Click Here for Gallery of El Tour de Tucson 2008 Photos




Late in the afternoon on November 22, 2008, I pedaled my way over the finish line for El Tour de Tucson XXVI, completing 109 miles of bicycling that I'd started by crossing the start line at five minutes after 7 in the morning, a couple thousand riders already starting ahead of me in those five minutes. I finished nine hours and thirty-two minutes after I started, in 3,487th place out of the 3,814 riders who completed the entire 109 miles.

Click here to read my transcribed voice posts from the day of the ride for more detail.

It was my third century ride in slightly over a year, and the second year in a row I've ridden El Tour de Tucson - and in many ways, the two rides were like night and day for me. The weather was equally gorgeous and tame, starting in the low 50s in the morning and topping out in the mid-70s. But my training had gone very differently, and my riding habits were very different as well.

I still had more strength in my core from working on it in the spring while preparing for America's Most Beautiful Bike Ride in Tahoe in June, and although it wasn't as strong as I'd hoped, it did help me take fewer and shorter breaks instead of having to nurse my back every hour or so. I had also learned a lot of valuable lessons during last year's Tucson ride about feeding myself constantly, hydrating myself effectively with electrolyte powder, putting on plenty of sunscreen, getting a good night's sleep beforehand, and wearing shorts with thicker padding... so I never had a moment like last year's where I felt like I was simply too exhausted to finish the ride.

On the other hand, I missed a lot of training rides this fall. Between the weather, greater demands on my time at work, and other issues, I just didn't work as hard to get my legs strong. And I felt it, but not for a while, and not nearly as badly as I expected. For the first several hours, I really felt great - I had some trouble climbing hills, but my riding was otherwise strong and efficient, and I was very glad to be out there. As I alluded to in one of my voice posts, on more than one occasion I thought the rest of my teammates were ahead of me when they were actually behind me, and vice versa (we were just stopping at different rest stops, and hopping over each other, basically). I wasn't doing too badly by comparison, though I knew the effect would worsen at the end of the day when they had more steam in reserve than I did.

Nevertheless, when I realized I had overestimated how much it would affect my overall time on the ride, and I actually had a shot at finishing earlier this year than last, I knew I had to seize the opportunity. All of my teammates had passed me for good by this point, but that was fine. I knew my training had been subpar, and unlike last year the cyclists on the team who were weaker than I had dropped out a couple of months ago, so I knew that one way or another I was almost certain to finish last; the only question was how far behind.

So I hammered my way through those last fifteen miles, especially - with my knees starting to hurt from the exertion, and beginning to run low on my last bottle of Gatorade (or so I thought, anyway; as it turned out, I still had one more packet of mix buried in a pocket somewhere). And at this late stage of the ride, with the police actually stopping us to let suburban automobile traffic through, I was forced to channel my frustration at those stops and renew my efforts.

But it paid off - just as our route took us onto the downtown flats that begin two miles from the finish line at the Tucson Convention Center, I felt my phone vibrate, and I checked to see that Coach Kurt had sent me a text message: "How are you doing, sir?" The rest of the team had finished, and had obviously had time to gather themselves and their thoughts together long enough to wonder just how far behind I was. So I answered him the best way I knew how - by powering up the flats at 20mph, rounding the corner, and finishing the damn ride. This time, Mom and Dad were both there, as was my old friend Mark, and it was a relief to get off the bike, check in, and get my medal.

So I finished this year four minutes earlier than I had last year - but my bike's computer registered a ride time of 7 hours and 32 minutes, meaning it took me about twenty minutes longer to do the actual 109 miles of pedaling. As I'd planned, I made it through with fewer and far shorter breaks, which more than made up for the slower biking and accounted for getting me across the finish line sooner.

But another thing I pondered was this: Last year, I started in the back of the Gold group, which meant I crossed the start line pretty quickly after 7am. This year I started with the rest of the team (minus Anna and Peach, who were shooting for gold medals) in the Bronze section, and we didn't cross the start line until 7:05am. If our ankle chips were scanned at the start line when we actually crossed, then my ride really took nine hours and thirty-two minutes; if on the other hand they were all set with a default start time of exactly 7am, then the time it took me to bike the 109-mile route was really nine hours and twenty-seven minutes, and I shaved nine minutes off my time. Naturally, I sent an e-mail to the organizers to ask them which it is, because I'm just that obsessive - and the answer came back this morning that the start time was 7am for everyone, meaning I actually shaved nine minutes off my time. Woohoo!

