Fat Cyclist

Some of you may read Fat Cyclist, a blog started by an average guy looking to become a little more than average through the joys of cycling. His wife was diagnosed with multiple cancers, and at this point she is in the final stages of brain cancer, as he states in this post: Getting the Ending Right.

As the cancer eats away at her, more quickly now, Elden had A Chance to Talk with his wife when she became, remarkably, lucid. He siezed upon the moment to say all the things he wanted to say to his beloved wife, while she was the person he knew, loved, and adored. And then he offered this...

More important than the talk about our shift in focus — from fighting the cancer in her body to fighting the symptoms coming from the cancer in her brain — I got an opportunity I expect billions and billions of people have wished for: Having thought I had missed my last opportunity to tell Susan all the things I want to, I suddenly had a new opportunity drop into my lap.

A second chance.

And you can bet I did not pass it up.

Susan’s still herself today. She got up with me and helped get the kids ready for school, just like any ordinary day.

But ordinary now feels so amazingly extraordinary.

Now, I don’t consider this a “call to action” blog (though, honestly, could fatcyclist.com now be any further from its original purpose of being a cycling lifestyle / comedy / weight-loss blog?).

But I’m going to make an exception today. I’m going to tell you to put yourself in my shoes.

Think for a moment about the person you care most about. Now think about what you’d wish you could have said if that person were taken away from you. Now think about how glad you would be if you were given a second chance to say those things.

And then go say them.

I've nothing to add today, save that I love you...

Two Years--It's Official

I got my CT scan results back. Here's what they looked like:



Obviously, you can see from these results that I am CLEAN. Now I start going back one time per year. How will I ever manage the decrease in my barium intake? So, how do I feel?


Sending a mad shout out to my friend Terri BunnyRunner who keeps fighting the good fight!

Little Fish and I are Chasing the Great Pumpkin

A couple of weeks ago, Little Fish and I signed up for The Fifteenth Annual Great Pumpkin Chase, a one-mile fun run. She runs Cross Country with her Fifth Grade team and we signed up through them. This is the very first official race that Little Fish and I are doing together. Right now it's about 50 degrees and raining sideways, but we've been looking forward to it since we signed up. I'm thinking she'll want to go when she rises.

Of course, we signed up before I turned my ankle. But, I have rested, iced and wrapped it for a week, and it feels solid enough to run on, now. The swelling has gone down and the bruising is almost gone, so we'll wrap it tight and see how it goes.

Go Phillies!

Tonight the Phils go against the Tampa Bay (ne' Devil) Rays in Game 1 of the World Series. Go Phillies!

Ankle Still Hurts

So I had to put it on ice at work yesterday. It felt good in the morning (as it does today) but being on my feet had it swelling by the afternoon. Not working out is making me snarky. I guess it's time to do some more upper body and core work, because running and cycling seem to be out for a bit.

Rolled My Ankle

I was running over to a neighbor's house and rolled my ankle. Badly. I've been applying ice and taking ibuprofen all day, trying to keep the swelling down. It hurts. Like, a lot. I've been hobbled, but not by Kathy Bates. It looks like I have a couple of days of not running. Or anything else.

Thankfully, Dr. Little Fish has been taking care of me.

Winners...

So the Philadelphia Executioner takes down another one. Amazing. Bernard Hopkins, 104years old, beats Kelly Pavlick decisively. I saw the fight and it wasn't even close.

The Phillies are going to the World Series.

The Red Sox are down 3 games to 1 and losing 7-0 in the bottom of the seventh inning. They come back, improbably, to win. The venue shifts to Tropicana Field where the Rays have PWNED my beloved SAWKS all year. The Sox seem not to remember, because they won, again, last night 4-2 to force a deciding, winner-take-all Game 7.

Penn State continues to rise up the national rankings and is now Number 3. They faced Michigan yesterday, by whom they have been thumped for 9 (count 'em) straight games. Nine losses. Zero wins. At halftime, they were losing again. Somebody must have said SOMETHING (and probably quite loudly) to them at halftime, because the team that came out of the locker room played like their hair was on fire, scoring 32 unanswered points. Final score: Meatchicken: 17, PSU: 46. We are Penn State!

So, sports-wise, it's been an awfully good weekend in the Fish house, thus far. GO SAWKS!

Hopkins V. Pavlick

Okay, let me start by saying I am a Bernard "The Executioner" Hopkins fan. He has handled his business with grit and style, and always puts on an amazing fight. That being said, I think he has bitten off more than he can chew in facing the wrecking machine that is Kelly Pavlick. Pavlick is is on a mission to not only become Number One, but to systematically and totally destroy everyone in his path (funny, though, we said the same thing about Joe Calzaghe. Granted, he is moving up in weight to face Hopkins, but I don't see how Bernard, at 41, is going to win, much less keep his string of "never-been-knocked-out" fights intact.

There was an interesting article on Sports Illustrated about the fight. The article says:

...one of three things could happen in another non-title fight [for Pavlick] against a legend who's almost 44 years old: 1) Pavlik loses and becomes a completely unmarketable guy with a belt, 2) Pavlik wins a Calzaghe-like decision which proves that, in his prime, he's still only as good as Bernard, who is past his prime, 3) Pavlik dominates Bernard, which the public will not see as a testimony to how good he is, but rather just as proof that it is definitely time for Bernard to stop boxing.

For the record, I'm picking Pavlick in eight....but I'm cheering for Hopkins.

"So, for whom do you cheer if the Phillies play the Red S...

SHUT UP!!!!!!!! Don't jinx it!!!!!!

As the Irish say, "We'll blow up that bridge when we come to it."

