The Great Fire of 2015

Two days ago we biked into St. Mary’s at Glacier National Park where we camped and had a rest day.  I dedicated the beautiful 95 mile ride over the east side of the mountains to Kelly. My group made it into the campsite just in time to set up most of the tents before a storm passed over.

Unfortunately I got food poisoning from lunch that day and wasn’t able to do much that night. Yesterday morning I was determined to get out and enjoy the park. Zach, Evan and I went off on our own to get breakfast and go for a hike. We found a trail with higher elevation, a few waterfalls, ad a lake at the top. It took us about three hours to get up and was well worth it. The lake shore was lined with beautiful red stone, the water was an incredibly clear deep blue, and the lake itself sat in between two mountains with some remanence of snow.

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We decided to venture to the far side of the lake to have a snowball fight. We followed a dried up stream in attempt to make our own trail to the other side when we realized it was getting late and adding an extra forty minutes to an hour out of our way was a bad idea. When we turned back we saw a massive cloud of smoke climb over the mountain ridge. We purposefully climbed down the mountain although were unaware of the severity of the situation until the smoke turned black with an orange undertone.

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(Picture from our hike down taken by Zach)

It took the three of us about three hours to climb to the top. We got down in no more than an hour and a half. When we exited the trail we were met by a flustered woman working security at the park. Surprised to see us come out of the trail, she asked a million questions about who we were, where we were coming from, if there was anyone else up there, where we were going, if we knew what was going on and so forth. She briefed us on the situation and instructed us to find the park rangers in the parking lot below and figure a way out of the park.

The rangers in the parking lot were tending to a boy scout troop waiting for the rest of their group that was still on the mountain. We informed them that there were four groups behind us that would need transportation. The rangers called for another shuttle to come back then looked at us and asked if any of us could drive. They had an extra service vehicle that they couldn’t get back and needed us to drive. She gave us the keys and told us to bring it to the parking lot of the visitors center on the other side. We made it back safe and so did their vehicle. People helping people is a powerful thing.

The park had already been evacuated and it looked like the town would be evacuated as well. As soon as we had cell service we made contact with the group and informed them on what was going on on our end. It took awhile to get ahold of everyone and even longer to get everyone on the same page. We were given an alternative route that would take us about 140 miles and several thousand additional feet of elevation. The poor air conditions and soot falling onto our tents was a clear sign that we we’re going to be biking out of the campground. Several people were already having breathing issues due to the elevation so it was pretty frustrating having to wait several hours to come to the obvious conclusion that we wouldn’t be staying there when we could have already shuttled half the group to a new host. With 30 people and less than half actually having any cell service that’s just the nature of the business though.

(Panorama courtesy of Zach)

Nevertheless, we all made it out alive and well. The first group made it to Whitefish around 1:30 and the last around 6am. I was at a laundry mat and met another group of bikers coming from Bar Harbor Maine to Seattle for MS.

As always, if you would like to make a donation to this amazing cause, I will be accepting donations until after I arrive in Seattle August 8th.

My $8000 haircut

I was finally starting to get better at doing work after arriving at our hosts until we went camping in the Badlands and have had very limited to no wifi/ cell service since (I also ran over my data several more times than I care to admit..). I’ve gotten really backed up on blogs, emails and everything in between again over the last two weeks.  Although their not as detailed, I’ve been able to push out more snapshots on Instagram (@amazur12).

Yesterday we rode 113 miles into Billings Montana where we had a service day today. We spent the morning wandering the city for food donations for our brunch at a cancer hospital in Billings where we spent most of the day. It was really cool to be able to spend so much time with the patients, their families doctors, nurses, and hospital staff. Because of HIPA we aren’t allowed to spend as much time with patients as I expected so it was a really great experience.

 (photo taken by Billings Clinic)

A bunch of the parents organized dinner for us at a stake house. I had a phenomenal steak. It was the first time in 46 days that we’ve had a real meal where we haven’t been rationing food, sitting on the floor, reusing silverware or other things that are considered “inappropriate” dinner edict. Thanks to all the parents that helped make that possible. It was amazing!

Last week I put an $8000 fundraising bounty on my hair. Thank you for all the contributions this past week and a half that helped me hit that goal. Before dinner I had Sanjia and several other members of the team shave my head.  Sanja had to shave her head three of the four times she went through cancer treatment so I had her do mine this time and got her to sign it. They also decided to leave a rat tail on the back and told me I had to keep it for a day and couldn’t acknowledge it… I thought it was funny so I went along with it. I’ve never shaved my head before and am definitely uncomfortable by how cold it is. At dinner I was shivering and had to put a hat on. Sanja said I actually looked like I had cancer.

 The progression pics thanks to Giuliana.

