Ride for the Roses 2003

As I sit here at the computer writing about the Ride for the Roses, I can't help but remember reading about it shortly after my diagnosis. Through a quirk of fate, I was told I had cancer over the telephone at 4:45 on a Friday afternoon. My Dad had died from a brain tumor three years before and I knew when I told my family that I had cancer, their emotions would immediately go back to what we been through with my Dad. I needed something positive, some kind of success story of hope for everyone to hang onto. I remembered the guy that had testicular cancer, which was what I was just diagnosed with, and had come back to win the Tour de France just 6 months ago. His cancer had even spread to his lungs and brain. I knew that would hit home with everybody, so I jumped on my computer and within about three minutes, I found Lance's website, (Thanks Chris Brewer!), the testicular cancer resource center and the Lance Armstrong Foundation website. I spent the next ten minutes clicking and printing all the info I would need, well at least to get me through the next few hours. I spent the next two minutes practicing what I was going to tell Angie, my wife of four months, my kids and my mom. I didn't have time to get to Angie's work to tell her face-to-face, but I knew she would call me on her drive home from work to ask about my day. I called her at 5:00 just before she left. "I've got testicular cancer", I said, " But the good thing is it's the same thing that Lance Armstrong had and he came back to win the Tour de France!" Now honestly, I didn't know anything about the Tour or Lance or professional cycling. All I knew was there was some guy that had cancer like me and he was alive. For the next several months, through some surgery and treatments, I spent a lot of time reading about Lance, cycling and more importantly, the Foundation. We didn't make it to the Ride for the Roses that year because I was just finishing my treatment, but it sure sounded like fun, so Angie and I decided to buy some bikes and go, that was in 2000.

    This year our only problem was to decide which bike to take to Austin. My fishing boat has been replaced by a spread of bikes, a big spread! This year we're taking our new tandem. The same one we took to France for our third visit to the Tour de France! Okay we did get kinda hooked. But it was the sincere dedication of Lance and the LAF staff to the cancer community, as well as our fellow Peloton Project friends that has made this a deep commitment for us.

   I flew into Austin late Wednesday night so I could attend a meeting for the Regional Mentors Thursday morning. Angie was flying in Thursday night with my mother, Billie. Billie also went with us last year. In 2001, as we planned a one-year anniversary party of my diagnosis, Billie was diagnosed with breast cancer, so she's also a fellow survivor!

I was all hyped up about seeing old friends, staff that we talk to all year (mostly though email) and making new friends. I didn't get to the Omni Hotel until about 9:30 and everyone was gone from some early setup. I was so bummed! So I just went back to our room and built our tandem so we'd be ready to roll.

   The next morning I was up early and grabbed some breakfast before meeting Doug Ulman, LAF Director of Survivorship, to go do some radio interviews on the Kevin and Kevin morning show. The interviews went well and were fun. Kevin, whichever one I was talking to, was really fired up about possibly going to France next year.

      We got back to the hotel and I headed to the registration and bike building rooms. I collected some hugs from Elli, Catherine and some of the other mentors that I hadn't seen since earlier this year. We sorted and organized registration bags then had our mentor meeting. The mentor program was just started this year. We try to take some of the load off of the Austin staff and help answer questions from Peloton members and possible members about fundraising and other aspects of the LAF.

   I spent most of the day hanging around the registration and bike room, hoping to catch some familiar faces. I also wanted to meet some of the people that we had conversed with all year, but never met face to face. Angie and Billie got in around 9:30 Thursday night, and my Uncle Jim came down from Fort Worth to join us for the weekend also.

   Friday morning and the festivities were beginning. I checked the registration and bike room to see if I could help with any late arrivals. Alex, Elli Overton's fiancé, was helping in the bike room and had gone home and gotten a bike for a Peloton Member to use. Their bike missed the flight and wouldn't make it in time for the private ride with Lance. A possible huge disaster was averted!

   We walked down to the Expo to pick up Billie's registration; she was doing the 5K Run for the Roses with my Uncle Jim. The Expo was very nice this year, with much more room, even though there were more vendors than last year. It's probably a good thing that I don't spend much time there because with all those shiny new bikes and accessories on display, I could buy way too much to carry home. Angie found the Terry Cycle booth and dove headfirst into some discount boxes of clothes they had. I took my place as the official clothes holder, my normal position when I go shopping with her. After she scavenged the booth for what she wanted we headed back to the Omni to get ready for the Peloton Project Private ride with Lance.