"That's an Odd Choice"

I have been watching the League Championship Series on the telly and an unfortunate byproduct of such viewing is sitting through commercials. As a former ad-guy, perhaps I cast a more critical eye at the attempts to separate me from my dollars than the average slack-jawed, mouth-breathing American consumer. Perhaps.

One of the commercials that has been sticking me like a trident in my eyes (the third point goes in my mind's eye, stabbing the now-bloodied chakra that used to reside in the middle of my forehead) is the Direct TV ad featuring the little girl from Poltergeist. It's not so much the unimaginative content that gets me as the recurring frequency with which this little girl appears to tell me, "They're back..."

Unfortunately, that tag line is exactly what I don't want to hear, because it seems like every time I look up she's sitting there, in front of the television, right before the ghostly hand reaches out of it (I for one can't wait to watch the World Series with Little Fish--that moment's going to be a peach) and tries to grab little CaroleAnn and bring her into the next life.

So I mentioned the ad to Mrs. Fish. "That's an odd choice," she says.
"I know, she's so annoying," I reply. "And she's on every single commercial break."
"No. I meant because she's dead."
"WHAT!!!???"
"Yeah, she died shortly after making Poltergeist. I forget what from. Odd that they're using her in a commercial."

DO YOU THINK???? What is wrong with people? Who in the Direct TV marketing department decided THIS is going to be our spokesperson/deliverer of the message? Suddenly the slack-jawed troglodytic masses seem to be on a higher road than I, former-ad-man and guilty-by-association purveyor of totally bizarre choices. I'm so sorry, America, for the thoughtless decisions my brothers and sisters of marketing continue to inflict upon you. If they had bleach for the brain, I'd use it in an attempt to unsee and unlearn what I now know. The commercial has gone beyond annoying.

But wait. There's more. How did CaroleAnn die? For that information, I went to the trusty-rusty Google and clicked on the site for Heather O'Rourke. You may want to stop reading here, because it just gets worse. She died from an obstructed bowel, which, I am certain, is a terrible way to go, and especially so at such a young age. I found out how she left us by clicking on the Heather O'Rourke fan site, one of the odder (read as creepier) sites I have ever visited.

From this site, you can click on Find-A-Grave and find out where Heather is buried (LA, really close to Mel Torme and in the same vault as Truman Capote), see items for bid on e-bay (Heather Rourke's First Barbie ad--Buy It Now for $15.00!), or visit the forum to learn important things that people want to know about her (did she like ABBA? How tall was she?) and do other things like read poems dedicated to Heather. I could go on and on, but really, what could I possibly say that isn't better said better by this...

I Don't Have Cable

This could be the year. My two favorite teams in baseball are the Phillies and the Red Sox. This could be the year they play each other (I almost don't want to type this) in the...you know what? I'm not going to say it. The Phillies have been on Fox (Phox?)for the National League Championship Series and the Red Sox have been, inexplicably, on TBS for the American League Championship Series. Are you telling me someone decided it would be good for baseball to put the ALCS on a little know channel in the boondocks of cable television?

Let's get this straight. It's not that I can't afford cable, it's just that I think it's stupid to pay for television. The only time I really regret the decision is in July when the Tour de France is on Versus. Until now. I feel like half my dream has been banished to a veritable barbarian hinterland.

Then I remembered that on clear nights, I have been able to get WEEI out of Boston, the voice of Red Sox Nation. No such luck! But, I did find a station out of Chicago, WMVP, which was broadcasting the game as an ESPN affiliate. So I hunkered down next to the radio, grabbed a book and harkened back to a fabulous era of radio and baseball.

When I was a kid, my Uncle Charlie used to listen to every Phillies game on a tiny transistor radio, smoking Pall Mall's in the kitchen while my brother and I shucked corn. It was a fun way to follow a game, drifting lazily in and out of the game (conversely, last night's Dice-K nailbiter did not allow for much drifting) and I was right back there last night. There's a side of me that wishes it were reversed, so I could catch the incomparable Harry Kalas on radio.

Blood Results

My blood is clean -- reports were negative!

I also went for my two-year CT Scan today. I simply love the taste of Barium in the morning. Now they're flavoring it with orange, so it tastes like orange chalk. "I ask you," in the incredulous voice of Lane Meyers, "which is worse? To drink a chalk-flavored drink, or to drink a chalk-flavored drink that is masked with crappy orange flavor to try to make you forget about the chalk-flavored drink?"

Answer: I'm not sure it matters. It's the difference between


...and...


Either way, it fails. But (not to mention the DRE), if the worst thing I have to complain about is the horrible taste of barium (and the DRE), I'm still ahead of the game.

Ummmmm.....WANT:

So, I went for a ride on some dirt trails and through a construction area near my house the other day. Dirt is fun. I had forgotten just how much fun dirt can be--switchbacks, ducking branches, single track and ruts, wildflowers, washouts, and PUDDLES!!! So I took a look at dirt-friendly bikes. I think I want one of these....

....anybody have $5Grrrr laying around?

Welcome to SOXTOBER!

I said it before and I'll say it again: Jon Lester PWNS yer FACE!!!!!!



Now, a moment of silence for my beloved Eagles...

Checkup...

I had my two year checkup this week with my urologist. It's hard to believe that I was diagnosed with cancer more than two years ago. So far, everything is great. I also visited the dermatologist last week and he removed two spots and "as a precaution" is getting them biopsied.

If I pass the two year milestone, I get to go down to once a year checkups. The rest of the tests are scheduled for Thursday morning, so I'll probably know where all of this stands next week. They've been slow in the past with tests, so it may be a little longer.

One of the things about testicular cancer is that it is very unlikely to come back. So I have that going for me, which is nice...

A reminder--October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Check 'em out.