(Not officially, but whatever.)

The victory celebration was a nice turkey dinner, just like last year's, and this time instead of feeling burned out from too much sun, I just had trouble using my knees. To my pleasant surprise, the next morning I was getting around just fine, and my knees have been great ever since. My back had trouble on the flights back on Sunday, and then went into full spasms on Tuesday, but I've fully recovered from that now. Last night was bike pickup, so my bike is now back in its rightful place in my apartment's entry hallway.

I even got a very nice e-mail this morning from Team in Training, asking if I would be a mentor or fundraising captain again for the spring/summer season, as I did this past spring. But I politely declined this time, because I think I need a season off - several months during which when I bike, it's because I want to. I made sure to let them know I'd be available as a fundraising resource if they needed me, though.

Which brings me to the final point, and the reason I was doing this in the first place: So far, friends, family, colleagues, and complete strangers have sponsored me for this second El Tour de Tucson ride to the tune of $14,774, which will go to the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society to support its missions of blood cancer research, patient support, and lobbying efforts. I'm very grateful for everyone's support! Still, it's not quite 75% of the way to my 2008 goal of $20,000; and in fact it's still short of my total from last year, $15,395. I would really love to top last year, even with the economy in its current state.

If you haven't made a donation yet, there is still time. There are even a few miles left open that you could sponsor retroactively with a $109 donation (see the sidebar to your right)! Click the link below for information on how to give by credit card or check. Please also feel free to share the information with your friends and family if you think they would be interested; I'm perfectly happy to have strangers sponsor me if it'll help the LLS find new treatments and cures. Thank you for reading, and for supporting my ride and this important cause!

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I won't go into too much detail about this year's pre-ride Pasta Party, because for the most part it was very much like last year's pre-ride Pasta Party. There were some differences, of course. First of all, the NYC team is a bit smaller this year, with a total of about 15 between riders, mentors, and coaches.



Second, this year both of my parents were able to join me in Tucson, instead of just my mother - along with my old friend Mark, whom I've known since first grade, and who drove out from southern California just to be in Tucson for the weekend.



Third, this year instead of Larry being the #3 fundraiser in the country and me being #8, Larry was #3 and I was #7, with $13,881 raised so far! Ironically, it was a pretty good sign of the current state of the economy that I moved up a spot while raising a little bit less money. But it's still a wonderful honor, and something I owe to all of you, my friends, family, and colleagues, for continuing to support this endeavor. There's still time to give, of course - through mid-December, really.

Anyway, here are also a couple of shots from the Shake-Out ride earlier today:








I hope to have many photos of tomorrow's big 109-mile El Tour de Tucson as well. Just like last year, I'll be voice posting from the road. In the meantime, I'm going to try to get about seven hours of sleep before the main event, which (sadly) would be about four or five more than I got last year.

Thanks for following this blog, and for your interest in and support of this very important cause!

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For a variety of reasons, before yesterday, it had been over a month since the last time I'd ridden my bike at all. El Tour de Tucson is in less than a month away, and yesterday was the first of only three remaining long training rides. The weather wasn't promising, but I knew I had to go, or I might even have to withdraw from El Tour for lack of preparation. Travel reservations (including my parents') notwithstanding, that would have been extremely disappointing for a host of reasons, so I knew I had to ride yesterday.

I felt my five-week layoff pretty powerfully during the ride; my legs, my ass, and my back all felt it. I'm still feeling it today. The headwind on the way back didn't help, but most of it was my own fault for the lack of riding. But it's a good pain, the kind of pain that says, "What the hell were you waiting for?!" And I did make it up all the horrific hills that 9W South offers, it just hurt.

Since there was rain coming soon, the (fairly small) group only went up 9W as far as Piermont and then turned back. I even got a lift back into Manhattan with Kurt and Sandra instead of riding back over the Bridge to home because I was so wiped out, but that was fun as well. And the whole experience has renewed my determination to do a few weekday rides in the next two weeks as well as the last two weekend training rides, both of which promise to be quite long.

I will be ready for El Tour de Tucson on November 22. I may not improve on my time or performance from last year as I'd hoped, but I will bike 109 miles that day.

Second-round fundraising e-mails go out this week and next.

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So, as you probably divined from the voice posts I made on the day of the ride, I successfully biked my way through 109 beautiful, sometimes grueling, always inspiring miles last Saturday. The last five days have been a roller coaster both physically and emotionally, but I'm just about recovered from the experience, and itching to do it again soon.