Maybe the private ride should be called the semi private ride. Amazingly there are about 150 people that qualify for the ride by raising over $10,000 for LAF throughout the year. The idea is for everybody to spread out as Lance works his way through the peloton. Kreutz Photography http://www.kreutzphotography.com/ does a great job taking pictures of this and other events throughout the weekend, then when you get home you can get on their website and order your pics.

    This year we did have one other thing to work on. There was a European documentary being filmed about the weekend. They wanted to follow a survivor through the events of the weekend and get their perspective and meaning of being involved. If you knew me pre-cancer, I was always shy and very quiet. Now Angie calls me the press hound when we go to France for the Tour because I chase down reporters to talk to or flag down photographers with our LAF sign. Anyway, I'll volunteer for about anything if it helps the LAF and our mission, so the film crew was to meet up with me at each event and chat a little. It was actually pretty interesting for me because I have been doing film and video work for almost twenty years, just never on that side of the camera. The director spoke English, but the cameraman and audio girl were Italian and didn't understand much. It was actually easier to communicate than I first thought, because of my experience in production. We would point at things and play charades a bit, but it all worked. After the ride Angie rolled the tandem back to the transport truck and I sat down with the film crew. One of the first things that we talked about was the difference in the way Europeans and Americans view cancer. Angie and I had noticed in our trips to France that they seemed much more interested in Lance the cyclist, than Lance the cancer survivor. Hopefully I said the right things and the Italian editor will understand my explanations and feelings to make sense in the edit.

We got back to the hotel and changed for the Peloton Dinner. This is the first year that the Gala, which is still in April, and Peloton Dinner have been separate events. The location for the Dinner was known by the locals as the Dump. The property includes a landfill (but we couldn't see it), and the area where we went was filled with exotic, wild animals. The kind of antelopes and horned critters you'd expect to see on a National Geographic show. There were also buffalo, zebra and of course some longhorn cattle. The lodge was a beautiful huge log cabin style building, with margaritas and cold beer outside. Silent auction items were also set up under a tent, including various signed items by Lance, a new Trek bike and the item I would have liked the most, one of the stuffed lions that Lance is presented with at the end of a stage at the Tour when in Yellow. He must have a good collection of those now! We saw some old friends and I took Angie's picture with Graham Watson and Louis Viggio, his assistant. Louis remembered us from one of the pictures that Graham shot of us with our LAF sign on the Champs Elysees. Angie also had to get her picture made on the longhorn steer they had and with the cowboy swinging his lasso. We saw Kevin from the radio station interview and by the time we finished talking to him, he promised to meet us on Alpe d'Huez next July for the Time Trial.

   The dinner was some great Texas barbecue and the best pies and ice cream ever! The program, emceed by David James Elliot (from JAG) had some laughs, cheers and tears. Awards were passed out to top fundraisers and a new Triumph Award was given to one of our Region Mentor friends, Noreen Breslauer. (Congrats to all of them!) After the dinner we went outside to here Lyle Lovett sing. Angie scooted up to the stage, close enough to strum his guitar for him. Lyle sang a while then called Lance up to sing with him. Lance changed the words to one song, something about ... all I want is ... .6. Gosh, what was he thinking about? It was the best Peloton Dinner ever. Angie and I were about the last ones back on the bus to leave, because we were having such a good time.

   Saturday morning found us sleeping in. We called Billie and told her to have a good time at the 5K Run for the Roses as we slowly got moving. We went back to the Expo at the Convention Center. I looked at more bikes that I needed to add to my garage and we checked in at the LAF booth to see our Regional Flags. We had flags of every region and Peloton members stopped by and signed them during the weekend. It was fun to spot names we knew or had emailed with during the year.

   Soon it was time for the autograph session and group pictures with Lance. The different jersey levels of fundraisers, yellow, polka-dot and green, each had a group picture taken with Lance. The thirteen mentors also had a picture taken with him. My European film crew friends grabbed me out of the group and I sat down with Lance and they asked us a few questions. Then we moved into the autograph session. Lance signed two items for the polka-dot and yellow jersey levels of fundraisers. People had a variety of pictures, jerseys or books for him to sign. One guy was showing off his fresh tattoo of Bill Cass's version of "the Look" on Alpe d'Huez. Bill does the artwork for the Ride for the Roses posters every year. It started when he sent Lance a card several years ago, and Lance has asked him to do the poster since then. It's fun to talk with Bill about the posters because he likes to explain the detail and story about everything in the picture. Angie and I went through the autograph line and talked with David James Elliot, of the TV show JAG, Bill Cass, Davis Phinney, Jo Dee Messina and Lance. We had a picture from Luz Ardiden last year that I took of Lance just before he attacked Mayo and got hooked by the now famous bag. Our big LAF sign is beside Lance and Angie is shaking her cheerleader pom poms furiously behind him, cheering him on! He immediately recognized where it was. He also signed two of the route markers that we brought back from France. We have one from each year we've been and Lance has signed them all.

