No one should fight alone!

My friends and family have come through in a huge way in helping me with my fight. My friend MS, above, had a shirt made with my name on it for the Keuka triathlon. This is no easy race, I have done it myself 3 times. Since I couldn't be there this year MS did it in my honor! What a huge inspiration for me that he fought the cold water and waves and the rain and the pain and agony of a 6.2 mile run to finish the triathlon in fantastic style. Great job and thanks my friend.

My wife rode in a virtual bike race with friends cheering her on through the internet. The above bike stickers are on all our families bikes. Team Radio Shack has the same stickers on their bikes during the Tour deFrance. They support cancer survivors with this effort. DD came in 39th place in the virtual tour with 100's of our friends giving cheers through the internet!

I cant even mention all the support I have been given from my immediate and extended families and friends. Thank you all for your help and support. I could not do this without you.

My lifetime ambitions Mission accomplished (sort of)

From a very young age I have had the same list of lifetime ambitions. The first is to marry a beautiful girl. Well as you can see from the above photo, mission accomplished and then some (My wife is the one of the left). Thing is about beautiful girls they make even more beautiful girls (My daughter on the right). My other daughter is equally as beautiful but I really liked this photo so I will feature her in another post.

Ambition number 2 was to win something big (Wimbledon, The Masters etc). Well thats me on the right after winning the 1994 Indy 500. Al took a swig of milk then handed it to me. I kind of fell into this one but I am going to count it as complete.

Next up, become a highly skilled golfer. I played the course and as you can see from the sign, it must be true. Seriously I hit the ball pretty good, I spent 5 years and thousands upon thousands of range balls learning to hit a draw (99% of golfers slice, almost all pros play a draw). I have shot 18 holes in 1 under par and can drive the ball 280 yards and can work the ball at will. My putting sucks but what the hell you cant have it all.

Number 4, become an extremely fit, ripped athlete. This is me on the right at the muscleman half iron man in 2008. A very nice and talented fitness instructor at my work is responsible for the abs. 20 hours of riding running and lifting a week is responsible for the 10% body fat. It is impossible to maintain this fitness and raise and family and hold down a full time job, so don't ask me to show you the abs now (There under there somewhere I promise).

Now for the incomplete ambitions
Play guitar - I tried. Developed carpal tunnel. Tried again and at the moment I am a bit stalled in my playing ability. I need lessons bad. That and I found out I have absolutely zero musical ability, have really poor hand eye coordination and motor skills for this and have very poor rhythm. Other than that it is going really well. NOT.

Learn a foreign language - My French is awful. Nes Pas. I need to learn Italian with my beautiful wife before my brain cant do it any more.

Become a martial artist -  I took some kickboxing classes at work. I sometimes work out with a Mixed Martial Arts guy at work. He brought in this 6 inch think pad which you hold as a target, he held it for me and I kicked it, I held it for him and he nearly broke my arm.

I should note that all these accomplishments pale in comparison to the joy I get from my beautiful family. I love you guys. Your success is what drives me. Love Dad.

Half Way

I am now half way through my chemo treatment cycles. Only 12 weeks to go.
Picture of me finished with Treatment #6

 Heres a highlight of my cancer related activities
1) I put a Livestrong band on my wrist before my first chemo treatment. It has not come off.and will not come off until I am cured. I gave bands to all my family members.

2) I get tons of support from my family and friends. This has really been a huge source of help for me. I really appreciate all the things and work my supporters are doing for me.

3) My hair has not fallen out, it has gotten softer though.

4) I gave up caffeine and coffee and meat. I told my Vegan and card carrying PETA member daughter EJ I was going Veggie, then started back on the meat, but I am planning to cut back again. Someone over at together cooking keeps making delicious pot roast and it irresistable.

5) I make homemade sushi every Sunday. The pickled ginger helps with the stomach and nausea. Other favorites include lemonade, lemon water and chicken noodle soup. The rice is pretty good and bland. No raw fish here just veggies and cooked crab.

6) My wife, kids and friends take me on bike rides. I love this, they love it too. I feel much better with exercise.We do a cancer survivor ride every other Monday at 6pm. I cant ride fast but I just go until I cant go anymore.

7) I thought I had this already, but I have really come to understand the value of my family and all the joy they bring to me. I love you guys. Keep up your great attitudes, hard work and dedication to the things you enjoy. I don't care if EJ wins a Marathon (She will)  or B wins the Masters (This ones a stretch, but hey, who would have thought I would win the Indy 500,  if you think it and believe it, it will happen) or DD becomes the most sought after psychologist in western NY (she will) or AM becomes a famous Chef on the Food Network (Iron Chef AM ala cuisine!), In my mind you are all there already. Love DAD.

