John
I’m not riding. I’m holding fast with everything I’ve got to my title of Laziest Human Being in Charlotte. But I am designing this website and giving my time that way, along with helping Lisa and Paul head up our fundraising efforts. And I’m giving my cash, too, because that involves far less sweat and chafing than riding a bike for one hour, much less 24. I think they’re all nuts.
But this is a disease that matters a lot to me. I’ve lost three people in my life that were very dear to me to cancer, and cancer deprived me of ever meeting my wife’s mother. So I’m doing this for Debbie Moore, Blair Beasley, and Caroline Crawford. Debbie would have been my mother in law if she had not died of breast cancer the winter before Suzy and I met. So I never met her, but I obviously think a lot of her daughter, and wish that she would have had the opportunity to watch us grow up together, buy a house, fight, make up, and generally do all those things that you get to enjoy doing when your kid grows up. But she didn’t have that chance, because breast cancer, which killed her sister some ten years before, took her life in December of 1993.
Blair and Caroline were two of my professors in college. Caroline was my lighting design professor and Blair was my advisor and directing professor. It’s faily safe to say that without their guidance, my life would have taken a very different turn. Caroline also died of breast cancer, and Blair did the unpardonable thing - he quit drinking and smoking, so of course he died of lung cancer. They were more than teachers, they were my friends. And that’s why I’m sitting in front of a computer screen at 12:45AM on a Friday night/Saturday morning building a website. Because I don’t ride, but I write.
