juvenile sports

I bet the best part about being a sports announcer is getting to say "sack" on the air. And "penetrating the red zone".

a cancer story that's not a cancer story

Often when you hear a story about cancer, you read about someone who had no symptoms then launched headlong into a life-mangling battle with the disease. “I went in for what I thought was strep throat, and the next thing I knew, my hair was falling out and I was puking like a frat boy at a keg party.”

The stories we hear and read about the disease are almost always those of detection, diagnosis, and treatment; hopefully of survivorship, and sadly of death. It’s a heart-crushing scenario in any case. We rally around the patient and we use words like “fight” and “battle” and vow not to let cancer take control. These are valiant words and they give us all – patient and loved ones alike – a sense of empowerment to squash this invader who threatens someone very dear. You go ahead and try to conquer a very good person, alien cells, but you will be denied because this person is too good to suffer.

But what about a cancer story that is seemingly not a story at all? One of my best friends in the world was recently convinced that he had a tumor in his jaw and neck. He had many symptoms that indicated something was indeed wrong: a lump under the jawbone, soreness in his neck, and he had been a tobacco chewer since his youthful invincible years. There’s a frightening feeling that beckons to be addressed – one is keenly aware that this needs to be investigated right away, yet the crippling fear of truth is a powerful deterrent. The mind jumps to conclusions and runs directly toward being laid to rest while family and friends sob uncontrollably, residual victims of something that neither prayers nor medicine could halt.

With great bravery, my friend sought a doctor’s opinion. This was perhaps the most frightening time in his life. The doctor even surmised that based on the symptoms and history, there was a high probability it was indeed cancer. Tests were run, scans, waiting…..several anxiety-soaked days and sleepless nights passed. Bleak thoughts entered his head and arrangements were pondered should the news come back as expected.

The fateful day. The eagerly awaited and dreaded call from the doctor. The results were negative. No cancer. We met for coffee a couple days later, as we have done most days for the past three years or so, and he divulged his ordeal. Until now, he had kept it private so as not to cause any worry or distraction. Now the burden had been lifted and life was once again new. 

My own life had been so impacted by cancer in negative ways that all I knew of the disease was how it changed lives with a positive diagnosis. My parents, two uncles, a cousin, more than a couple friends were all lost to cancer. Others who are close to me had been diagnosed with cancer, experienced its unfriendly demeanor, and lived to tell about it. But never before had it really occurred to me how cancer can wield such a powerful influence even when it is not found. My friend's life had been temporarily upended by the mere notion that he just might have the disease, and for me weighing the thought of losing another friend gave me chills. 

So this cancer story mercifully never really happened. It was effectively little more than a bad dream after all was said and done, but it still changed a life and made for an ominous consideration of what could have transpired.

I suspect we'll meet for coffee for years to come, and the coffee will now taste a bit more robust.

Lance, Heroes, and Hope

No hero is infallible. Whether your hero is a parent, a political figure, an actor, a writer, or an athlete, as long as heroes are human, there is always some slightly less than desirable trait that underlies the sparkling image we see and read about.

The thing is we need heroes. We need heroes to affirm that anything is possible and that we can aspire to their greatness. Heroes, quite simply, give us hope.

So now we have Floyd Landis who wanted to be and tried so desperately to be a hero that he cheated to become one.  In 2006, he won the Tour de France…briefly.  A positive doping test bled into the media just as sports writers were finishing up their pieces about his amazing victory that year. Tarnish and stain. But Floyd seemed like a good guy and many thought surely the results were wrong or would be proven false. He embarked on a media tour declaring his innocence and he even wrote a book (now a joke) about it boldly entitled, ‘Positively False: The Real Story of How I Won the Tour de France’. We wanted to believe Floyd because he appeared to be an average dude like the rest of us and we thought he would have been crazy to use any form of performance enhancing drugs right before a stage that he fully intended to win. Stage winners, after all, are almost certainly guaranteed to be tested.

Floyd fought seemingly endless court battles and spent pretty much everything he was worth to defend himself and to have us believe that surely he wouldn’t bankrupt himself to support a lie. In addition to that, he endured bizarre exchanges in court with former Tour winner and persistent Lance attacker, Greg Lemond, and the drama of it all served to paint professional cyclists as completely psychotic head cases.