Innovation

Definition: Great ideas you come up with that are mocked by the status quo, you are then persecuted, your idea is stolen and some else takes credit for it.

So here's an example. I have been following the NHL playoffs. I heard about this player who got hit in the mouth with a stick. He lost 9 teeth, and he was quoted as saying "It was good that I only missed one shift". I started looking at the players. They have a lot of missing teeth,

There is of course a very simple solution to prevent the loss of teeth.

Bring that up at an NHL players meeting. First you will be mocked. "Sissy" I hear them yelling . "How do you expect us to fight?" Well that was my next presentation "No more fighting allowed in the NHL" but since you called me sissy, I am forced to drop my gloves and challenge you to a game of Parcheesi.  Next thing you know your not the NHL player safety advisor anymore (Persecution). Then 5 years down the road, someone sitting in that same room the day you showed your power point on no more broken teeth, brings out the new NHL safety guidelines (Face guards mandatory) (Stealing). Of course change happens slowly. At one time, NHL players, including goalies wore no helmets at all. Of course there were some really bad innovative ideas that actually made it into play (see wikipedia under Cooperalls). But I am pretty sure adding full face guards is a good one and will some day be de rigour. Plus the no fighting thing. What am I a friggin psychic? We know these things will eventually happen, we just need time for the status quo agents to adapt to it and for someone to come along and steal the idea.

There you have it. This has actually happened to me more times than I want to remember. Being the first out of the box with an idea, and then trying to change the status quo is almost certainly a path into ruin. Being a status quo jockey or an idea stealer is almost certainly more financially beneficial, you just don't get to sleep at night.

Time for a change

I have been taking my car to the dealer I bought it from for 5 years. Every time I go there they try to sell me some repair I don't need and ignore my comments of how the car is running. I told them the engine light came on one morning and the car stalled out and they told me I needed a $200 fuel injector cleaning without even diagnosing the car. So I decided to take the car to a different dealer. What a difference. Not only did they listen to me and find the problem I had been having for 50,000 miles and fix it (under warranty). They found another problem and fixed that under warranty. They did an excellent job and were friendly and courteous and it was a great experience. So what a difference a simple change makes. 

I had the same experience when I changed cancer centers. Better service, listened to me and reacted to my needs and I am much happier. 

So, I have been pushing myself to keep working (as in my day job designing clinical diagnostic analyzers)  through this chemotherapy and finally decided it was too much. Fortunately I have great insurance and can take time off work at full pay. So I have decided to take time off work while I undergo the chemo and really relax and let myself heal. As I left work yesterday I felt like I was leaving a piece of me behind, but I realized this change was badly needed and will be a great thing in the long run.

Why Bother

I once went to this cafe where they served a decaf latte made with non-fat milk. The cafe named all their drinks and this one was called the "Why Bother". Similarly I have a bunch of stuff for sale on e-bay right now. Anyone unfamiliar with how the bidding goes on e-bay, Even though the listing lasts 6 days,  most people will do their bidding in the final day or even final hours. Most items sell for about half the price of a new one or you can look at other similar items and see what they sold for to get an idea of how much you should bid. So with 3 days to go in the bidding for my items people are penny bidding. Someone bids 1 cent then gets trumped by someone bidding 2 cents or some bids $1 then some else bids $1.10. Seriously, do they think that by bidding in penny increments they are actually going to win an item. These are items will sell for hundreds of dollars.

Some people are so focused on saving pennies today. When its hundred of thousands perhaps millions of dollars in the future we want to focus on.

Both people are doing what I call ass holing it. Definition: If your an ass hole you believe that your penny manipulations actually have an effect on the final outcome, when in the end your really just bidding to see your self bid or drinking a Latte that has no flavor! Neither is productive or enjoyable.

Together Making Sushi

Well were crossin' over here at the blog-a-sphere. I know the Together Cooking folks are out Mountain Biking, on my bikes by the way. So if they can do my thing, I can do theirs, Truth be told I cant do my thing now so I thought I would russle up some Sushi. I saw this great throw down with Bobby Flay and he was crap at making sushi and I thought I can do better than that. So I took the tips from Marimoto and the crazy Korean Sushi guy who took it to the flay and, well, filleted him. I made the best Veggie (Yes EJ will love it) Sushi Ever. Shown is a carrot, cuke, sesame roll with cilantro and wasabi.  Garnished with Soy Sauce Wasabi and sriracha (Spelled right by the way). Great with shaved pickled Ginger which is also good for nausea. And speaking of nausea, I tell you if Medical Marijuana was legal in New York... I bet if those state senators were going through chemo they would be like hey emergency session right now,  legalize the stuff, immediately!!!!

