Three Days!

So one of the more amusing things that has happened onstage at Syosset High School (at least as long as I've been directing the shows) was during our production of Fiddler on the Roof back in the spring of 2002 (can it really be eight years ago?). During the scene where the constable comes to tell Tevye and the other villagers that they have to vacate in three days the villagers talk amongst themselves and one of the actors had the line, "three days?!". Only the actor forgot his line. There was that awkward silence on stage as everyone knew someone had forgot their line and were waiting for someone to say somthing. Suddenly you saw the actor who was supposed to speak (he probably heard the crickets chirp http://www.naturesongs.com/cricket1.wav) get that deer in the headlights look:

And all of a sudden at the top of his lungs he shouted, "THREE DAYS!?"

Well the excitement I feel today at the prospect of our Victory Ride only being THREE DAYS away is similar. It makes me feel sort of like this;

Ahhh, if only I looked that good in my cycling jersey! Instead, I look more like this;

But even though I'm not sprintng for the big win at the Tour de France, I feel like we're really making a difference and doing something for others. As of this morning we've raised just under $3000 towards the campers at Sunrise Day Camp and I'm really hoping we can possibly get another $1000 before/by Sunday. It really feels like we're doing something positive here. And the fact that it is coming together so quickly is really the most amazing part of it all. Amy (my Amy, that is) has already started talking about the logistics of promoting the ride for next year. My hope is that we can make this an annual event on Long Island and really turn it into a great charity ride!

On another note, today has been a mostly good day. I haven't been sobbing or overly angry about anything and I'm really trying to embrace life. I miss my departed family members, oddly enough more so now than when they were still with us. My thoughts have been on them and their families fairly constantly over the last two weeks and that is a good thing. For as long as we remember them and pass on those remembrances of them to others, they live on.

So I ride and I think of them. I ride and I try to envision the camper(s) that will be helped by what we will do in three days. I ride and I think of others who are facing the disease that is called cancer. And I ride and I thank God that he has given me all the gifts he has bestowed on me - talent, passion, career, students, friends, family, children, and a loving, supportive wife. I truly am a rich man - Yada deedle deedle, bubba bubba deedle deedle dum!

Stay well and I'll see you on the road, especially in THREE DAYS!!!!

Sobs and 4 More Days!

So all the literature warns that when you're dealing with loss the emotional changes between stages of grief can come unexpectedly and leave you on an emotional roller coaster. That was certainly the case today. I had been having an okay ride into school when I finally pulled up to the door for school. Suddenly out of nowhere I started sobbing and couldn't stop for a good five minutes. I don't know why. I wasn't thinking of anything in particular, it just started up. I then pulled myself together and by the time I had to go to teach my first period class I was manic and bouncing off the walls.

However, since then its been a pretty good day. I've gotten some good news on the internship front - it looks like things are going to work out really well and I'm excited about the district internship. Maybe someday when I grow up I'll be a real boy, umm, I mean I'll move on to being a coordinator.

AAAAAAAANNNNNNNDDDDDDDD, ONLY FOUR MORE DAYS UNTIL THE VICTORY RIDE! As of this morning we have 15 riders (although I have verbal commitments from about six more riders) and we've collected about $2500 in pledges - almost enough for 1/2 a camper! With any luck we can collect another $3500 and that would get another camper to experience a great summer at Camp Sunrise!

So, if ANY of you have been sitting on the fence about riding with us, now is the time to go online to my website (the link is to your right) and click on the "Victory Ride" link and come join us! You'll be giving a lucky child a great gift and you'll do something great for yourself at the same time!

Sooooo, stay well and I'll see you on the road!

Another Reason to Ride

Today is a mixture of emotions for me. I realize that when I first started writing this blog it was basically just to update everyone on how the year-long Connor's Army effort was going. As I started to gear up for this year's Victory Ride - CAN YOU BELIEVE IT'S ONLY IN 6 DAYS? - I initially began writing this blog again to let you all know how it was going, what we needed and how YOU could help. Well, that hasn't changed but my life has.

However, the last two weeks I have been side tracked by a series of family tragedies. I honestly can't say that I have much motivation to do anything but get on my bike and crank the pedals - and be so grateful for my children and my wife. I know that my family is with me and they support me but it has been rough on them, especially for the few times that I haven't been able to control my anger and it just busts out of me - but I am getting better. My wife is probably the most supportive person I could ever wish for - even if she doesn't always think she is. I am a very lucky man.