Trying to recover the remains.

If there is anyone that you would like me to dedicate a ride to, send me a message or email me @ almazur@Loyola.edu. I will be accepting donations until I arrive in Seattle on August 8th if you would still be willing to donate. Also, follow me on Instagram for more updates.

The day that we went to the world famous Corn Palace

On day 34 I rode in Mrs. Rafferty, a very close family friend who is a cancer survivor and huge supporter of mine. 

  
We rode about 75 miles from Sioux Falls to Mitchell, home of the world famous and words only Corn Palace! We stayed at a church next to a 4K alumni’s house who invited us into their home for dinner, brought us breakfast in the morning and joined our dedication circle. The alum, Danny, and his brother Andrew also rode out with us to the first water stop. Their generosity reminded a lot of the Raffery’s. 

Before we left the parking lot, I lost a 7 to 1 odds are to stay clipped in to my bike until we got to our destination that evening (odds are is a game we play to dare people to do things. You pick a number 1 to 20, someone counts down and if you call out the same number you have to do the dare. The odds are always in my favor so I like to keep it below 10 to keep it more interesting.)  About 10 miles in I got a flat and had to change my back tire clipped in. It took foreve. After about half an hour I got a little help so we could get back on the road. Staying clipped in all day was exhausting. Water breaks were more of a balancing act than a break. When we made it to the second stop I got a lot of smirks so I went over to the work out circle to join in and did push ups and bicycle kicks on my bike for the reminder of the break. 

  
  
We ran into a little trouble with our host and didn’t know if we have a place to stay in Mitchell. We found a campgrounds nearby that offered us enough space to pitch a few tents for the night though. We waited a few hours to hear back from the church that we expected to stay at. I was pretty pumped to camp on the 3rd of July but our host later came through which was less of a haste so it worked out well.

While we were at the campgrounds me met a man named Tim who was biking across the country the other way and ending in Plymouth Mass. We talked to him for awhile then ventured down to the famous Corn Palace. In one way the Corn Palace was really cool because we’ve been riding through corn fields watching it grow all summer and made it out of the past thousand miles of corn to arrive at the Corn Palace. On the other hand, they were changing up the outside so there was only s few murals on it and it was a monumental let down. 

   
I’m getting better at blogging but am a few days bad logged and probably going to get a few more once we get to the Badlands tomorrow. Since I don’t know when I will be back on WiFi I thought I’d share that I will be shaving my head if I can reach $8,000 on my fundraising page by this coming Monday evening. Also, if I can find cell service I may be able to get some pics on the instagram (Amazur12)

The day of the relay

Day 33 was dedicated to Mrs. Jackson who battle leukemia and has been the cancer free a few years today. 

 

We’ve had a lot of sickness and minor injuries which have thrown off our van schedules. I found out I would in fact be driving moments after being my bike out. Hammer is recovering from a pulled hamstring so we decided to switch off riding at the water stop to help ease him back in without further hurting himself and to allow me to ride more. So I relayed the hundred mile day from Marshal Minnesota to Sioux Falls South Dakota riding and chalking until there were a few minor accidents that required our food van to spend a large chunk of the day at the hospital. At that point I got back in the van and set out to collecte food donations for the teams lunch. Special thanks to the Subway and McDonalds Pipestone for donating lunch. 

 I was happy to have finally have the opportunity to ride along my favorite railroad, The Great Northern Railway. I have been using James J. Hills story as as fun facts ever since we arrived in Minneapolis. The Great Northern was the first fully privatized railway in the United States and fund from the Twin Cities to Seattle.

When we got close to our host, we routed the team to the Sioux Falls Falls.  

  
    

 If there is anyone that you would like me to dedicate a ride to, send me a message or email me @ almazur@Loyola.edu. I am also accepting donations until I arrive in Seattle August 8th. Also, follow me on Instagram for more updates. 

A City with Wind

Last week was a hell of a week. After a thousand miles I got my first flat. Less that a tenth of a mile later I got another one. I was pretty excited about my badges of honor and take them as a point of pride. I saved them to wear to the finish line. Every day we meet countless people that have been affected by cancer and share their stories with us. On our service day in Madison Wisconsin in a few days, I am going to go to get a white sharpie and write the names of the people we meet and the people I dedicate my rides to on my old tubes.

We road into Chicago the day of the Blackhawk parade so we were a nervous about navigating the city with so much extra traffic so we leisurely made our way in. Just as we were making our way out of Indiana, a man on the side of the road invited us to jump in his pool to cool off.  Evan got a flat coming in, then we stopped to jump in the lake just south of the city.

