride called the Challenge to Conquer Cancer. Five teams of either 4 or 5 persons will be participating. Each team will ride 6 hours at a time on their shift. They will then have 24 hours off to sleep, eat and get ready to start to ride again. One crew member will drive the Hincapie Co. bus behind the team while they are riding. The other crew member will drive the team van. In order to participate, each rider raised at least $5,000 and each crew member raised at least $1,800. The money raised benefits the Lance Armstrong Foundation and the Oncology Research Institute of the Greenville Hospital System.

How, one might ask, does one become a crew member on a ride such as this? For me it was a simple matter of the stars and planets falling into perfect alignment. On Labor Day weekend, I traveled to Greenville with my sons, Thomas (7) and Charlie (2) to watch the U.S. Professional Cycling Championships. On the morning of the road race, there is a ride called the Stars and Stripes Challenge, which also benefits the same two above organizations fighting cancer. We had planned to ride but my son Thomas crashed and broke his arm while riding his bike two weeks earlier. So instead of riding, the three of us volunteered to be course marshals at the only sharp left hand turn on the ride. It was a good experience and a fine introduction for my boys into the world of volunteering. Two weeks later, I received an urgent e-mail from the Palmetto Peloton Project, the sponsoring organizations for both rides, looking for a few last minute crew team volunteers. It seems that a couple of volunteers had dropped out at the last minute leaving them short-handed. I was already planning a 4 day cycling vacation that week. How hard would it be to do this instead and be gone for 8 days? My mother-in-law was coming that week for the boys' birthdays and I wouldn't therefore be leaving Janet home alone with the kids for 8 days. Janet said yes and the tallest hurdle was cleared. I thought about it for about 2 minutes, couldn't find a reason why I couldn't or shouldn't go and called Kevin Dunn to tell him I was ready to sign up. Needless to say he seemed pleased.

So on a practical level, all the lights were green to join the challenge. On an emotional or spiritual level, it seemed as if I was being called to participate. The events in my life and those close to me provided a strong motivation to join an organized effort to conquer cancer. Let me try to explain a little further.

When I was 29 years old I lost my mother to liver cancer. I had just returned from my honeymoon with my wife Linda and we learned that my mother had to cut her trip to Maine with my father short due to intense abdominal pain. They flew back to Atlanta where she received the diagnosis of liver cancer at Piedmont Hospital. This was a woman who hardly drank, ate very healthy and started doing yoga in the 70's. She would later travel to the Mayo Clinic for surgery that offered some hope. She never recovered from the surgery and died one month later on September 11, 1986. It was a loss that our family wasn't prepared for and our family would never be the same without her. To this day we all miss her greatly.

Fast forward to 2008, twenty two years later. Linda and I have been divorced since 1994. We have a beautiful daughter, Mimms (20), who was named for my mother who she never met. She inherited her incredible artistic talent from her though. Mimms is a junior at UGA majoring in graphic design in the art school. The week Mimms finished her Spring semester at UGA, she found out her mother, Linda, has Stage IV breast cancer. This is hardly the news my daughter wanted halfway through college. Before her diagnosis, Linda made some major life changes to prepare for the next chapter in her life. Her children were all grown so she sold the house we lived in and Mimms was born in to move to a smaller townhouse in a co-housing community in East Lake. She quit her job and went back to school to receive training for a new career. She is one of the healthiest persons I know. She has been a long-time vegetarian, she eats mostly organic food and she tries to avoid sugar. Her beverage of choice is water or herbal tea. How or why she developed breast cancer I do not know or understand.

But she has it and she is trying her best to get healed from it. She had chemotherapy early on. In August, she had a mastectomy. After that she underwent radiation therapy and an alternative vitamin therapy. Her spirit is strong and she is fighting the disease as best she can. We all are praying and hoping that she can be healed. It is a tough battle but if anyone can win it Linda can.

So when the Palmetto Peloton Project e-mailed and asked me if I could help try to conquer cancer, I couldn't say no. I want Linda to live longer. I want my daughter to have her mother with her as long as possible. I want to help raise money so that a cure for cancer can one day be found. I can't think of a better reason to drive a bus 15 miles an hour for 6 hours while 4 strong beautiful women ride their bikes towards Austin. I am looking forward to an incredible week. I will try to keep you posted on the challenge.