…I got a phone call from my grandma’s neighbor saying that my grandpa had “fallen.” Everyday my grandpa would walk to the end of the drive, pick up the mail, and since he wasn’t strong enough to walk all of the way back to the house, he would stop and sit on a stack of […]

What exactly is cancer, and why, even after years of study, are we still fighting it? Well, a friend of mine, Jesus Maldonado, explains better than I can here, condensing worlds of research into four elegant pages (and seeing him do it is unspeakably exciting, because it shows just how much people our age can […]

I was sitting down to do some school work in between passing periods this Monday morning when I had a strong inclination to compose this journal entry instead. Call it procrastination or whatever you’d like, but somehow this urge wrestled past my enormous OCD habit of “productivity all the time.” I always like to peruse […]

Cancer doesn’t discriminate. It effects the very young, the long-lived, and even the most healthy of us all. My brother-in-law was the latter. Quite possibly the most fit and healthy individual in our family (and we have a really fit family!) he was afflicted by a rare cancer that was even outside of its usual […]

At the end of the day, the Internet does a much better job explaining these things than I could ever dream: http://adventure.howstuffworks.com/outdoor-activities/biking/bicycle1.htm (I really did read the article. Just, you know, fyi.)

I want to talk about this exercise business. First of all, I am riding my freaking bike from Austin, Tx to Anchorage, AK. You would think that I am an athlete, a long time proponent of an active lifestyle. Well, guess again. Don’t get me wrong, since the semester I applied for Texas 4000, I […]

Six days have passed. I finally feel ready to share what happened last week. Last Thursday, September 15, my close friend Scott and I went to the weekly adoration and praise & worship service at the University Catholic Center. I especially prayed for my Aunt Isabel who has been suffering through her battle against cancer. […]

So, what with this whole biking to Alaska thing, one would imagine that the relationship between you and your bicycle is a pretty crucial part of the Texas 4000 experience. This strapping specimen of, uh, various metal alloys(?) will carry you (the generic, Texas 4000 you) beyond where even the Proclaimers would dare tread. Basically, […]

Restaging last week revealed a couple things worth sharing. First, the good news. Biopsies and images taken during an endoscopy Thursday have revealed no cancer in the stomach. Dr. Raju, the gastric oncologist was in total shock, he said that in his years as a GO he had never seen anything like it. He was […]

It’s been a tough day. I know a lot of people who can relate with the above sentence. Some people probably live it 7 days a week. I’ve lived at least 5 of them in a row so far, and I have come to realize a pattern. I, sadly, am not Superman. The more tasks […]