                           

I loved Chicago. It was big like New York but felt smaller like Boston and clean like Singapore. We had a great time on our rest day. After brunch, a small group of us went downtown to visit the Willis Tower (Sears Tower) and get some Chicago deep dish before meeting some of the Cancer to 5K coaches in Millennium Park. Cancer to 5K is another program run by the Ulman Cancer Fund that helps cancer patients use exercise as therapy. After meeting them, another small group of us hung around the park, saw a free classical music concert in the park and walked over to Navy pier to watch the sunset. Navy pier turned out to be a much further walk than we anticipated and there was an awesome playground in between. We played on massive playground while the sun set. When we finally made it to Navy pier I talked to the man in charge of the ferris wheel, his name was Bo, and he sent us up.  Portland also met up with us in Chicago. They had a scholarship presentation before we met up with the 5K team so we only saw them in chunks.

 

Leaving Chicago was our first intentional century ride. Ricky and I accidentally joined that club on day four through the Appalachians. We happened to be leaving Chicago for Milwaukee on the same day as Northwesterns graduation. Graduation is a huge milestone so Nate, Maxine, Ricky, and I decided to join in on the festivities.

Day 12: Things just haven’t been the same since the accident

Columbus to Upper Sandusky:
On our way into Columbus, we saw a sign that read “Happy birthday McGee Sextuplets!”. I’ve never seen sextuplets before in my life so I wasn’t going to wait another twenty-two years to see them again. Aaron, Megan, Amber and I went to the Dollar General to get balloons then went back to congradulate the McGee’s. The kids were not actually home but their great-aunt Marie talked to us for an hour or so and said she’d bring them the balloons. She had a lot of family working in different parts of hospitals and medicine. One of which that worked at the Ohio State James Cancer Hospital that we visited on our service day. He was walking passed us and I got really excited when he asked if we were the group that stopped at his mothers house riding into town. Today I dedicated my ride to D’Angolo, Marie’s son who had to come home from a service trip in Africa early when he was diagnosed with leukemia. I will go into further detail about the our amazuring ride into Columbus in a later post.

  
Day 12 was certainly an interesting day. It started with our tastefully decorated 15 passenger van being defaced in the parking lot of the church courtesy of Portland. As someone who thoroughly enjoys testing the waters and flirting with the line, I was disappointed with the way they retaliated for writing smiley faces on their windshield and stupid things like “Portland is the John Cusack of cities” or “Seattle has better coffee”.  

From the beginning we were down a rider so we enjoyed that special surprise. More importantly, one of the girls had three previous back issues and spent the night in the hospital to get it checked out. One of our directors, Stephen, and her would be staying in Columbus to wait for the next step. We had rerouted our day so we could all stop by the hospital before leaving Columbus and check on her. On the way to the hospital Julie had an accident and broke her hand. She is notorious for being the best rider on the team so it kind of evened the playing field to give the runner up a fighting chance. While she will be back soon, she had to go back to Baltimore to get surgery so it really isn’t funny. 

Later in the day, Will and Matt Myer took a spill. Matt’s bike got messed up so he was unable to finish the day, and Will hit his head. Everything is ok but as a precautionary measure he was unable to finish as well. We finally made it to the lunch stop and we are already down five riders. Rough day for Team Seattle. Spirits turned for the best as the food van arrived with a bountiful harvest. Nevertheless, we had to be very flexible on day 12 with all of the accidents. We sent the food van back to Columbus to bring the injured their bags so they wouldn’t have to sit in bike shorts all day.

When we got close, all those remaining met up at the town pool to cool down. As we rolled into Upper Sandusky we were greeted by our awesome hosts at the church with warm showers and homemade pasta for dinner.
After dinner a group of us decide to walk around and explore the town a bit. Things seemed a bit off. Besides the one guy that drove up and down the street on his motorcycle at least four times, there were no cars along the road or anywhere in sight for that mater. There were only about fifteen people in the town and as we walked by and said hi, we received some awfully strange looks. Two kids laid down in the road to take a picture like a scene from the Notebook. A few minutes later, three police cruisers and an SUV race down the road. A cop gets out of the car and starts yelling at us to come back. He’s a fairly big man that was clearly excited to be able to throw on his bulletproof vest and wave his gun around (he never took it of the holster but his hand was on it the whole time). He got real close and asserted, “Which one of you were laying in the street?” as if we were being accused of planning some sort of attack on the town. We was infuriated at the idea that someone would think it’d be ok to lay down in the road when there were two interstates that ran through the town. We looked at each other, we look both ways down the road where we couldn’t see a car for miles. We managed to hold in our laughter until he finished running background checks and let us go. Things really haven’t been the same since the accident. 