Anyway, today it has been one week since I became aware of the double whammy of the passing of my Aunt Janice from cancer. I'm still pissed at cancer and I'm still wanting to do something more. How could cancer take this wonderful woman out like that? Here is a picture of her in younger days. In my head this is how I remember her.

Now, in six days I'll be able to do a little bit as I ride to raise money so kids with cancer can have the chance to just be kids for the summer as I was able to be a kid when I stayed with Aunt Janice. It's a little depressing because the money (or the riders) are not coming in as I had hoped they would. We really need more people to ride to show support for these kids and if we (okay, especially ME) could just get some more sponsors it would be such a help to these kids. We really are hoping to be able to raise $6,000 - the cost of one camper!

Yesterday (actually this morning) I also became aware of another reason to ride and on my ride in this morning it had me in tears every time I thought about it. David's widow Ronda sent me an e-mail that was responding to one of these posts and what she wrote touched me and made me even more determined than ever to use my bicycle to make a difference. She wrote;

"I was told a story by a good friend of David's and know I know why David did this. His friend Dave Pearson told me a story about when David worked for Wilburn's, he said David went out and bought a bicycle and rode it to work and he did this a few times but realized he did not have the strength, or let's say the the energy, to ride the hills to get to work. He was trying to be like his big brother and ride his bicycle where he needed to go, and I think a part of that was to also lose weight."

I never knew that he had done that and I'm sure not many people knew it either. Now it will be too late for me to ever be able to go on a ride with him. Had things been different and I had known about this, I would have made it a point to ride through Knoxville next year on the cross country ride and spend some time riding beside my little brother. That's not possible now but I will ride as much as I can and try to ride to make a difference in someone's life. And if I can work it out, I will still try to ride through Knoxville and know that David's spirit will be riding with me for he has certainly just made a difference in my life.

So if you're reading this please help us out in one of three ways;

1) Sign up to ride with us next Sunday,
2) Sponsor me online and I'll ride for you,
3) Tell your friends about what we're trying to do and encourage them either to ride or sponsor me!

Any of the ways you can will make a difference in the life of a child and will make certain that they'll have a summer to remember!

Stay well and I'll see you on the road.

Back to Work!

So today was the first day back at good old SHS! Its been nearly two weeks since we were last here and its 80 degrees outside! So given everything that has gone on in my life in the last two weeks I was going to ride today, come Hell or High Water!

So I left this morning thinking "who in the heck said it was going to be warm this morning?!?!" as my legs and fingers kept getting colder and colder. But as I warmed up I started having a better ride and my legs felt strong. However, I couldn't get David and Aunt Janice out of my head. As I was freezing I kept thinking, "yeah, but its nothing compared to what her treatments were like!" After that I decided I needed to do one thing - HAMMER! I just had to get it out, and get out the anger and the tears and the frustration I've been feeling and continue to feel.

I also have been dealing with a lot of guilt because to be quite honest I've done none of the work this break that I was supposed to do. I didn't do the rehearsal calendar, I didn't do my admin work, I didn't do the grading I was going to do, didn't do the boys' science fair projects and didn't do the work around the house. I'm really not sure what I did becuase the time was just gone. I would like to think that maybe I just got sucked into some black hole void but I know that's not true becuase all of this really did happen.

So, yeah, I'm back at school and the classes have been going okay. It's also hard to get the momentum back due to the fact that our week before the vacation was truncated by the evacuation because of asbestos. So we've all had 13 days of vacation and nobody is really motivated to get to work. It sort of stinks since the end of the marking period is next week! But getting to work has been helpful and being surrounded by my kids has been a great tonic. When I opened my office door this morning there was a line of about ten kids ready to give me a hug and they've been doing it periodically all day. When people ask me why I want to be a school teacher, this is the reason - because they give back as much as they get!

Callbacks for Merchant of Venice are today so I'll be busy throughout and then I get to get outside and ride home! Since Amy's picking up the kids I'll take the long way home and try to HAMMER a few more hills! It'll be more difficult since I'll be carrying lots in my backpack but that'll just add to the sufferfest - and maybe that'll take my mind off the pain for a while.

11 days until the Victory Ride! I can hardly believe it! I just hope we can get some more riders for the event. I would be very happy if we could just get 40 people to ride with us. Right now we only have 9 so I hope we can get more to join us. SO IF YOU'RE READING THIS AND YOU LIVE ON LONG ISLAND - SIGN UP! We really need you!

