About Me

Profile

About: My name is Cullen Bounds. I was born in Pensacola, Florida to David and Kelly Bounds, but I call the small town of Sanger, TX home. My father is a pilot (he served in the Marine Corps. and now flies for Southwest Airlines) and my mother works with ESL students in Sanger. I have a little sister named Caroline who has just started high school and cheers competitively around Texas.

I love being outside and exploring my creative outlets as a means of procrastinating the starting of homework assignments. I've owned some sort of camera for as long as I can remember and as a result, I love photography and making videos.

I travel first and foremost. I lived in Japan for three years when I was a kid because of my father's job, and this past summer, spent three months traveling Southern Africa and Eastern Europe. It's an emotional process for me. I meet incredible people who inspire me. And from that inspiration I find a drive to hone my skills and fight negativity. I consider that a fundamental aspect of who I am.

Why I Ride

The thing I remember most about my Great-Grandmother, or Granny as I called her, was her smile. I remember visiting her and Grandpa at their house in Harlingen and playing with the green electronic frog they had in their living room that would croak when you pressed a button. I remember her Oldsmobile sitting in the car park next to the house under that blazing Rio Grande Valley sun. I think I even remember the smell of her perfume. The clarity of my memory is peculiar seeing as I couldn't have been more than 3 years old when Grandpa was still alive and the both of them still lived in the Valley. But she was always smiling. That's the her I remember most.

But I also remember seeing Granny a few months before she passed. I remember how skinny she looked and I remember feeling confused when she couldn't recognize me because of the Alzheimers. I remember my mom crying. She would cry during our visits home to Texas or around the house in Pensacola. I remember the oppressive atmosphere that had slowly gotten heavier and heavier over the years that was now crushing those around me.

I knew she had cancer. I knew this unbearable weight on those around me was cancer. But I couldn't really comprehend it until it took her away from us.

In 2005, my great-grandmother, Ladonna Livingston, lost her fight to breast cancer. I ride for her and that oddly distinct memory of her smile. I ride for my grandmother, Granny's daughter and my mother's mother, for her unbelievable strength in caring for her mother in those final years. I ride for her resilience and compassion.

In 1998, 6 years before my great grandmother's death, my Great-Uncle Bucky, her son and my grandmother's brother, lost his fight to lung cancer. He was 52.

I hate the fact I don't remember my Uncle Bucky as clearly as I remember Granny. I remember his presence, but not his face or his interactions with me and I don't know why. I've only heard overwhelmingly positive things about him from my mom and her family. He loved to travel and traveled through Africa (I've seen the pictures and the rug made from a zebra he killed on a hunt there). I wish I remembered knowing him. Instead, I only know the smiles that grow on the faces of those who knew him well as they recount stories involving him and his mischievous antics. The smiles and laughter left behind really reflect the type of person he was. I ride to continue his sense of adventure and connect to him and his memory beyond the stories told to me.

They aren't the only members of my family lost to cancer. The disease has a presence in my extended family tree.

I ride for the strength my family has shown and for the pain they have endured as a result of this disease. I ride for their resilience and commitment to a positive outlook on life in spite of their struggles.

I ride to share my family and I's hope and optimism for a healthy future. The fight against cancer has been long and hard. It takes people like my Texas 4000 teammates and the community of cancer survivors to bring hope, happiness and positivity to the fight when sometimes it seems the light at the end of the tunnel is a long ways away.

I ride for you reading this and any personal connections you might have to my story or to this disease. I want to empower those you think of and ride for them. Let me know your story.

As of Summer 2015, I ride for Marcelo Flores, a dear friend and a 2012 Rockies Texas 4000 rider.

Mars was a true and unique soul. In the time I knew him, I never had a boring conversation. Instead they were fueled by mutual interests for travel and film and the arts and music and the human experience we see all around us every day and in ways we can live every day until we are old so that by the time we are, we are content and tired. Mars passed this summer and I think about him and his friendship every day.

I ride for the stories you told me, Mars, and I've begun chasing my own as well.