Hopkins 4K for Cancer

July 29, 2002

Day 58 (60 miles) San Fransico, CA - Gol
I’ve spent my life fighting the adage that all good things must end. If they end, how good could they really have been? Shouldn’t they linger? Shouldn’t lessons, memories, and friendships persist long after the event that spawned them? Rather, all not-bad things must end. All good things become ingrained in every subsequent moment of one’s life.

It’s two months previous, and we’re in Greensburg, Pennsylvania. We wake up in a YMCA to the sound of a basketball smacking rhythmically against the floorboards at the other end of the gym floor.
Squinting, my eyes still resisting the new sunlight, I grumble, “Who plays basketball at six in the morning?”
Two sleeping bags down, Gary replies, “They’re probably saying, ‘Who bikes across the country?’”

Today we woke up on our final gym floor, this one thankfully lined with wrestling mats (a detail we genuinely regard as luxury). To preempt, a teeny bit, seeing our families at the Golden Gate Bridge, the other Mamas and Papas filled the room with our quasi-anthem, “If You’re Goin’ to San Francisco.”
We sang that once before, while biking. In Baltimore. It sounded different then, half rally and half joke. Now, on the twenty-ninth of July, deflating our air mattresses for the last time, with the women rushing outside to pick flowers for their hair (as the song requests), it sounded like a song of success. We are the champions.

We’ve been biking for two weeks. It’s my turn to drive the van, and I’m shuttling Mark to give his bad knee a day off. Here’s a great town for lunch: Alton, Illinois.
We zip through Alton to mark a path for the bikers. We’re looking for a set of picnic tables, a city park...anywhere shady we can set down some coolers. We stop at a monument to the final Lincoln-Douglas debate. Nearby is a steamboat labeled “Harrah’s.”
Wow, neat, a riverboat casino. Never seen one before. Say, don’t they have those on the...wait a second.
Mark gets the same idea. He runs up to the nearest passerby. “Excuse me,” he says. “What river is this?”
The man looks at us like we just fell out of a time machine and asked him what year it is.
“That’s...the Mississippi,” he says.
Mark and I instantly scream and high-five, jumping up and down. The man mumbles something and walks away quickly, but who cares: We just rode our bikes to the Mississippi River.

Aware of the futility of leftovers, we finished every scrap of breakfast, even the unpopular plastic sack of “Fruity Ocean Adventure” cereal that had been our traveling companion for the better part of a week.
Bike maintenance also took on a new aspect today: cleaning parts other than the chain. People grabbed handfuls of paper towels, cups of water, and set to work wiping the dirt of twelve states off their frames. Every handlebar scrape, every tube patch, and every smudged sticker was a memory, and as we cleaned, we recounted stories of the slowest—and fastest—summer ever.

Two years ago, on the fourth of July, I sat on the slopes of the National Mall and watched a laser show projected on the side of the Washington Monument, followed by fireworks over the Potomac River. This year, I’m in Otis, Colorado, a whisper of a town lost somewhere in the center of the country.
Here we watch both town fire engines roar down the street, eat Rocky Mountain oysters and homemade pie, and pitch horseshoes with the locals until the sun sets. For some reason, this year feels infinitely more American.


The last moment of silence before the last thirty miles. The sun was mild, at least compared to Nevada and Utah, but the humidity at sea level more than made up for it. With our gear packed in the vans, our bikes cleaned and oiled, and our matching grey and yellow jerseys, we stood in our last silent circle, as Ryan would say, “to take a minute to remember why we’re riding.”