   Angie and I went back to the hotel in hopes of meeting some people that we had emailed earlier this week. I also wanted to catch up with the Cycling Combating Cancer group http://www.ridetolive.org/. It's an online support group that has way too much cancer but lots of interest in cycling. It makes for interesting conversation at times, and can get pretty emotional. These people become friends that we hardly ever get to see. We ran into a few of them at the bar, and walking through the hotel. It just gets to be to many things to do and people to see in not enough time. We tested the temperature of the Shiner Bock at the bar and then went back to the Convention Center to see the release of a documentary called, A Lion in the House. I had heard it was a pretty emotional story about families with children battling leukemia and lymphoma.

   We got to the Expo early so we could get a good seat. The movie was exactly as we expected. Plenty of tears shed by the audience, but also some good endings. After the show, Lance led a Q & A with the filmmakers, Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Dr. Frederick Huang and Regina Fields and her son, Alex. The documentary is supposed to air on PBS Television in 2005. This is a must see event.

As we were leaving I caught up with the documentary crew that had been shadowing me through the weekend. It was tough to discuss the movie because one of the reasons that I want to help the LAF is the thought in the back of my mind that I have passed something along to my daughters. With all the cancer in our family, they're bound to be at a higher risk than some kids. Kids? Well, our oldest girls are 21 year old twins. Both are in nursing school. After having way too much experience with nurses, I know how important they are to a patient's survival. I'm not sure how much our family's health had on their decision to go into nursing, but I do think it is extra cool that they are doing that.

   We stopped for some dinner as we walked back to the hotel with Billie and Jim. Angie and I were ready to crash for the night. There hadn't been many idle moments since we arrived and the ride was tomorrow.

We rode the busses out to the Travis County Expo Area, where the Ride for the Roses starts and finishes. As beautiful as it had been leading up to the ride, it suddenly turned cold and tried to mist a little rain on us. There was also a brisk, more than brisk breeze...okay it was really a killer wind. Lance gave a brief talk about how much he appreciated everyone's work and how amazing it was to see the ride grow from it humble beginnings to the 6,000 riders that would pull off today. I believe it was mentioned that the Peloton Project had raised almost $4.5 million dollars this year, too! Wow!

   Lance pulled out with the first wave. Angie and I followed with the tandem group next and the subsequent groups rolled off, spread out to help the congestion. We had been riding just few miles when Angie asked me if the brakes were on. I laughed as I said, "No it's the wind!" It was blowing so hard it felt like we were towing a car behind us, with someone tapping the brakes occasionally. We had a good ride in spite of the weather and made it back in time to jump on a massage table and have a cold beer. It was still a bit chilly so not too many people were hanging around after the ride.

We made our way back to the hotel and cleaned up to go meet some of the regional mentors for dinner. It was nice to sit down and rehash the weekend and get caught up on what everyone has been doing. Nothing like a margarita and some Mexican food to help unwind.

Monday morning the mentors had another meeting to make plans for next year and laugh and smile about what a great weekend we had. It was especially nice to be able to sit down and chat with some of the staff and see Elli, Bianca and Rachel without a telephone in their ear. Unfortunately for us and LAF, Elli is getting married and moving to France. Alex, her fiancé, seemed really nice, but damn him for stealing her away from us! Angie and I are hoping to get together with them in France next year during the Tour. Yes, we’re going back!

Angie and I will be back next year to do it all again. We missed some people that didn't make it back this year, but also made some new friends that we can look forward to seeing next year. There are a thousand different stories about how and why people come to the Ride for the Roses. There are a wide variety of cyclists from those that want to hammer out the century to those that may struggle to ride the six-mile loop, but it's really not about how far or how fast you ride. There are also hundreds of volunteers that work all weekend with no intention of ever sitting on a bike. It all goes together to pull off a fun weekend, and more importantly, to continue the goal of the LAF, to enhance the quality of life for those living with, through and beyond cancer. We hope to see you there next year.

Jerry & Angie Kelly