I was born in St. Louis, Missouri on the great day of March 24th, 1982. After my freshman year at St. Louis University High School (or SLUH), my family moved down to Dallas where I finished at Jesuit College Prep. Then I came down to UT, Austin where I'm studying Electrical Engineering. I am now a senior and plan on attending graduate school in a year and a half. I grew up on skates and played ice and roller hockey for seven or eight years. I seem to enjoy most other things that involve my feet not being on the ground: skating, wakeboarding, skiing, snowboarding, cycling, etc. I also like camping and ceramics, and enjoy learning about the scientific universe that we exist in.

To me, cancer is one of the scariest things in life. To spontaneously lose control of the growth rate of your cells and have your body produce a tumor seems out of this world. Yet, it's not; thousands of people die every year from this ailment, and millions are affected by the emotional drama of its repercussions.

When I started smoking senior year in high school, it was fun. "I won't get hooked." "It's not bad for me if I don't smoke that often." Well, this mode of thinking was obviously wrong. A year later I'm a regular smoker and would be for four years. That definitely wasn't in the game plan when I started.

A year ago my mom got a tumor in her colon. Until then, cancer hadn't affected my personal life or that of my family. This was scary. She has been lucky; she had it removed and after chemotherapy treatments, things seem to be going good. But what if she was one of the many unlucky victims? And I thought, "It is ridiculous for me to be encouraging this life threatening disease when a copious amount of people have it forced upon them by no fault of their own."

So it's time for a clean slate. I quit smoking and I'm going on this bike ride to help others avoid this terrible epidemic. Sometimes cancer is unavoidable and for this our donation to the American Cancer Society will help fund research so that hopefully one day we may find a cure. At other times, cancer can be prevented, and I hope that our presentations across North America will help provide the knowledge needed for these preventative processes.

I know that this trip will leave an impact on me for the rest of my life. I would like to say that I joined out of selfless sacrifice, but I can't think of anything I'd rather do with my time this summer.