Twenty-three surprise “bonus” miles in the cold when our sleeping quarters fell through, and we’re in Snow Mountain Ranch, Colorado, west of Rocky Mountain National Park. It’s pitch black, we’re not unpacked, and all we want to do (besides eat) is pitch tents using the vans’ headlights and pass out in them.
Cynicism abounds in the restroom. Waiting to shower, we take turns complaining about everything we hate—it’s cold, we’re tired, we’re hungry, we need more sleep before tomorrow, these mountains are tall...the usual. Then I inadvertently direct the complaints someplace I shouldn’t: our cause.
“It’s not even that important,” I say to Dan and Fred. “We’re doing this to raise money for the American Cancer Society, and you know where that thirty thousand is going to go? It’ll replace one machine in a lab that some grad student breaks.”
I pause. “Ryan’s not in here, is he?” I shout. No answer from the showers. So I keep going.
“And spreading awareness of cancer—who doesn’t know about cancer? What, are we telling someone who’s never heard of it that it exists? And even if they do learn about it, what can they do? It’s not like there’s some cure or prevention we can advocate.”
Ryan steps out of the shower. He’s angrily silent. I’m fearfully silent. Dan and Fred are judiciously silent, and they leave the restroom at their first opportunity.
“You want me to tell you about cancer?” Ryan shouts. I’ve never seen this look in his eyes. But rather than confess that I’m still skeptical about our motivation, I back off. Hey, I tell him, I’m really really sorry, I didn’t mean any of it, I’m just tired, it’s been a long day.
He apologizes. I apologize three or four more times. But I’m sharing my tent that night with him.
In the tent, warmer and cleaner, the exchange reopens, this time as a legitimate discussion. “So why are we doing this?” I ask. I’m still not convinced that our grander purpose is to raise money for the American Cancer Society, and it sure as heck isn’t to spread “awareness” of cancer. Those are mission statements invented for the web page.
But as we share tales of the people we’ve met—not just the other twenty-two riders, but the truckers and convenience-store clerks and church patrons and homemakers happy to buy a Wal-Mart feast for a group of bikers camped out in their city park—we discover the word we’re looking for.
Hope.
When people see us riding, when they see that a group of students is willing to take two hot months to bike from one ocean to the next, we spread hope. Medically, hope can prolong lives. Socially, hope can inspire activism. Hope is an immeasurably powerful tool, Ryan and so many others teach me, and our larger purpose, our Big Altruistic Thing, the reason that keeps us pumping into headwinds, mentally begging the Golden Gate Bridge to be just over the next set of mountains, is to keep it from getting lost.
That lesson will stay with me long after this good thing comes to an end.

Today the Golden Gate Bridge really was over the next set of mountains. Before departing, the leaders passed out envelopes containing notes to everyone—twenty-four scraps of paper with messages we’d scribbled to each other three days previous in Groveland. We stuffed them in our jersey pockets (can’t read them yet—have to wait until later) and took off.

It’s July 10th, and we’re biking through Glenwood Canyon, Colorado, one of the most beautiful areas I’ve ever seen. At this point, our destination seems less impressive than our origin. “Where y’all headed?” someone would ask. As we’d been used to doing, we’d shout, “San Francisco!” But now someone would feel obliged to toss in, “We started in Baltimore.”
At the mouth of the canyon, I pass a professional cyclist who’s already met some members of our group. Recognizing my Lemond Tourmalet, she asks, “Oh, are you on that trip from Baltimore to Never?”
A bit disheartening, but as I recount the story to Travis later, he laughs and says, “You mean Never to San Francisco!”

Biking today didn’t feel like biking. There were no thoughts of when to snack, or what average speed to achieve, or where to find a water stop. The thirty miles to San Francisco, one quarter the length of our longest day, were filled with shouts and laughter and cheers as we biked en masse, all twenty-four of us finally cycling together. San Pablo to San Francisco: America’s Victory Lap.

I’m in Yosemite National Park. After a fifty-mile warm-up that took us over three mountain passes, I’m finally at the top of the Tioga Pass, having climbed a vertical mile over the course of the last nine miles. Yosemite includes highway grades as steep as 13%. Trucks can’t handle slopes over 8%.
In line to use the payphone after me, a man sees my bike. He’s shocked. “Did you...ride your bike up Tioga Pass?” he asks.
“Yes,” I answer.
He puts his hands on his hips. “Now the question is,” he says, “why would anyone want to do that?”
I think for a moment. The Golden Gate Bridge is less than a week away.
“The answer is,” I tell him, “it’s in the way.”

