One Of The Redeeming Things About Being

I Want To Die At A Hundred Years Old With An American Flag On My Back And The Star Of Texas On My Helmet, After Screaming Down An Alpine Descent On A Bicycle At 75 Miles Per Hour. I Want To Cross One Last Finish Line As My Wife And My Ten Children Applaud, And Then I Want To Lie Down In A Field Of Those Famous French Sunflowers And Gracefully Expire, The Perfect Contradiction To My Once Anticipated Poignant Early Demise.

I Believed In Belief, For Its Own Shining Sake. To Believe In The Face Of Utter Hopelessness, Every Article Of Evidence To The Contrary, To Ignore Apparent Catastrophe - What Other Choice Was There? We Do It Every Day, I Realized. We Are So Much Stronger Than We Imagine, And Belief Is One Of The Most Valiant And Long-lived Human Characteristics. To Believe, When All Along We Humans Know That Nothing Can Cure The Briefness Of This Life, That There Is No Remedy For Our Basic Mortality, That Is A Form Of Bravery. To Continue Believing In Yourself, Believing In The Doctors, Believing In Thetreatent, Believing In Whatever I Chose To Believe In, That Was The Most Important Thing.

If Children Have The Ability To Ignore All Odds And Percentages, Then Maybe We Can All Learn From Them. When You Think About It, What Other Choice Is There But To Hope? We Have Two Options, Medically And Emotionally: Give Up, Or Fight Like Hell.

Nineteen Hundred Meters Up There Is Completely Different From1,900 Any Place Else. There's No Air, There's No Oxygen. There's No Vegetation, There's No Life. There's No Life. Rocks. Any Other Climb There's Vegetation, Grass And Trees. Not There On The Ventoux. It's More Like The Moon Than A Mountain.

The Truth Is, If You Asked Me To Choose Between Winning The Tour De France And Cancer, I Would Choose Cancer. Odd As It Sounds, I Would Rather Have The Title Of Cancer Survivor Than Winner Of The Tour, Because Of What It Has Done For Me As A Human Being, A Man, A Husband, A Son, And A Father.