Profile

  • Route: Rockies
  • Ride Year: 2004

About: Born in New Orleans on Jan. 31, 1983.
What I spend most of time doing:
Student Government: One Year at Large rep, Texas UNICEF, Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority, Ye Ole Walling Place Clan, UT Geography Society, UT Cycling. India bound in the fall!

Favorite book: Where the Red Furn Grows
why? as a kid, it made me appreciate the value of a good
book and it can still make me cry.

Why I Ride

We all have different mental associations with the word cancer, but none the less, we
don't like its collective meaning. To me, it means a hero-taker and
a hero- maker.

It means years from now a friend will call and tell
me she has bad news. "I have cancer" she will say. We will cry together and I will spend the next moments reviewing all the "what-ifs" as our memories surface in my thoughts.

Then I will remember the ride. The way those kids in the hospital smiled when we, dressed in full bike gear, said, "we are doing this for you"; the way crossing the Continental Divide makes you feel so small; the way cars honk at us when they read our jerseys. But most of all, I will remember that amid everything the word cancer means, there is a spirit within all of us to both recognize its power and assert our human strength within its domain.

People often doubt the plausibility of our prowess. All their questions begin with, "How...". While I can't answer every inquiry,
I do know that no matter what my body will feel like after riding upwards of 75 miles, the feeling that surges through your body when someone you love has died is far stronger. I know how it feels to be at a funeral when you suddenly recall all that you loved about someone: their smile, their laugh, the times you got to hug them. For those people and the ones that keep them going, I ride.

Raise a toast to all the beautiful things our short time here brings us. I will pedal with everything in me and on the way I will redefine all that cancer means in my heart and in the heart of those that back our cause: there is hope through inspiration- and that goes both ways!