Reconnect and unplug

Its funny the number of things you can fix by turning them off and back on again. Or reloading the same thing again i.e. Windows software. I had several experiences around these lines last week. Reconnect number one was the power seat in my car. It had broken for the second time in two years. The first time the dealer replaced the switch. This time while waiting for a switch to arrive, I had an epiphany in the middle of the night. I sprung out of bed and headed into the cold garage. My wife hopped up and grabbed me and begged me not to go and try to fix it. I said I had to. So I went to the car, disconnected and reconnected the connector under the seat and Viola, the seat worked. It had been broken for 3 months ,stuck in my wifes forward position, preventing my son and I from driving the car. I came in jubilant and gave my wife a huge hug.

Reconnecting number two, I have two wireless routers which have been acting poorly for years. Disconnecting, not allowing computers to access the internet. So after hours on the phone with Tech support I decide to re-download the firmware into each. They are now both fixed. Who knew?

Unplugging: My normal office I go to for my Chemo treatment was closed so they had me go to a new office. What a difference, the people at the new office had fixes for all the side effects I had been experiencing in my previous treatments. Simple stuff, they even gave me free samples. Now I am having a much better Chemo experience, if you can say that. So sometimes you just need to reconnect the same old thing and sometimes you need to unplug and plug into something new. Who knew!

Courage

The photo at the left is a picture of my daughter jumping over a crevice at the top of Mount Marcy in the Adirondacks. Its an 4 hour hike and 5000 feet of climbing to reach the summit, over some very rocky and rutty terrain. Then you have to turn around and hike back down.

It takes a lot of courage to climb a mountain or jump over a crevice. Having been through experiences like this helps you have courage in other areas of your life. I am finding it takes a lot of courage to fight cancer. Courage I had not built up despite making this climb and many others. I am also finding this courage spills over into other areas of my life. I find I have the courage to speak out more. To stand up to people and situations I would have shied away from in the past. There is an art to letting things wash over you, but there is also a need to tell people who are annoying, hurtful or rude to stop. So if your full of yourself and hanging around me you just might get treated to a shot of my new found courage.

The story of the missing link..40 years in the making

If it ain't broke don't fix it right. Don't tell that to an engineer (Explains my writing style doesn't it). Our motto is, if it ain't broke, you just haven't tried hard enough to break it yet. Or how the hell does this thing work I think I will take it apart to find out. Or I can make this way better if I modify, adjust, or just fiddle with it. So goes the story of my life with mechanical things. When I was around 5 years old I took my bike apart and couldn't get it back together. I seem to always remember having a bike to ride, my Dad put it back together. I just wish he had showed me how he did it. Of course, being only 5, youv'e got to wonder how much I would have been able to comprehend. For the past 6 years I have been engrossed in a hobby of cycling. Not just riding the darn things but assembling, disassembling, cleaning, modifying, improving learning and thinking about improving the dozen bikes which have gathered in my garage. Now most of them are not mine, I have 5 other people who ride 8 of the bikes in there. Although I have been known to borrow them from time to time. I do however claim 4 of the bikes and I spend a good bit of time tinkering with them.

What I have come to learn is this, in cycling, mechanical stuff is complicated. Bike Parts are designed to work in a certain way, if assembled incorrectly (wrong bolt torque, type of grease, orientation of assembly type of part etc) all hell breaks loose. Its pretty overwhelming for someone doing this as a hobby.

Heres a recent example: My wife was having trouble shifting the gears on her bike, she has small hands and the shift lever required a lot of travel and she would not be able to shift it, (This would be the all hell breaking loose part). Usually this happened on a steep hill where she would be stuck in a high gear and end up having to stand up on the bike to get it to the top. It would be way too easy and not as much fun to go to the local bike shop and have them fix it. So I set to work adjusting fiddling, modifying etc. I get most of the job done when I notice that after the modification the chain is too long. So the chain has a little quick link which allows it to be taken apart. I have some of these on other bikes which I have taken apart successfully. So I go about trying to remove it. No luck. In fact no amount of pliering, hammering, use of excessive force or foul language will free this thing up. Well if theres one thing I have learned in 35 years its once four letter words start coming out of my mouth, its time to seek professional help (or the occasional ambulance ride). So off I go to the local bike shop and say "Hey man this thing is stuck If you can get it apart I......and before I could say "will give you fifty bucks" the bike shop guy hands me back the chain with the quick link disconnected. Perhaps he shoudn't have done it so quickly. I am there thinking this guy is a freaking David Copperfield. "Can you show me how you did it..." I felt like I was asking Tiger Woods how he hits the ball 300 yards. Well actually I felt like I was asking Tiger Woods how he kept all that skank a secret for so long. But I digress. So I was taken into the inner sanctum of solitude and shown the secret trick. Everything with bike repair is like that. Theres always some trick where it takes me and hour and 1000 lbs of force and someone shows me how to do it in 30 seconds with ease. I guess thats whats so intriguing about working on bikes..theres always something new to learn and an incredible sense of satisfaction when you learn how to do it correctly. 40 years later and I can actually put a bike back together...with a little help from my friend at the bike shop that is.