That's all for now. Stay well and I'll see you on the road!

I Hate Cancer! Catharsis, Part 3.

So if any of you have followed my blogs, either recently or for the long haul, you know at least two things about me - I like to ride my bicycle (yes, the anthem of Queen should be resounding in all of your heads right now), and I Hate Cancer! Today I had the chance to combine both of these "passions".

You see, I received word from my sister Tamara today that our Aunt Janice died on Saturday. We knew she was sick and she was too sick to make it to David's memorial but we didn't know how sick. Now we know and to tell you the truth, it just pisses me off.

You know how in your life there are little things, little moments in time that solidify certain times of your life. All you have to do is think of them and you know where you were and mental images just pop into life. I do that all the time. All I have to do is think of a certain time in my life and the mental images just come up. I have a lot of those images in my head from my Aunt Janice. During a very developmental time of my life I spent the better part of three summers with her - the summers after I turned 8, 9 and 10. One of the biggest memories I have of her is how patient and gentle she was with me when I needed my stitches out.

I wasn't really a big cry baby but I was known for getting into things. Usually taking them apart and then my dad would have to put them back together again. Well, one May while on a fishing trip with him I decided to make a bow and some arrows out of sticks I found around and some fishing line. While notching the arrows so the string would fit the stick split and the knife ended up slicing my thumb down the middle lengthwise and cut down to the bone. A crazy, mad rush to an out of the way hospital later I was stitched up and the inside of my dad's pickup truck had a lot of my blood in it (good thing I didn't disappear, but this was way before CSI)! Well, the stitches were unique (at least for me who had been stitched up many times before - I was an "adventurous" kid) in tha they went right through my thumbnail - ouch!

Anyway, when I got to my Aunt Janice's house for the summer the stitches needed to be taken out. I remember so well how gentle she was and how patient she was with getting those stitches out. Even though her own children were very small at the time she was so good at it that I barely felt anything. I spent the rest of that summer and the next going between her and my Grandma Connor's house but my times with her (and running amok with the neighborhood kids) was exactly what I needed for the summer. During a very developmental part of my life, she provided a chance for me to have summers with a certain kind of nurturing that I really needed. She even sent me to Bible Camp - but that's a story for another time. Unfortunately, due to some tricky family dynamics and issues I drifted out of touch with Aunt Janice and the summer of my tenth year was the last time I saw or heard from her.

Yet today the memory of the stitches and of those summers came flooding back as I rode and pushed myself up the hills - I searched out each one that I could and attacked it like I was attacking this hateful disease that has touched my family yet again! I just wanted to pound something and just keep attacking it. And as I was attacking I had another cathartic moment, one that was equal parts emotional catharsis and mental/spiritual epiphany. In my ride I resolved one thing for certain - my cross country ride HAS to happen next summer! I need to do something MORE to help all the others that are fighting this disease - especially the kids who have done nothing but try to grow up and be kids. They deserve the same kind of summers I had - the chance to run around with friends, play games, swim and just have fun.

So as I finished up my 30 mile slug fest with cancer, before I went home I stopped by Adams Cyclery and spoke to Chuck about what kind of bike I would need for the cross country journey. I was still pissed and hurt and close to tears but Chuck was great and supportive and after talking a bit we decided that a cyclocross bike with rack mounts would be the best for my needs. A good, light aluminum frame (no crabon for me!) with a compact front crank to handle the mountains. Since Adams Cyclery is one of my sponsors he said he could help me get a 2009 model (which is vastly cheaper than the 2010s) and I can do it on lay away (wow, people actually still do that). Unfortunately, with finances being what they are now I can't even afford the down payment, much less the $1400 for the whole bike, argh! I keep hoping I can find a way though. So, if anyone out there sees any leprechauns (and catches one) or wins the lottery and wants to share the winnings, (or if any bike companies out there are reading this and want to throw a good quality cyclocross bike my way, lol) its a Trek CX-01 and I'll put you down as a sponsor!

But no matter what - Cancer continues to piss me off as it keeps insiduously sneaking up on little cat feet and touching my family. I hate it and I would love nothing better to help eradicate it in our lifetime. For now I'll do what I can for those youngest members who are fighting it - but next summer Cancer better watch out!

Stay well my friends and I'll see you on the road.