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Two Weekends

A dock and sunset on Lake Tahoe. More Tahoe pics here.

Sorry about that.

I really feel like I dropped the ball, but I've got an excuse. You see, I was really really busy, and instead of making up for it by posting another heart wrenching mindblower of an essay, I'm just going to explain why I didn’t write anything last week.

I guess the trouble started last weekend (Memorial Day weekend) when I went to Duck Beach, North Carolina with some friends. We pushed south through hours of holiday traffic until we got to the lovely "Celestial Seasuns" beach house. The glory of the 80 hours following our arrival cannot be articulated in any earthly language, but perhaps a list might give you some idea:

* Saltwater

* Moonlight

* Nightswimming

* Skinnydipping

* Grillin

* Unicorns

* Speedos

* Plaid tankinis

* Ha-tub

* Sunbaked skin

* Jean shorts

* Tons of Mormon kids

* Burnt feet

* Texas hold'em

* Diet Coke

* Karaoke

* Dance party

* 360 dives

* BYU physical education

* White dolphins

* Church dances

* Sunrises

* No sleep

I left that lovely house at 2:30am Tuesday, arrived in DC at 7:00am, took a nap and went to work, wasted. That night, Tim and I had to move out of our house in DC to a little apartment in Virginia just across the Potomac. The evening was spent loading my parents' truck with as much of my life as it could bear and unloading everything into my new home, a small apartment where I’ll live for the next month and a half until Tim's wife moves in and kicks me out. At that point, I'll move back to my parents' house as I get ready to head to San Diego for grad school in the fall.

Anyway, I had to move on Tuesday night, having spent the previous night blasting Radiohead, Enemy Love, and Destroyer fending off sleep while shooting up the Eastern seaboard. I don't remember when I finally got to bed, but I had to be up early the next morning to cover for one of my coworkers.

You see? That was Tuesday night, the night that I ordinarily write all of this stuff down. I was too tired and I didn't have access to the internet, so I apologize. I really feel like I let everyone down.

Now you're asking, "but if you really felt so bad about it, why didn’t you write on Wednesday night?"

To which I'm responding, "because I had to move on Wednesday too, and I also had a favorite relative in town, and I had to get to sleep because I hadn't recovered from Duck Beach and I had another intense weekend ahead of me."

Yeah, INTENSE.

So I didn't write on Wednesday and I decided that it wouldn't be worth anyone's time for me to write on Thursday because I had to catch a flight out to Lake Tahoe on Friday morning.

As many of you might know, I have spent the past 5 months training and raising money to participate in America's Most Beautiful Bike Ride around Lake Tahoe. With the help of many friends and relatives, I was able to raise over $4,000 for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society and ride with the Society’s Team in Training in an effort to fight blood related cancers. The ride was fantastic. One of my dearest friends and I raced for 100 miles, up and down mountain passes, through forests and along the blue shores of Lake Tahoe. We averaged about 17.7 miles an hour and spent roughly 6 and a half hours on the ride including four bathroom/refueling breaks. Other than the ride, the weekend was spent lounging and buffet-ing, enjoying doing nothing, reading and walking. I love the Rockies and, as always, it was good to visit the West (pictures here).

So there's my excuse for not writing, but, guess what? I'll write a bit of an essay too.

I participated in the Relay for Life at the University of Maryland a little over a year ago. As I look past the idyllic weekend at Lake Tahoe to my cold, drizzly April night in College Park, I see the same confused person.

For some reason, I failed to mention in my entry on the Relay for Life how the wind toppled the memorial bags lining the racetrack, causing the candles to ignite the bags. We stood in observance of silence, shivering in the wind as a few unlucky bags spelling H-O-P-E on the bleachers caught fire and flitted out in bright windy paperfire flashes. And I thought, "That's embarrassing. Maybe that means something," and I looked around and saw sniffling daughters and austere young men and thought "I don't understand this."

So that was over a year ago, but this weekend I was part of the same thing. They took me to a dinner and told me I was a hero for riding my bike around the race and that I was a hero for raising the money and I felt pretty good about it, but my ability to emotionally invest in this cause is severely limited. And so a little girl, likely a victim of cancer, couldn't stifle a brief moan during this weekend's moment of silence and it killed me. I thought (again) "that's embarrassing for her parents." And then I thought (again), "I don't have the slightest idea what any of these people are going through. I'm surrounded by victims, and mothers and fathers of victims, and sons and daughters of victims, their cousins, aunts and uncles, and I just don't feel like I have it in me. I'm not sure if I can feel as much as they can and I wonder if it's enough."

So I get to thinking about what it'd be like if my Mom or Dad got cancer, or my sister or brother, or my niece or one of my nephews, and I get really angry, my eyes well up a bit, but then I can just shake it off because it hasn't happened. And I wonder, "Did I just come out here to ride my bike around Lake Tahoe? Because I think that might be what happened and I feel really bad about it."

And then I think about Kim, a little girl with cancer, probably about 11 years old who cheered me on halfway through a 9 mile climb around mile 85 and I hope, really badly, that riding that bike up the mountain really means as much to her as it seemed. Cheery in the noon sunlight, she stood holding a sign with her name on it, thanking the Team in Training and cheering me up the hill. So I cheered for her and said "go KIM!" and I rode on and didn't think much about cancer for the rest of the way. I had 15 miles to go. But now I still think about Kim, and I'm painfully aware of my inability to relate to her struggle.

Here's what I'm getting at: it might mean a lot to Kim that I rode my bike up that mountain, but the reality is that I don't even know why I was there. I can't tell if it was altruism or self consciousness, but either way, if she doesn’t mind, I'm really glad I got to go.