I'm going to write up a full report to post here, which will be as thorough as I can manage... but I've been waiting until I could try to recover the photos from my camera. You see, as a precaution, I brought some of my back meds with me on the ride, but left the pills loose in the same bag as my camera. So occasional rough roads meant several hundred milligrams of pulverized drug powder got into my camera by the end of the ride. Some data recovery software has successfully located the files on the card, but we haven't quite restored the files to a useful format yet (Dad's pretty sure he already owns a license to use the software, but it's only in demo mode right now). Once we get that cleared up, I'll post all the photos somewhere useful and write up my full ride report.

In the meantime, many thanks to all who've expressed their congratulations over the past several days here, on Facebook, by e-mail, in person, or otherwise. Without your support I couldn't have done it!

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To those arriving here from the latest issue of The True Stella Awards, welcome, and thank you for your interest. Plus, many thanks to Randy Cassingham for including the shout-out in my bio, and helping to publicize the cause for which I'm riding.

The basic gist is this: I'm riding my bike 109 miles on November 17 in El Tour de Tucson, through Team in Training, an arm of the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, to raise money for the Society's fight against blood cancers. I've been training for the ride for several months, and the final major training ride is tomorrow.

My primary reason for doing this is that my mother has Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia. As I've mentioned in this space before, Mom remains fairly healthy more than six years after her diagnosis, for which we're all quite grateful - she herself has taken a leadership role at the Westchester County chapter of the Society, and she leads our team every fall in the Society's Light the Night Walk.

Because my parents had a long vacation planned for this autumn before I signed up for this ride, they were going to be unable to join me in Tucson. Unfortunately, my father hurt himself only a few days into their vacation; they had to return home, and Dad is now recovering nicely from knee surgery. Since he'll be able to fend for himself, Mom has decided to join me for the weekend in Tucson after all, and although I'm disappointed for both my parents because of why she can go (and I'm also disappointed that Dad can't join her), I'm absolutely delighted that she'll be waiting for me at the finish line. This ride is for her, and it will be that much more special for her presence.

I have already reached my original fundraising goal of $10,900, but I am continuing to push forward with fundraising because every single dollar has the potential to help real people like my mother, my friend Lindsey, my friend Christine's father, and undoubtedly people in your life as well. For more about the specific ways in which the Society helps, please just keep scrolling down and reading... and when you reach the bottom of this page, hit "Go Earlier" for the blog's archives. I would also be most grateful for your donation if you are so inclined; just click on the link at the bottom of this entry.

More on tomorrow's ride after it happens... it should be a good one, if the wind and rain hold off.

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The Anbinder Family & Friends Team

The Anbinder Family & Friends Team, about to step off on the annual Light the Night walk over the Brooklyn Bridge and back to raise money for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, on Oct. 4, 2007. From the left: Linda, Dad, Paul, Helene, Me, Mom, Uncle Steve, Aunt Maddy, Ina, Patrick, Gene. (Irene, Stephanie, Todd, and Peter were unable to join us for the walk itself this year.)

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Tonight is the annual Manhattan edition of Light the Night, an inspiring event wherein thousands of people walk to raise money for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. I've been doing this event with my family and a few friends for the past few years, since Mom decided to go public with her diagnosis in order to help others. I'll be walking with them again tonight, though my fundraising this year has been devoted completely to El Tour de Tucson.

The Anbinder Family & Friends team, a ragtag bunch of a dozen or so people whose only common link is how much we care about my mother, consistently raises more than many of the Manhattan region's corporate teams. This year, led by my mother as captain and my father as the top fundraiser, the team has raised over $18,000 so far. In addition to most of the usual rotating crew, we will be joined at tonight's walk by my new roommate Pat, who unfortunately lost his father to leukemia last year. He still hasn't ever met my parents, but he joined the team and raised money because he knew he could do some good to help others who are still fighting the battle that his father lost.

Should you be inclined to make a donation, I encourage you to help my mother reach her $5,000 goal. It all goes to the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, so you're not "taking away" from my ride by donating through her. In the meantime, I am returning to my full training schedule as of the end of this week, and still sending out my own fundraising "reminder" e-mails; my total is up to $11,760, and shows no signs of stopping anytime soon. Thanks again for all your wonderful support!