We stopped in a parking lot less than fifteen miles shy of the Golden Gate—problem was, we had to cross the Richmond San Rafael Bridge first, and try as we might, we couldn’t get permission to cross it on bicycles. The vans, driven by Jenn’s parents, shuttled us across, followed by our bikes, in an operation that took under a couple hours. Once on the other side, we sped down the winding Marin County hills in a state of unmitigated joy.
I was still a little nervous; the hills in western California may have been small compared to the Rockies, but the highways over them were much steeper, curvier, and scarier. As Rajeev passed me, he shouted, “What are you doing? Don’t be a wuss!” He then rocketed down the hill at thirty-five miles per hour.
I saw him again halfway down, at the side of the road, his bike upside-down against an embankment and himself not much better off. He wiped out only six miles from the Golden Gate Bridge. It was tough to decide whether the asphalt, or the irony, hurt more. (Of course, that was only tough for the rest of us to decide—Rajeev decided rather conclusively that the asphalt hurt more.)
Six miles away, but we didn’t cross the Bridge for another four hours. Ryan and Leah accompanied Rajeev to the Emergency Room, and we sat at the Vista Point at the north end of the Bridge, napping in its shadow on the warm stones of a war memorial. One by one, our television sponsors called us to withdraw. ABC. FOX. CBS. At 1:00, they were ready to film our triumphant ride across the Bridge. At 2:00, they were wondering where the heck we were. At 4:00, they were long gone. Having the major networks televise our triumph would have been spectacular. But we didn’t want the cameras to show only twenty-one riders. So we waited.
When you strive for something consistently, twenty-four hours a day for two months, and it arrives—it’s unbelievable. But when you strive for something that hard and then voluntarily sit, next to your bike, a few feet away from your goal for hours just to wait for your friends to join you—that’s something else entirely.
I read on a postcard that the Golden Gate Bridge is nearly two miles long, and that the winds that barrage its center average over forty miles per hour. Yet they were the shortest two miles imaginable, and the most welcome winds.
Afterwards: A reception in Crissy Field. Food and champagne. Poetry readings. Dipping our front tires in the San Francisco Bay. Reunions with parents and friends surprised that we didn’t look emaciated. And then, for the first time in two months, we all went our separate ways.

I’m here. I’m in San Francisco. This afternoon...wow, this afternoon we crossed the Golden Gate Bridge. Now it’s evening, and I’m sitting (still in my bike shorts) in a hotel lobby, with my disassembled bike leaning against my duffel bag, waiting for a ride.
There’s something in my jersey pocket. It’s an envelope.
As I read twenty-three notes from my friends, I see twenty three faces, and I can picture everyone reading theirs (anonymity is shot; handwriting is easy to recognize). I’ll see most people tomorrow, when Mark Pitta interviews us on the Fox Morning Show, but I miss everybody anyway.
Then I get to one last note, one whose handwriting I definitely recognize. It’s from me.
“This is the note you wrote to yourself,” it reads. I guess that was a caveat in case I wouldn’t recognize the handwriting. Boy am I dense.
But then it continues. “Well?” it reads. “Will this trip be more than just a great story?”

The trip was a series of good things that, in turn, came to an end. First our excitement at having crossed the seemingly steep Appalachians. Then the awe of the Chicago skyline. The friendliness and generosity of the small communities that dot the Midwest. The Rocky Mountains. The blazing red bluffs of Utah. The Nevada desert, where anyone who stood up could see for fifty miles in any direction. The pine-covered slopes of eastern California, and finally our often-eulogized icon of triumph: the Golden Gate.
We biked for ourselves, for each other, for our friends and families—but most of all, we biked for hope, for the chance to spread faith and optimism to anyone who felt like absorbing it. We drank syrup out of peach cans, just to drain every last calorie, and we ate at the finest restaurant in St. Louis. We slept in churches, gyms, campgrounds, and sometimes, nowhere. We biked through rain, ice, hail, and 120-degree heat. We biked on the shoulders of crowded highways, and we biked on streets where only three cars appeared all day. We’ve had accidents, moments of elation, love, fights, tears, and intense introspection.
But will it be more than just a good story?

“May the road rise up to meet you,” read a cheery excerpt from a traditional Gaelic blessing that the members of the Grace Lutheran Church in Franklin, Nebraska included in plastic baggies with our breakfast of homemade cereal bars.
It’s a month since the trip ended, and I’m sitting in the passenger seat of a station wagon in Baltimore, nervous as anything, scratching a scar on my elbow where the road rose up to meet me.
She’s driving.
She’s beautiful.
“G’night,” she says. “It was good meeting you. Maybe I’ll see you on campus somewhere.”
My hand is on the door handle. If I pull that handle, the night is over. If I say what I want to say...
The usual little man takes his place in my head. “Open the car door,” he says, “and get out. Say good night. Don’t risk rejection. I mean, she’ll probably say no. She can do better. If you just walk away, I promise you won’t be nervous any more.”
Suddenly the little man gets flattened as a second man appears, gloriously charging onto the scene riding a blue Lemond Tourmalet.
“You just biked across the country,” he shouts. “What’s left to be afraid of?”
I release the door handle. I ask, “Do you want to have dinner sometime?”
Her answer isn’t important. The point is: I asked.
The Hopkins 4K for Cancer continues to influence every action, every decision that I make. No good things can come to an end.

Not only did we bike across the country, but we did it without any guarantee of success. As someone said in their toast today, when we drank cold champagne out of plastic cups by the shores of the San Francisco Bay: Here’s to the impossible.
May it continue to not exist.


- Adam Ruben