Cut to Spring 2010. Out of the blue, whaddaya know, Floyd admits doping. It was all a lie after all. His book, his media blitz, his insistence that he did not cheat….all exposed as lies just as we were all getting excited about the upcoming Tour de France. I’m sure the timing was a complete coincidence. Oh and by the way, he now joined hands with his former adversary Lemond and together they kind of slipped in a thorned word or two about Lance Armstrong being a fraud, a cheat, and a liar. Hey Floyd…pssst…your bucket has a few holes in it.

So here we go again hauling Lance through the fire when time after time inquiries and tests have proven nothing. Lance is the most tested athlete certainly in cycling and likely in the entire world of sports, but there has never been any positive test except for his use of a steroid cream for saddle sores. And that was approved by cycling’s medical authorities.  No, Floyd’s admission couldn’t be simply to clear his conscience and to embark on a mission to teach young athletes about not using drugs, could it? Instead, he is working very hard (with the help of FDA investigator/witch hunter Jeff Novitsky) to drag everyone in the world of cycling into the ugliness that will surely overshadow Floyd’s little problem. This is his Plan B to become a hero without regard to the fact that his credibility is zero. Attempting to ruin others is not a form of heroism. It is instead a manipulated form of schadenfreude and in the end, Floyd, you will still appear to be a bitter, disturbed man no matter the outcome.

I am so worn and tired from reading and hearing about this perennial attack on Lance. I do not believe he doped. I do not want to believe any of the allegations. He is a hero to more than 28 million cancer victims and countless others who have been affected by cancer’s wrath in one way or another. His foundation has given hope and provided a valuable source of advocacy on Capitol Hill in the fight against cancer. The LiveStrong campaign has united and ignited the world in the fight, and quite frankly these efforts have transcended even his amazing feats on the bike.

Even if Lance has been lying and did use performance enhancing drugs (which I am certain will not be proven to be the case), I will go so far as to say that at this point I don’t even care. Maybe it turns out that my hero was fallible. So be it. What matters in the end is the good that he has produced in our world, and that to me far outweighs the negative witch hunt agenda of Landis, his buddy Lemond, and Novitsky.

LiveStrong, Lance. I’m on your side.

i hate bikes

a bike ride anywhere outside of your own driveway is a risk. a bike ride out in sparsely populated horse country is an even bigger risk. when your wife (the "come get me" contact) is out of town, potential disaster.

so sure enough, i was riding through horse country while my wife was out of town and suddenly got a flat. an inexplicable, didn't run over anything, didn't see anything, completely flat tire.

no worries, i'll just patch it and be on my way. a great plan except that i couldn't find the leak. after 20-30 minutes of partially pumping the tube to try find the leak, i finally discovered that a previous patch had grown weary and allowed air to escape. so i put two patches on it and it held air -- at least it would get me home some 10 miles away.

that is, until i got about a mile and a half away from the house when it decided to start leaking again. hurriedly i slapped one more patch on the tube, reassembled the tire onto the wheel, and began pumping. psssssssss. crap. not again. ok, forget it. i pulled out my spare tube (which also had been previously patched). i pumped it up briefly to see if it would hold air.....and......of course not. so i stuck my last patch onto that little mess, re-inserted the tube into the tire, pumped away, and voila.......would not hold air.

have you ever walked a mile in cycling shoes? or a mile and a half, for that matter? neither have i, nor did i want to. but as soon as i reached for my cell phone, one of the few benevolent souls left on the planet (i'm convinced that 90% of all benevolent souls are cyclists) stopped and gave me his spare tube, no questions asked, no cash accepted (not that i had any).

faith in mankind re-newed, i was finally able to pedal home. so with all that, this ride was 27 miles and took me 4 hours.  last weekend, i rode 55 miles over several grueling climbs in the foothills...also 4 hours. i suppose both rides built character, just in entirely different ways.

just nuts

Everyone always says "kids say the darndest things" and the best part is when they say those things in a public setting. Take, for example, when my son announced in a crowded restaurant, "my nuts are sticking to my leg".

It probably didn't help that he noticed my tears of laughter.

dude, where's yer beer?

My son, Holden, is 5.5 years old. He is smart, a master negotiator, a charmer, a scientist, popular with the ladies, and very smart.

