I did all of this in a day?

  I thought the ride would be the hard part but come to find out that was the easiest part of the week so far.  I am just coming in from the Lance Armstrong survivor reception (and yes i have great pics).  And I am mentally exhausted and it has nothing to do with the long night of  checking out the Austin night life.  But let me tell you a quick list of what i have seen and experienced in the last 24 hours.

 Yesterday morning we rode into Austin as a group and myself and the other survivors led the way into downtown Austin.  As i got closer i rode in silence while I thought about what a year this has been.  I am 2 weeks away from the anniversary of my diagnosis, its been 6 weeks since I lost my grandmother (although she showed up several times this week, and i am wearing her necklace while I’m riding as well) I ordered a bike before I could even walk this last winter and now I’m 1 mile away from saying I rode my bike to Austin.  It was indescribable the feeling I got when we came over the bridge and the first people I see are my best buddy Carlee, my grandfather, and my parents standing in the middle of the road as we pull in.   Later last night we had our reception dinner (huge thanks to New Belgium brewery and Todd at Eagleshotz) and although it was completely unplanned people stood up one at a time and told their story on why they ride and I know there was not a dry eye in the house. But what I realized is I stopped doing this for me a long time ago.  I am doing this with this crazy idea that we are going to beat this disease in our lifetime and I am with a bunch of morons who have the same belief. 

I woke up this morning and did the Livestrong challenge 5k and once again all of the survivors  and warriors crossed the finish line arm in arm in-front of 3,000+ people and we showed them how united our team is.  I was even stopped at starbucks 30 minutes later and had a woman say how she saw us finish and how she could see how special our p3c3 group is.   Then came the survivor reception,  and I could go on all night about how cool it was but im too tired. However during a Q&A part with Lance someone asked if he was in fear of his cancer returning.  I almost couldn’t look up because I didnt want to hear the answer because Lance had the same as I did and I know i am always in fear, but he could not have put it any better than when he said “I know my chances of a re accuring cancer is much greater than most people’s, but I stay physacly healthy and I am not sitting idle waiting for it to happen either i am fighting back in the mean time”.  And just like that its game on for me, if it was bad before its going to be terrible now.  Im going to go to bed and get up early to do the Livestrong 45mile race, Im going to beat the shit out of my bike and my body on the ride, and Im going to go back to Greenville tomorrow and show the world how to liveSTRONG.  I’m not a cancer survivor anymore….I’m a cancer fighter.