About Me

Profile

Why I Ride

When I was in elementary school, my father, David Bertram, was diagnosed with colon cancer. Although I wasn't aware of the severity of the situation until later on, my father was given around 10 years to live. He spent the next decade of his live coaching all of my sports teams, teaching me about music and comedy, and distracting my brothers and I as best as he could from the fact that he was battling such a painful disease. In between different rounds of chemotherapy he trained and completed a marathon, maintained a full time job, and went on various hiking trips around the US. It wasn't until he passed away the summer after my junior year of high school that I realized just how hard he fought to make our lives as normal as possible. One day when we were in Boston on a vacation, he had to be taken to the hospital due to some complications. Earlier on in the day, he had turned to me and said "I don't remember what it's like to feel normal anymore." This is something that pushes me to ride, because I have every capability to fight for people like him, who would have loved to have just the opportunity to live a healthy and normal life. I also ride for my mom, LaRetta, a single and working mother of 3 who often goes unnoticed for the efforts she puts in to make sure my brothers and I are taken care of. I ride because there are millions of people who have to give their lives over to a disease that they didn't ask for, and although there is no cure, I believe that organizations like Texas 4000 can at least provide hope for the future.