Yellow

Thanks everyone for their well wishes -- unfortunately, my mom's side of the family is going through some tough times right now, and I'm still figuring out how to deal with it personally. Those of you who know me, know I tend to wear my emotions on my sleeve, and I needed a few days off -- taking a page from my mom, "if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all."

When Lance Armstrong launched his LiveSTRONG initiative years ago, I was on board. I snuck out of work and walked 2 miles to the Nike Store on Michigan Avenue because it was the only place with yellow wristbands in stock. Finally, someone was shining a bright (yellow!) light on the needs of Survivors. Then, a few years ago, between personal feelings about Lance himself and a feeling that the organization had gone a bit overboard, I sort of lost faith. Stopped wearing the wristband. Stopped paying attention.

But see, that's the thing about cancer. It just waits for its chance. Turn your back, "wait and see," light a smoke -- and boom, it's there. Everywhere, in the blink of an eye. Taking over. Every day brings more discoveries. And treatment options suck -- I mean, think about it: whereas you can have your knee completely rebuilt more or less remotely through arthroscopy and be walking in a week, the only way to effectively treat cancer is to overwhelm it. Only, the only way to overwhelm it is to go in like Gen. Sherman in Georgia: guns blazing, fire and brimstone, take no prisoners and leave nothing behind. Slash and burn -- which means slash and burn all the healthy tissue and cells as well.

Sometimes, it works -- Lance lived. My dad lived. But often, it's a stopgap. You buy yourself and your loved ones time to say goodbye, if you're lucky. And so whether you yourself live or not, everyone around you becomes part of this enormous community called "Survivors." I joined that community in 1976, when I was just 3 years old. My grandfather defied the odds -- he was given 6 months to live, and made it 6 years, getting to know his three grandsons and giving me a lifetime of memories before he passed away. Since then, my mom's family has never been able to not be "Survivors" -- and now we're dealing with it again, for the 6th or 7th time.

So that's what's going on. I started wearing my bracelet again about a year ago, when Lance came to SRAM and described why it was he was re-entering the pro peloton. That's when I realized that no matter how I feel about him personally, what LiveSTRONG is doing for Survivors -- people just like me, like my family -- is too valuable to ignore. We only have so much time with our loved ones, and if one of those folks is battling cancer, you tend to look for hope wherever you can. And if the personification of that hope happens to be cruising the roads of France, well then, so be it.

Because damn it, we're all Survivors.