For a couple weeks, we had been talking about how spring break was coming up, and to us parents the very phrase "spring break" spurs a Pavlovian response so strong that its very mention can render an immediate sunburn, a hangover, and annoying falsetto WOOHOOOs echoing from the ghosts of spring break revelers past. Spring break is as closely associated with college and coming of age as perhaps the onset of balding and slowing metabolism.

We had never really discussed with our kids the true meaning of spring break, but children are instinctive and they could sense that the magic words ignited a sparkle in our eyes - a deeply rooted yearning for a former life virtually devoid of responsibility and dictated by nothing more than rambling, senseless waywardnicity. It's something we all struggle with after graduation...the cruel fact that spring break goes away and disappears from your life when you really need it most.

Maybe it was because of our obvious fondness for that one week each year of utter freedom, but somehow Holden picked up on the spring break attitude, the sentiment, the completely care-free, caution-to-the-wind joie de vivre.

As I was getting him ready for bed the night spring break officially started, he pulled on some pajama pants over his bare little buttocks. I asked him "are you going to put on some underwear with your jammies?"

"Dad! It's SPRING BREAK! We can go commando!" he declared.

For those of you without kids, man you are missing it.

Ice. The Equalizer.

There is one underlying force in this world which is the great equalizer. No matter how cool you are, how adroit you may be, how handsome or beautiful, smart, or talented, it has the power to embarrass you, frustrate you, and potentially disable you. 

What is this force?

Ice.

Humans were not meant to function upon it naturally. We are not equipped with spikes, blades, slats, treads, or any other means to travel safely and effectively over ice. Yet since we are curious creatures, we must try. We tried to fly for many many years and eventually figured it out with the help of various devices designed to harness air currents. We really have no business being in water other than perhaps while taking a bath. Yet we persisted in breaching the world of fish by producing scuba gear, diving bells, boats, and submarines. And so it is with skates, skis, boards, crampons, and various rubber compounds that we willingly struggle to navigate ice since we feel we must.

I have come to the conclusion that I enjoy the Winter Olympics more than the summer games but I struggled with the reason. Yes, that's it - ice!

Maybe it's obvious to you, but ice is precisely the single biggest factor that makes the Winter Olympics so compelling. An entire two-week-long (give or take) spectacular circus devoted to sliding. Sliding down a hill, around an oval, over terrain, or in an arena. Sliding, sliding, sliding with varied attempts to either control it or use it.

The Summer Olympics are triumphant with feats that stretch the bounds of human physiology, amazing athletes all taking part in their respective activities on solid non-slippery ground. Ok, except for the water sports, but water itself isn’t much for slipperiness. I don't mean to denigrate the Summer Olympics, but there is a little something lacking in thrill factor. Yes, there’s speed, strength, skill, tactics, artistic interpretation, and drama….but not much in the way of an ever-present feeling that someone’s gonna just totally eat it at full speed.

In the Winter Olympics, you can pretty much guarantee that with every single event, someone will without fail end up sprawled and flailing, skimming across a shimmering frozen surface. It’s a huge risk! It’s dangerous! It's absolutely thrilling! Of course, we never wish to see anyone seriously hurt (or killed, as we sadly witnessed in Vancouver) but it is an undeniable part of our twisted nature to sort of - yes I'll say it - want to see someone fall, or try very hard to avoid it. Admit it - that's what makes all the action. Often in the Winter Olympics, the very difference between winning and losing is not so much who can go the fastest, farthest, or highest, but simply who in the end has avoided face-planting into frosty shame. Ice has no favorites based on nationality, grace, or popularity. Ice doesn't care and it will take anyone down at any time.

Perhaps it is not the desire to see someone fail so much as it is the hope to see them persevere in the face of adversity. Perhaps it is inspiring to witness a competitor falter but live to fight again, and the next time conquer. We love the unlikely hero, the underdog, the one who shows human vulnerability. In one part of the brain it is wildly entertaining to see someone take a digger in spectacular fashion. In a very different part of the brain, we want to give that person a big hug, dust them off and say, "It's ok -- you tried and it's amazing you came this far. Well done."

Thank you, Winter Olympics, for the treacherous, slippery, and speedy journey on ice. I will miss you while you are gone for four long years.