My Golf Swing

Just in case you were wondering what my golf swing looks like. Here it is.
The club is a 54 degree wedge. I hit the ball about 100 yards in each swing. Effortless!

The golf fix

I watch this show on Golf Channel called the Golf Fix. It is hosted by this guy "Michale Breed" who is a poster child for Ritalin. I really enjoy it. I have been studying and playing golf for 12 years and have gotten pretty good, but my swing has problems, and like every other golfer who has tried to fix their own swing, you tend to end up with something that looks like your trying to wound a duck. Have a look at Charles Barkely, Jim Furyk, or my father in law(who has read every golf book in the world but has a swing that is.... lets just say its self taught and leave it at that).



Well Michael was able to very simply describe how to fix a number of things in my swing, most of them in the setup and grip. I practiced then in my garage and yard over the winter and was able to hit a few wedges in the yard. Everything felt good and seemed right and it really seemed like I had discovered that I had compounded many faults in my swing, aka adapted one fault to correct for another one.

I played my first round yesterday with my new swing. Well its actually a new setup and grip. (As Michael says, in golf most faults occur before you begin to move the club, or as in life most faults occur before you begin to move your mouth). The first tee box at my club is intimidating. The tee box is lined with trees on the left and right (not unlike 18th at Augusta photo at left). I have hit the trees on the right quite a few times. The ball ricochets and lands by the womens tee (Invoking an old and rather embarrassing rule, which requires one to hit his next shot displaying visual evidence that he is in fact not a woman). I was very anxious as other golfers teed off and had to hit Mulligans. My wife Debra then teed it up and made her first golf swing in 5 months and hit a beauty right down the middle about 175 yards out. So up I stepped, did my new routine, new setup, new grip, what could go wrong. Well I piped it down the middle about 250. Maybe the best drive I have ever hit on that hole ever. I walked off the tee box down the fairway yelling "Michael Breed, I love you, I want to have your baby". Well ok I may have gotten a little too excited. Anyway, for the rest of the round, I hit the ball better than I ever have with less effort. Michael Breed "I do love you", but you can forget about that baby thing.

Howling at the Moon

Last night I went out for the first time after my first chemotherapy treatment. The stars were out and beautiful. After a beautifully sunny day, the sky was as clear as I have seen it in a while. We had dinner with some friends and one of them asked me if I just wanted to go outside and look up at the moon and ask God "Why me?" Well I dont really ever ask that. Every year millions of people get cancer, lose their jobs, mourn the loss of family members, get divorced or suffer many other traumas and setbacks. Sometimes life is easy, sometimes it is very hard.

So everyday I count my blessings, family, friends, good health (well were working on that one), opportunities to do the things I love (Golf , skiing, cycling). So instead of asking "Why me?" I try to get enjoyment out of everyday and thank God for all the great things he lets me do.

That said, my friend told me if I ever just needed to go outside and howl at the moon she would do it with me. So here it goes, "Howl.........."

Finishing a really grueling race

Here I am in 2008 finishing my third half ironman triathlon. This one was nasty. It started with 3 foot waves and me puking during the swim. Then the bike ride started up hill into 20 mph winds. Then the last part of the bike leg was over bumpy gravel, I stopped to help someone who had a flat and didn't have the stuff to fix it soI fixed it for them and half way through changing the tire it started to rain. I mean a monsoon rain. As I left the transition area to start the half marathon the lightning was incredible. The rain kept up for all of the 13 mile run. About 7 miles into the run I started to bonk and get light headed and I almost passed out. But I manged to get some cliff blocks into me and I perked back up and make it to the finish line you see at the left. Yes thats 6 hours of swimming biking and running. This race is not unlike the battle I have been waging since the first of the year. Although this time its against cancer. My family and friends are cheering me on and supporting me as they did during the half iron man. I will not let them down and I will cross the finish line.