About Me

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Why I Ride

I ride for Hope. Inside all of us lives a deep ache for certainty, comfort, and the promise that it will all be okay. When the world doesn’t give us that assurance, we must cling to hope. As South African social rights activist Desmond Tutu once said, “hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness.” I ride for light that breaks through the cracks of dark walls and restores our hope.

I don’t know what it’s like to lose a loved one to cancer, but I do know what it’s like to feel threatened, saddened, and impacted by the disease. My mom lives every day since 2001 wondering if her Cervical Cancer will come back. I never got to meet my grandfather, because he passed away 60 days after his diagnosis of Leukemia in 1990. My mom lost her best friend since 7th grade to her battle with Breast Cancer in June of 2016.

These dark walls close in on us reminding us that it’s all not going to be okay. We quickly forget that as humans we were never made to have control. But although we cannot control, we most definitely can influence. We have a choice to gather our tools and chip away at the dark walls until the light floods through. I ride for the hope that is given to us when we chose to influence.

My chosen tool of influence has been given to me through Texas 4000. Along with my teammates, I am biking to Alaska in the summer of 2018 to bring hope and light to people who need it, to spread knowledge of potentially life-saving preventions and screenings, and to raise money for cancer research and support.

I will never control cancer, who it claims, and who it sets free. But I can influence it with everything that I have. I ride for the all the people directly and indirectly effected by cancer. I ride for the hope of a world where cancer is a thought of the past and our loved ones are kept close.

If you have a story to share or someone you would like me ride for, please don’t hesitate to reach out. Your story matters, and I would love nothing more than to honor you or someone you know on my ride.


I ride for Loren Orr.
I ride for Christy Orr.
I ride for Eileen Orr.
I ride for Virgil Pittman.
I ride for Cindy Smullen.
I ride for June Slaughter.