Why We Ride Pelotonia

When this post appear on the glorious Internet, I will be on the road.

Somewhere in Ohio, I will be with more than 6,000 others.

We're riding to end cancer.

Together, we're taking a stand.

It's all about the money. Every rider is a dollar sign. Every volunteer is an enabler. we're all working to raise the precious funds to defeat the diseases that have defeated so many.

I ride for several reasons:

• Appreciation
• Honor
• Fear
• Anger
• Respect
• Hope

I don't know why the other 6,000 riders ride. I suspect for some of the same reasons. And I know that they ride for reasons too deeply personal to share.

Yet, whatever our motivations, we ride...together.

And it's a beautiful thing.


I hope you will help me to raise money for life-saving cancer research.

We need your support to end cancer. Please consider donating.

Hope: Why I Ride Pelotonia

Please help me raise $2,200
to help END CANCER!

Donate to Pelotonia
at my rider page.

• 100% OF EVERY DOLLAR
  raised goes directly to life-saving cancer research!
• DOLLAR MATCH, TOO!
  Every dollar you contribute will be matched by The Limited Brands! I will be wearing their colors proudly!

I ride with hope. Hope that we can end cancer.

I'm blessed.

Seven years.

I just celebrated my 7th year cancer free.

I want the same for others.

And I ride with hope.

I hope for treatments, therapies, cures.

I hope for patents, families, friends.

For researchers, doctors, caregivers.

I hope.

I'm not a "glass is half full" guy. But when cancer rates are going down, I'm encouraged.

And when I hear about breakthroughs, it's rewarding...and hopeful.


So, I hope

I hope for Jessica.

I hope for John Looker.

I hope for all the people behind the faces who inspire.

I ride in that hope that my children will live in a cancer-free world.

Hope is simple, it needs little explanation.

I ride because I hope.

The glass is half-full.


I hope you will help me to raise money for life-saving cancer research.

We need your support to end cancer. Please consider donating.

Respect: Why I Ride Pelotonia

Please help me raise $2,200
to help END CANCER!

Donate to Pelotonia
at my rider page.

• 100% OF EVERY DOLLAR
  raised goes directly to life-saving cancer research!
• DOLLAR MATCH, TOO!
  Every dollar you contribute will be matched by The Limited Brands! I will be wearing their colors proudly!

I ride to respect those who fight.

I'm out. I'm free. The specter is behind me, consigned to history.

I'm lucky! I'm blessed.

Others aren't. I ride to respect them—their battles and their struggles. I ride because I can, and because they inspire me to be more than a survivor. They inspire me to thrive.

Jessica Vs. Cancer

I'm out for a spring ride. It's a cold day; I'm dodging rain. I see a woman ahead of me—definitely not your typical cyclist. She's laboring on the flat, and she's approaching a hill.

I pull up and we chat. And everything changed.

Some people radiate warmth. She's that people. Joyfully, she rode. Smiling, she spoke. When I left her, I no longer felt the wind. The rain? What rain?

Weeks later I saw her again. Riding. Laboring. Smiling. And everyone around her was smiling, too.

Soon I knew her story. Jessica P. lost her liver to an incredibly rare form of cancer: primary hepatic neuroendocrine carcinoma. She received a liver transplant. While it saved her life, it did not stop her fight. She lives daily with the chronic nature of the disease.

And she smiles.

And she radiates warmth.

Part of her healing is hugging. Big hugs. Enthusiastic hugs. Not back-breaking hugs, but hugs that connect.

You know the type. Not many people give them. To give one is to share one's self—to extend, to express a kind of love and need and vulnerability that is as poignant as it is gentle. It's wordless, language-free. It's a gift.

And it's a hard gift to receive. It makes you vulnerable. To receive that gift in the spirit with which it was given means you accept the moment...that precious moment when two people connect, sharing time, space, and spirit.

It's beautiful.

Jessica hugs. She hugs a lot. And she inspires me.

Recently, I saw photos of her in a hospital gown. She was getting tests. She battles on, yet she smiles.

I ride to respect those who fight.

I ride for Jessica and her fight.

I ride because you don't have to save a life to change a life.

Facing Chemo

Robert Houser Photography

I'm facebooking (Yep, it's a verb...). An image appears and stops me dead.

The eyes. Haunting and strong. Vulnerable and loving. Placid.

She's looking at me with wisdom—with secret knowledge. She's peering through me. She has taken my measure, and she has found me...

Facing Chemo is a photographic project that exposes the emotion of those undergoing chemotherapy. While the drugs target cells, the treatments effect people—the persons within and without.

Unadorned, exposed, vulnerable, the subjects share their beauty, strength, fear, resolve.

As it happens, I know the photographer. We went to school together many years ago. He's a good person. I had no idea he became an artist. I'm awestruck.

Robert Houser Photography

Months later, I'm facebooking. An image appears and stops me dead.

These eyes are knowing—direct. Maskless, guileless.

Accepting, content.

Her name is Kim.

She's beautiful.

She lost her battle.






 
I ride to respect those who fight.

I ride to respect those who fight, knowing they may lose.

Respect...


I hope you will help me to raise money for life-saving cancer research.

We need your support to end cancer. Please consider donating.

Anger: Why I Ride Pelotonia

Please help me raise $2,200
to help END CANCER!

Donate to Pelotonia
at my rider page.

• 100% OF EVERY DOLLAR
  raised goes directly to life-saving cancer research!
• DOLLAR MATCH, TOO!
  Every dollar you contribute will be matched by The Limited Brands! I will be wearing their colors proudly!