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So, it turns out that even a paid LiveJournal account only gives you fifty entries for your "Link List." I learned that yesterday while crediting my friend Addison for sponsoring a mile; his donation got him the 50th mile to be sponsored since I started "offering" dedicated miles for $100 each, and I noticed there were no more blank slots on my links form. So there's no room left at the inn, so to speak.

However, since I certainly don't intend to stop dedicating miles to people who sponsor them, there is always a solution. Several individuals or families have generously sponsored multiple miles, and as you can see on my blog's sidebar, I've dedicated each mile to them individually. I would prefer to keep it that way, as I think it more effectively conveys the magnitude of their donation, but I think henceforth whenever I need more "room" to dedicate another mile to a new donor, I'm going to have to consolidate some of the multiples. E.g., instead of "Mile 17: Bob" and "Mile 18: Bob," I'll list "Miles 17-18: Bob".

(A couple of people have cleverly insulated themselves against such consolidation by picking non-consecutive miles to sponsor... though I don't think that's why they did it. )

Rest assured, I appreciate everyone's donations of any size. It all adds up, and rather quickly at that - I'm nearing $6,000 on my way to my $10,900 goal. Thank you to everyone who has donated to the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society to sponsor my El Tour de Tucson ride thus far, and everyone still considering it!

Looking forward very much to tomorrow's winding training ride through the wilds of New Jersey.

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The brutally hot weather today convinced me to put in a couple of extra hours at work, and skip the core (non-bike) training scheduled for this evening in Central Park. I can do some sit-ups and lift the cats for a while in the comfort of my air-conditioned apartment after I get home tonight.

It also gave me some time to think about my goals... and here's what I think.

When I did the Boston-NY AIDS Ride in 1995, I committed myself to raising at least (I think) $1,500 for the cause. It had been a long time since I'd done any kind of serious fundraiser like a bike-a-thon, but I had a lot of friends and family, and I knew that if I put my mind to it, I could reach them all and convince a decent percentage of them to help out. I ended up raising about $5,200, which pleased me deeply. Not because I could pat myself on the back for my fundraising fu (though as I was just beginning to learn, I did have some game where that's concerned), but because clearly there was a need out there, and I was touching that need within the people I spoke to.

Twelve years ago, though, I really hadn't heard of any other massive events like that one where you really had to spend months getting ready.

As I continued by doing the far less strenuous AIDS Walks after moving to New York City in 2000, I gradually became aware that other big events were cropping up: The Komen Three-Day Walk for breast cancer was one, but what I started hearing most frequently was "Team in Training." Friends of mine who'd never done any fundraising or had any serious athletic pursuits were training to do marathons or triathlons...!

Moreover, raising money started to get harder, especially when I switched to the Light the Night Walk to raise money for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society following Mom's decision to "come out" as a leukemia patient. I knew more and more people, and could spread my reach farther when it came time to ask, but more and more of them had other friends who were doing Light the Night, or who were doing far more impressive things like triathlons or three-day walks, while (however important the cause) I was still doing a four-mile walk. And of course, my own friends who were doing those triathlons have a lot of the same friends I do, and people had to make choices about where their money went.

The real surprise came last year, when I contacted one old college friend who'd done a couple of Team in Training events, and asked her to sponsor me for Light the Night. She told me that she wasn't sponsoring anybody else's pursuits this time, just her own. I can understand that inclination, given that A) everybody has the right to budget their own charitable dollars, and B) she, like every other Team in Training participant, had committed to raising a rather large minimum (at least a few thousand dollars), and if she could get herself closer to that goal with money she might normally have sent elsewhere, and it was going to the same cause anyway, why shouldn't she?

On the other hand, not long after, she unironically sent me a request to sponsor her. :-)

With all those changes, with all that demand on everbody's charitable dollar, I guess this isn't going to be easy. But like I said in an earlier post, this is supposed to be difficult - I'm doing it because it's difficult. And I need to set a fundraising goal for myself that is, commensurately, a real challenge - a goal I have a legitimate chance of failing to reach no matter how hard I try. I'm going to do my part by riding my bike 109 miles through the desert, but I'm going to ask you all to pitch in as well, at a level beyond that which I've asked before.

In order to participate in El Tour de Tucson, I had to sign my name to commit to raising at least $4,400.

For the Boston-NY AIDS Ride in 1995, I raised $5,200.

At the height of my fundraising for the AIDS Walk in New York City - the one year my father didn't participate, and I was able to ask all our family members to sponsor me - I raised about $7,000.