Important links:

My fundraising page where you can make donations and link to my other teammates blogs 

Team Seattle route

Days of dedication

Mansfield opens up

I am dedicating day 10 to Columbus to Junkin Jerry and Darlene, Jerry’s brother Edward who passed away from cancer when he was 8 and niece Rebecka who recently lost her battle with lung cancer. Here is their story:

Our group was invited to join a community dinner in Mansfield that the church has on Monday nights to help those in need. I was in line for dinner when the pastor introduced one of our riders to explain more about the program and what we were doing. A man came up to me and thanked me for what we were doing. I could see tears coming to his eyes as he told me how much what we were doing meant to him. After a short while he told me about his brother who passed away from cancer when he was 8, as well as his niece who was diagnosed with lung cancer soon after she returned from Europe with a team of children with cancer that she had been volunteer coaching. The mans name was Junkin’ Jerry. He invited me to sit with his his wife Darlene and him. They were extremely kind and generous but had a terrible string of bad luck. In addition to their cancer stories, Jerry was run over by a truck and almost died, their son was beat to death because he was gay, and they are currently trying to do everything they can to prevent their house from being foreclosured next week.

Through all that hell, they were both optimistic, and able to see through to the silver lining of nearly every situation they had been faced with. It was a little uncomfortable when I first walked in a little late because I was locking up all the bikes. When I finally left diner several hours later, I was amazed at how so many terrible things could happen to such great people. In the words of Father Nghi (my vietnamese theology professor in Bangkok who had broken out of prison camp three times when Vietnam was invaded), “bad things happen, but that’s life. Only you can make the best of your situation.” Jerry and Darlene really seemed to live this moto.

Day 9: The day I didn’t fall asleep driving the food van from Cleveland to Mansfield Ohio

It has been an amazing first week. Our group is really incredible.  I thought it’d be cool to take a Studs Terkel approach and do some interview series about different team members and people we meet. That way you can get to know more about the people that I’m meeting instead of the types of trees we ride by. I’ve never blogged before so give me some time and I’ll try a few different ways out to see what works and keep it interesting.

As we kick into week two of 4K, day 9 is being laid to rest in Mansfield Ohio. Everyday, 4 out of our group of 31 are spread between two vans that chalk the route, set up water stops, and collect food donations to provide the rest of the team with lunch and possibly dinner and breakfast for the day (depending on what our host is providing). We survive strictly on food donations so that all of our fundraising efforts can go directly to the patients and families that we work with.

I was supposed to be on van duty tomorrow (day 10), but have been fighting through a knee injury these past couple days traded so I could get some rest before I made it worse. As the rest of the team left Cleveland around 7:30 this morning, Sonja and I jumped in the food van and set out looking for donations. After nine days and several hundred miles we are all experience some bumps and bruises. Unlike the rest of us, Sonja has battled cancer several times and is still recovering from a lung surgery a few months ago. Yeah. She’s amazing and is a huge inspiration.

Over the course of ten hours in the van together, we covered a vast array of topics. One thing that amazes me about Sonja is her perseverance and ability to see the good an otherwise unfortunate situation. She is pretty open and willing to talk about her experiences since they are such a huge part of who she has become, yet at the same time, she is humbled by it. It’s cool talking to her about it because although we all have relationships to the cancer community, as if it wasn’t hard enough to keep everything balanced in college, try throwing multiple cancers in the mix. She is the only one that can truly understand what it is like balance a full college course load, social life, and cancer treatments all at the same time. It would be easy for a lot of people to just give up and say “I’ll go back to it when I’m healthy”. I certainly don’t know if I’d have it in me to laugh at my doctors goofy cowboy boots while he’s was telling me that I could only have a few years to live. She explained to me how having all of those other things in her life and rides like this were the things that kept her alive.

Over the past week we have met a lot of amazing people. We have shared our stories, and have heard and shared theirs. Some of them have been heart warming, others heart breaking. Part of the Ulman Cancer Fund’s mission is to “create a community of support”. We’re only a week in so I can’t fully understand the importance of this journey yet but the amount of support and appreciation that we have received from the communities that we have visited has been incredible. I truly cannot explain how grateful I am for all of the support I have received. Both from my donors who made the scholarship that we presented to Sarah from Lancaster PA last week (I’ll talk more about that later in a “flashback” that I’ve accidentally been stock piling for… I’m really sorry), and from all of the amazing people that have taken us in and fed us over the past nine days.

Here goes nothing!

This summer I will be biking from Baltimore Maryland to Seattle Washington with 4K for Cancer, a program through the Ulman Cancer Fund for Young Adults that works to provide aid, support and hope to young adults battling cancer along with their family’s. I will be using this page to share the sights, sounds, conversations and experiences that I encounter along the way. Special thank you to all of my supporters who helped make this journey possible. If there is someone that you would like me to dedicate a portion of my ride to please comment or send me an email at almazur@loyola.edu!