“Sure, I Like Bikes!”
When two of my peers invited me to join their 180-mile journey across central Ohio on a bike this August, my immediate reaction was, unsurprisingly, “Sure, I like bikes!” In the ensuing months, when acquaintances, friends, and family members questioned my motivation (and perhaps my sanity), the answer they received often related to my affinity and obsession with cycling. Those who know me well know that I am preferably on the road, often on the trainer, and always in the saddle.
When I first began cycling in high school, it served primarily as a low-impact form of cross-training and an opportunity to share a hobby in common with my father. As I progressed to solo rides in college, I quickly came to appreciate the therapeutic hum of the tires, the click of the gears, the whistle of the wind past my helmet as a rode through Jefferson’s vineyards in Charlottesville or McRee’s Mill in Athens. On a bicycle I could travel miles — farther in a few hours than I would drive in a week — leaving in my wake the anxieties and uncertainties that accompany post-graduate life.
If it sounds as though I developed my enthusiasm (and borderline obsession) for bicycling for self-interested reasons, it is because I did. Cycling allowed me for the first time in many years to feel strong and capable. I had become, simply by virtue of my spandex shorts and the click of my cleats, a member of a rag-tag group of athletes equally passionate about conquering the open road on the beautifully simplistic human-powered two-wheeled machine.
As I tested daily my own limitations — both physically and psychologically — I came to appreciate the capacities that enabled me to transcend boundaries both self- and societally-imposed. And in doing such — in learning more about my points of weakness and failure — I became aware of the privilege I possessed in the mere ability to get in the saddle and ride for hours, carefree and unburdened. Just as I was growing stronger and more confident, people dear to my heart were discovering their own challenges with the limitations of the body, and emerging from that experience in ways vastly different to my own.
I have been sadly familiar with cancer from a shockingly young age — my grandmother passed from complications due to breast cancer far before I understood the meaning of the word. Many others followed, relatives near and distant who have fought a valiant battle, those who overcame as well as those who survive only in our memories and minds. Some were too distant in both geography and kinship to appear as more than a somber blip on the radar screen of a self-interested adolescent, but none failed to contribute to a growing familiarity with and acceptance of the presence of cancer in my life. Indeed, I became flippant towards cancer — when asked about my family history or knowledge of the disease, I replied nonchalantly, listing a dozen friends or relatives, rattling off names and diagnoses as easily as my peers listed members of their favorite boy band.
I do not believe that my family is unique for the frequency or prevalence of cancer and the tragedies that too often accompany it. Rather, my parents did not see merit in “sanitizing” my childhood with ambiguous platitudes to avoid the difficult questions I asked. The effect, however, was desensitization to the severity and seriousness of cancer — rendering it normal and inevitable. My rationale at a young age — one that subversively lingers to this day — was that eventually, we all would develop cancer. That was how life worked, wasn’t it?
In the years since — coincidentally those during which I began to spend more time in the saddle — I became conscious of the lack of normalcy of what I experienced. It is not normal for sisters, aunts, and cousins to undergo genetic testing to calculate their odds of developing breast or ovarian cancer. It is not normal to read the blog of your mother’s cousin telling you that the cancer is back — again, and with more aggression. It is not normal to know what a hypothermia cranial cap is, how to use it, and where to buy it. It is not normal for the last image of your grandfather to be the papery-thin translucence of his emaciated hand.
All of these stories, all of these interactions, they were decidedly not normal. More than that, they were not inevitable. It is not inevitable that girls should grow up calculating when to go to graduate school or start a family so as to be finished before cancer arrives. It is not inevitable that a community will lose its moral and spiritual leader because the most recent manifestation of cancer is even more ravaging and ruthless than the first. It is not inevitable that a daughter should worry if her mother will possess the strength after chemotherapy and radiation to hold her newborn granddaughter. It is not inevitable that “6 months to live” will be a diagnosis we accept, however begrudgingly. It is not inevitable that we should passively accept our own future diagnoses, certain that it’s coming, so why fight it?
I will embark on this journey — far longer than just the 180 miles across central Ohio in a peloton of compatriots — not only because “I like bikes.” I still like bikes. More than that, however, Pelotonia allows my love for cycling to translate into support and solutions for the millions of individuals that cancer has affected in the past, and the millions that it will affect in the future. Pelotonia turns the strength that I have discovered on the bicycle into the immense strength needed to fight back against this indiscriminate disease. The research and innovation of the Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center will channel our energy, our enthusiasm, and our efforts into ensuring that each year, each month, each day that passes sees fewer and fewer diagnoses.
My vision, and that which I share with my teammates and the cycling community, is a future where little girls grow up without fear of a genetic “death sentence.” It is a future where the first, second, or third return of cancer is inconceivable. It is a future where grandfathers bounce their grandchildren on their knees with a smile and the firm grip of a long and fulfilling life. Is a future in which I do not have to ride for a cancer patient, but rather with a cancer survivor.
So as I get in the saddle this August, each stroke of the pedal is a battering ram against cancer. Each mile is a leap towards a cure. And each penny is a token of hope. I hope that each of you will be there with me: pelotonia.org/rachelanne