This year, I'm going to raise one hundred dollars for every mile I'm going to ride my bike. I'm going to raise $10,900 to benefit the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.

Stay tuned as to how you can help.

In early 1995, still feeling bitter and helpless over the 1993 AIDS-related death of a family friend, Mike Riesenberg, I poured out my feelings to my friend Kate. As it happened, she had a friend named Chris who had done the first California AIDS Ride in 1994, and was now on the staff of the first Boston->NY AIDS Ride for 1995. She suggested that maybe this kind of event was just the opportunity to allow me to feel like I was doing something about Mike's death, or at least to start to put it behind me.

I started training in mid-May, raised about $5,200 from friends, family, and colleagues, and from September 15-17, I biked the 271 miles from Boston's World Trade Center to Chelsea Piers in Manhattan. (As it turns out, coyotegoth was another of the 3,200 riders, but we wouldn't meet for several more years.)

It hurt. :-)

But it was also an overwhelming experience, the likes of which I had never experienced before and haven't since. I had done walkathons or bikeathons, but those had been pretty limited, one-day events. Time and again, when I asked people to sponsor me for this, they were amazed at the level of commitment and effort I was putting into this - evenings and weekends given over to training, etc. - and they rose to the challenge by writing checks. Of course they also found the cause compelling, but I certainly felt like the "biking 271 miles in three days" part helped get people off the fence.

I started to develop arthritis in my neck and shoulders the following year, and never did another AIDS Ride as I'd hoped to do (including one with my friend Andy, who later did one on his own). When I moved to New York City in 2000, I started doing the AIDS Walk (10K through Central Park and the Upper West Side) with my parents, and eventually started a Cornell alumni team which was pretty successful for a few years.

That includes a few years following Mom's diagnosis with Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia in 2001. After she was diagnosed, Dad and I felt that a switch in priorities was in order - but because her CLL remained relatively inactive, she preferred not to tell people of her diagnosis, so that they wouldn't treat her like a patient. Unable to explain why we'd be doing a Leukemia fundraiser, and still feeling strongly about the need for funds to fight the spread of AIDS, we all kept on with the AIDS Walks.

When Mom changed her mind in 2004, deciding that she could do more good for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society by coming out as a patient and becoming an active advocate, we all immediately signed up for the Manhattan Light the Night Walk. It's a chaotic but inspiring event where a few thousand people carry lighted balloons from South Street Seaport to the Brooklyn Bridge, then over the bridge to the Brooklyn side and back to Manhattan, a total of around four miles. Mom is our team leader, and with the participation of only a handful of friends and family members each fall, we have consistently raised more money than even most corporate teams.

But I couldn't help feeling that it was all a little too... well, easy.

Don't get me wrong - I don't mean to disparage or devalue Light the Night or any other short-range fundraising walk. And Mom and the rest of the team will be raising money for Light the Night again this year, and I support them 100% (and will even be walking with them, albeit without sponsors). But every year I was coming back to my friends and family and asking them to donate to a cause that was important to me, and in return I was walking a total of around four miles, something I was already doing most days anyway - then sitting down with my folks for some beer and fish'n'chips at the Beekman Pub. And to my surprise, each year I was actually getting fewer donations - and for less money. And I couldn't help but think that maybe it really was a little too easy.

Plus, I have experienced some of the same anger and helplessness over my mother's illness that I felt twelve years ago about Mike. It's not that there's nothing I can do, it's that what I can do (or at least what I have done) feels thoroughly inadequate.

So I honestly don't know if my raising the bar on my own personal commitment will help encourage my friends and family to do the same. I am planning to set a very ambitious goal for my fundraising (about which more later), but I also have some interesting ideas as to how to achieve it (again, more later). In the meantime, I'm training to go to Tucson and bike 109 miles in one day because I need to push myself... because I need to know that, at 37 and with two knee surgeries behind me, I can still make my body do what I want it to... because it's my mother, and that's reason enough... because there are already enough areas of my life where I do the least I can do, and it's time there's one where I do the most I can do.

I'm doing El Tour de Tucson because it's not easy.

I haven't been able to, and likely won't be able to, join the group on any of our officially scheduled training rides this week - largely because of the absurdity of trying to make it to Prospect Park at six or seven in the morning, which would require getting out of bed at 4:30 or 5:30. There's a Thursday evening ride in Central Park tomorrow, but I already had other plans to support a cause important to a friend of mine, plans I'm loathe to break.

