Today we went there with two big buckets of ice-cream, chocolate syrup, cherries and whipped cream. As we were making our way into the kitchen I was greeted with a broad smile from Marc and his wife and caregiver Dana with whom I had spent time last time. I smiled back at them. As soon as we got the ice-cream out for serving there was a queue and you could hear things like,
``Don’t be so greedy!”
`` No, the extra one’s for my wife!
``But she is not there!”
They laughed it off and the line moved ahead. Charlie, caregiver for her friend Karen Patterson, recovering from pancreatic cancer spotted me and picked on me, `` so, did you get those bikes for me today? You are gonna give that to me for $200.00”.
I told him, ``Yeah, most certainly, but you will have to wait until the end of our bike trek. Hopefully it will still be worth that much!”
A few more laughs and we settled down on our tables. I served myself some chocolate and strawberry ice-cream and sat down with Marc and Dana. Marc is undergoing treatment for throat cancer and he told me that today wasn’t one of the better days and that he felt tired and worn out. We did our customary brief introductions in the room and then went back to our table discussions. Marc is a sports coach for kids and was telling me about these cameras that we can fit on our bike helmets that we should look into. He told me that they are used by players in football and hockey and it would be really cool to capture our trip on video as we would be witnessing some of the most breathtaking scenic routes on our bike trek to San Francisco. Kristine and Adam joined me shortly on that table and I could see that Marc’s spirits were uplifted as he spoke to us and Kristine told us about last year’s route. Marc’s mantra for fighting cancer: One day at a time!
I was glad that I could be there that night. ``One day at a time!” I will think of those words by Marc and bike harder when I hit the Appalachians and the Rockies this summer.
Abhishek Gupta
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