Friends in the High Places

Hi all,

On November 5th and 6th I got to ride in a 2-day road bike fundraiser for cancer research, 170 miles total, split 100 miles on Saturday and 70 miles on Sunday.

Saturday was a 100 mile ride from Dolphin’s Stadium down to Coconut Grove and then up to City Place in West Palm Beach.  It was in the mid 50’s when we started out in the morning, with a 30+ MPH wind from the North that would make the ride to WPB a bit of an epic.  I rode with the lead pack for the first 48 miles but left the Dania Beach water stop a little behind the group (my 2-year-old son was sick so I spent a little extra time checking up on him).  Unfortunately for me, that meant riding solo into the headwind.  Worse, when I stopped at the end of Las Olas to meet up with another colleague who had donated to the cause, I found I had been riding with a flat tire.  After taking time to fix the flat, I had totally lost touch with the peloton and had to ride the last 30 or so miles solo, getting sandblasted by the gusty winds off the beach.  Needless to say I was pretty happy when we finally turned West onto Okechobee in WPB for the last 2 miles to the finish.

On Sunday, however, we got the benefit of the strong wind at our backs!  It was a really nice ride back south, and though it probably angered a lot of motorists, it was a unique experience to ride West on 595 at close to 40 MPH!  I managed to avoid two big crashes and finished within sight of the leaders as we rode into the stadium for the finish.

Together we raised $1,500 to fight cancer (not including any matching donations, and close to $1M overall), and my dad, a cancer survivor, was there to share the moment on the field at the stadium.  Let’s hope that the results of our effort will mean more people will survive, and that someday soon we will find the cure.

I’m still not 100% recovered from my trip to Nepal to climb Lhotse, where I picked up some kind of intestinal parasite.  I still get some periodic recurrence of “GI distress”, but thankfully it seems to be getting better little by little, and I didn’t have any issues during this ride.

As the months pass and get closer to spring 2013, I’ll try to update more on training and preparation for Everest – starting to get excited and even though it’s still 18 months away, time flies when you’re having fun…