I ride because I'm angry.

Howlingly angry.

Cancer pisses me off.

It's allowed. I don't feel guilty. Neither should you. In fact, I encourage it.

Go ahead, be angry.

You have cancer. Your mother has cancer...your father...

Your partner has cancer...your lover...

Your child...

Being angry beats the hell out of feeling hopeless.

Your chemo hurts in ways you never imagined. You're sick of being sick. You're beyond tired, as your body and soul are pushed to the limit...and beyond...and still beyond.

You fear the mirror. You know that what you will see will not be you. That ravaged creature is not you, but you make eye contact and you see...you. And your sunken stomach sinks again and you feel tears and your chest tightens and you gasp and you know it's you but it's not you and you're lost because who is you and where did you go and Gods what has...and why has...and inside you boil and quake and it wells up from places you never knew and never felt before and it's there and it's scary and it's from you and about you and...

You're angry.

Howlingly angry.

It's allowed.

You don't have cancer, yet you visit the hospital, and the treatment center, and the hospice. You're there every step of the way, supporting, loving, helping.

You watch. You listen. Your palms sweat, your bowels churn as you wait for results. You don't have the cancer, but you're savaged by it.

Your mother, your father has cancer. Your partner, your lover has cancer. Your child...

It ravages them; it destroys you.

What can I do? How can I help? Drive, hold hands, cook, dress, hug, cajole, weep, watch, listen, pray, hope, encourage...a million little things that matter. Yet, you sleeplessly wonder what more you can do.

You're angry.

And you're guilty about it.

But you don't need to be. It's allowed.

I ride because I'm angry.

Cancer hurt me. It stole parts of me. My scars run deep. The skin scars, like the one that runs from sternum to pubic bone, are obvious. I can't show you the soul scars...

Cancer surrounds me—my friends and family. Yet, it always feels like there is so little I can do.

And it makes me angry.

But cancer has taught me a few things...about anger.

Impotent anger is destructive. You bleed pain. You melt with fury. And you remain silent. You're fighting an enemy you cannot know. It's right in front of you, but it is invisible, alien. And you try to understand it, but you can't, and that fact makes you even more angry. And you silently seethe. The feelings surge and recede, wave after wave of pain you wrestle to control, lest it control you. You fear the anger, because it's too big, too strong, and you have no way to express it without hurting someone, everyone, yourself. You know that anger destroys.

So you have a drink, take a pill, eat a doughnut, or close yourself in and wait for the tide to ebb and hope it all goes away.

And for a time it does; and you're able to do what you need to do.

And then it comes back...fiercer. And the cycle begins again. And you go deeper, and the gyre sucks you down.

But you're not impotent. You have choices.

Each time you help, you reach out, you touch, and you comfort you are doing something. Each time you hope, you heal. Every time you do what you need to do to be healthy, you overcome.


You're never powerless, no matter how overwhelming it seems. Anger and Fear are so close; and they can be used for good.

Anger is an energy. use it. Channel it to fight the unknowable enemy. Embrace it and transform it and use it.

And heal it. 

Be angry.

It's allowed.

I ride because I'm angry. And I choose to do something with that anger. I choose to use it to help heal; and to fight to end cancer.

I hope you will help me to raise money for life-saving cancer research.

We need your support to end cancer. Please consider donating.

Fear: Why I Ride Pelotonia

Please help me raise $2,200
to help END CANCER!

Donate to Pelotonia
at my rider page.

• 100% OF EVERY DOLLAR
  raised goes directly to life-saving cancer research!
• DOLLAR MATCH, TOO!
  Every dollar you contribute will be matched by The Limited Brands! I will be wearing their colors proudly!

I ride because I'm scared.

Really scared.

I'm fearful, anxious. Not panicky or terrified. I'm scared.

Cancer is scary.

Most of us feel it. Few of us admit it—even to ourselves. Fewer still will share it.

Admitting it makes us aware—and vulnerable.

Sharing it make it real—and dangerous.

Cancer: it's that-which-shall-not-be-named. It's Voldemort.

Yet, it's always there.

And it's scary.

My mother has a type of non-Hodgkin lymphoma. After some unpleasant treatments, they told her that it was not a question of whether it would re-emerge, but when.

She lives with that knowledge every day.

And it scares me. I know trepidation.

And while I know that others bear the same burden, it fails to comfort me.

My mother is going to die, and cancer is (likely) going to take her from me.

It's why I ride.

My Little Angels are 11 and 7 this year. They blossom. And they have a solid family history of cancer.

That's scary.

The odds are that they will get some form of cancer. I live with that knowledge every day.

I usually don't think about it. Unless I do. And when I do, I'm scared.

I know about the children who fight cancer. The images are burned into my mind's eye. The tubes and wires and baldness and pallor and scrawniness and the smallness—god, they're small! They're young! It shouldn't happen to them!

Yet it does.

And I know about young adults who fight cancer—how their lives are completely re-defined by the experience. How the best years of their lives are smothered. It shouldn't happen to them!

Yet it does.

And we feel powerless.

It's why I ride.

Something happened to me a few years ago. I intuited something long before I understood it. I'm not powerless. I'm not a bystander. I'm not passive.

When I ride against cancer I'm empowered, involved, and active.

I ride because I'm scared; because I choose to do something with that fear.

I hope you will help me to raise money for life-saving cancer research.

We need your support to end cancer. Please consider donating.