So many of the early morning rides are in Brooklyn because most of our coaches and mentors apparently live in Brooklyn, plus there are constantly other things going on in Central Park that would get in our way. At least one other Manhattan rider, an Israeli gentleman named Ofer, got in touch with me through our coach to talk about scheduling our own independent Central Park rides on a regular basis, but I'll be away for the next two weeks, and then he'll be away for a week right after that.

I will still probably do my own ride in Central Park tomorrow, though; the weather looks to be perfect, partly cloudy in the high sixties. The group rides are never required, they're just suggested. The main two reasons I would be disappointed to miss them are 1) continuing to make friends with the other Tucson riders, and 2) that some of the rides have specialized lessons, such as bike safety or body core training, that I could certainly stand to get refreshers on, if not learn from scratch.

But the main purpose of the rides is to ride, and that, I plan to continue doing, by myself if necessary (coyotegoth, are you up for something midday tomorrow?). And after I return on June 3 from my vacation in France, I plan to join as many of the training rides as possible.

Meanwhile, I had a slight disappointment earlier this week. Originally, I had planned to do the Honolulu Century on September 30 rather than El Tour de Tucson on November 17, particularly because I've never been to Hawaii and this would have been a great excuse. Unfortunately, Team in Training dropped Honolulu as an event; I gather the expense of sending the riders out there and putting them up had become too high a percentage of the money they were asking riders to raise (I'm not sure why they couldn't just increase the minimum, but they don't consult me). When I first told my parents about my plan, and asked them if they might be able to join me in Honolulu to greet me at the finish line and spend a few days with me in Hawaii, they thought that was a great idea. But now that it's Tucson - and it's later in the fall - my parents have told me that they're likely still to be on a vacation that includes a long cruise, one which they booked months ago.

I'm sure I will have no trouble finding meaning in completing the Tour without having my parents there, but it would be especially nice to greet Mom at the end of the ride, just to say, "That was for you." But of course, whether she's in Arizona with me or in Rio with Dad, she knows.

I spent much of today wandering the Brighton Beach and Sheepshead Bay neighborhoods of Brooklyn, including the actual beach and boardwalk. It was pretty foggy out there, but beautiful in the way that only a New York City beach can be. On the Upper East Side, even just a couple of blocks from Carl Schurz Park overlooking the East River, it's easy to forget how much natural beauty surrounds us, and what those parts of the city have given us.

Brighton Beach and Sheepshead Bay gave me my mother.

Well, my grandmother Mollie (whom I never met) and my grandfather Isaac ("Irving") gave me my mother. But she grew up in Brighton Beach and Sheepshead Bay, and later Manhattan Beach. She and my father finally settled in the suburb of Dobbs Ferry when I was only six months old, already over 37 years ago. But I spend enough time there, and today I wanted to reach further back and connect with her in a different way, with her roots.

Six years ago, less than a year after I moved to New York City to be closer to my parents, my mother was diagnosed with Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia. None of us really knew at the time what that meant; we knew that leukemia was a form of blood cancer, but we didn't know her prognosis, or even really that there were different kinds of the disease. I'll write more about CLL in later entries, but for now suffice to say we knew her life would change.

We have been very fortunate, far more fortunate than many families of leukemia patients, in that my mother's life hasn't changed all that much; she has remained relatively healthy. CLL can remain relatively inactive - or at least advance very, very slowly - for several years, and with Mom it has done just that. As I said, it's been six years - and she's not only still with us, she's still in pretty good health, and hasn't had to undergo any kind of medical treatment. Not everybody is so lucky, and so we count every day with her as a blessing.

What does that have to do with Tucson?

Tonight I spent a couple of hours at the registration and kick-off for the New York City chapter of Team in Training. "TNT" is an arm of the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, through which ordinary people sign up to do extraordinary things to raise money for the Society's programs - medical research, government lobbying, patient services, and all the other things that are desperately needed in the fight against blood cancers. TNT members spend months training to run a marathon, bike/swim/run a triathlon, or bike a "century," and they use the event as a catalyst to raise money from their friends and family.

And tonight I committed myself to spend the next six months training, so that I can ride my bike in "El Tour de Tucson" - one hundred and nine miles in and around the city of Tucson, Arizona in one day, November 17, 2007.

I hope you'll check in with me often over the next six months. It should be an interesting ride.