Sunday, May 12, 2013

Thursday, March 28, 2013

This is Beard

This is my new mate Scott Maggs aka Jimmy Niggles. He lost his mate Wes to melanoma and now he's on a mission to get as many people as possible to get a skin check. Part of that journey is to make his beard famous...and it's working. 

Love the creativity. Love the dedication. Check it out, and if you have a beard and see him in the street, be sure to introduce yours to his.

Two perspectives on one journey

As someone who has survived cancer I find myself morbidly attracted to those who do not. I know what they're going through, I feel like it could have been me or could be again. Maybe it's the loss of the 'it won't happen to me' bone. Or maybe I just feel their pain. Whatever the case I am drawn in and saddened. Life feels chilled and crisp like a winter's morning when I read these things. They wake me up like ice water.

This week I have come across two.

The first is all pictures and no words. A photo essay by a man about losing his wife.  Poignant in the faces it captures and also the ones that are hidden from camera.

The second is all words and one picture. A piece of prose by a man losing his father.

Each tackles the subject in such a different way yet each seems to take you on exactly the same journey through the thinning of human life to death.

Both are poignant, touching and very, very sad. Both are sadly, also, very real. I'm just grateful we have creative people to capture these moments as they slip away.






Wednesday, March 27, 2013

This fella is the goods

At 15 he's worked out a way to detect pancreatic cancer that costs 3 cents a go and is 100% accurate. Go you good thing.

Saturday, January 19, 2013

Lance.

Lance. Waving bye bye to his credibility. 

On the day of his 'big' revelation, I feel a need to lay down some words about Lance.

Anyone who's had testicular cancer, nay any cancer, has looked to him as a figurehead, so how do I reconcile the person whose books helped show me the way with the smouldering heap his reputation has now become.

To be honest, I always thought he'd done the drugs. Maybe he protested too much, maybe it's a bit of a case of 'where there's smoke there's fire. Maybe I just did the sums and figured that if all his fellow competitors had been busted one by one over the years, it didn't really add up that he smoked them all for seven years. We always thought he was a superman, but that's just a little too super for my suspicions.

Whatever the case, I didn't care. I didn't want him to get busted. As the nets drew in around him I was sure he'd slip them, uncatchable because maybe just maybe he didn't. The world needs heroes and I don't like seeing them go down. It upsets, as he said, my belief in miracles'.

Then he got busted. Big time.

So how did I feel about it? At first, I still didn't care. I figured if the whole sport was doing it then does it really erase his legacy? He still beat all the other dopers so it's still a huge thing to have won seven times. This article changed my mind. When you make yourself such a hero from doping you make it impossible for anyone to ever be a hero without doping. And you relegate any competitor who chooses to stay strong and clean to the place of also ran at best. You make a generation into dopers.

Nonetheless, tarnished cycling legacy or not, I still liked him. He's done so much to help cancer patients that I forgave him that.

Next I read about his bully boy tactics. This rocked me a little more. So now not only was his cycling prowess built on a lie, so was his nice guy persona. Nice in front of camera, self serving away from it.  Hmm, sad but not so unusual. Tiger Woods, anyone?

And what was I left with? A not very nice drug cheat who helped raise millions for cancer, made survivorship sexy and gave me years of hope that one day I would win seven Tour de Frances.

His interview with Oprah made me hate the hatable parts even more. I felt like I was watching a narcissist try to be good but not knowing how. He doesn't get that, as the guy who gained most from cheating, he deserves the biggest penalty. He doesn't get that cheating and getting busted is one thing and smiting honest people who dared stand up to him is another. He doesn't get that he tried to be a figurehead for clean sport and that turned him into its biggest enemy. He's like a kid done wrong. He's been spanked and he doesn't quite get what what he did was bad.

But still, I say thanks. If he'd just survived what he went through with cancer and never raced again he'd be inspiring to me. To me, the fact that he used a lot of his evil gains to do good with Livestong is still worth a lot. He did bad but he used it to do good. And that good helped a lot of people and will keep helping a lot of people. He and his yellow wristbands helped keep cancer firmly in the world's psyche. That's awesome, and nothing can take away from that, even if the profile he used to do it was built on a lie.

So Lance, if you're out there, you're a jerk. You blew everyone's belief in miracles, at a time when the world needs them most. You cheated, you lied, you bullied, you deserve everything you got coming. As a cyclist, your name is mud.

But Lance the cancer survivor, I still have faith in. The things you wrote in your books about how it feels to face death and see it off, the idea that we survivors are the lucky ones. They came from a better place in you, and they stuck with me throughout treatment and beyond.

So that's for nothing and thanks for everything. And I hope the legacy you created in the fight against cancer isn't tarnished by legacy you created on the bike.


Footnote: A funny photo doing the rounds at the moment in Australia. Love a librarian with a sense of humour






DailyRX

A kind article in this week's DailyRX and a video to go with it telling story much quicker than my book does: )  Thanks, Laurie Stoneham : )


Sunday, January 6, 2013

Now on Amazon

Glad to be able to tell you that if you're looking for a copy, Amazon is now the place and this is now the link: http://amzn.to/Zf9zwo


Thursday, January 3, 2013

What fits in a box?

Christmas all boxed up for another year
Today we packed up christmas and put it in the attic for another year.

Looking at that box, I got to thinking, it says exactly where my life is at.

When Annabelle and I landed in Ireland in 2005, all we owned was what we carried there in our backpacks.

When we left there to live in Bangkok we found we'd managed to collect enough to have to ship a box 6'x6' with us.

Now, with two kids we have a house worth. And more in the attic. The weight of it all keeping us firmly here for another year and beyond.

So what happened to the life of carefree adventure?

I gave a talk to a class of visiting US college students the other day and I found myself telling them, like I do all younger people, to travel, try new things and seek adventure all they can while they can, because one day you find life isn't like that anymore.

Then I thought, if I were in a class now and an 80 year old were talking to me what would they tell me?

Probably to travel, try new things and seek adventure all I can while they can, because one day I'll find life isn't like that anymore.

Really, the best time to do anything is now.

Wednesday, January 2, 2013

And then there were four

And the there were four
The latest update from my lone surviving testicle is it's working just fine. 

My GP once said that with one testicle you still have enough sperm to populate the world. While I don't think it's necessary to go that far, Annabelle and I have put it to the test once again and it's come up trumps, delivering our second born Juliet Juno into the world on Dec 28.

Everyone says she looks like me. I think she looks like a tiny wrinkly little old lady. Mind you, cuteness doesn't take long to take hold. Once her head reshaped itself after the squishy experience that is birth she has been the fascination of everyone's eye....most of all Lulu who wants to carry her everywhere. 

So more good news. Where once I was told it was 50/50 if I'd have kids I now have two. That's winning if you ask me.