Rider Profile

I will be joining 1,000 other cyclists in a bike ride to raise money for cancer research for Georgetown University Lombardi Cancer Research starting from the Georgetown University campus in the morning of Saturday 10/26/24.
Just over 12 years ago, I learned that I had cancer. My youngest son was five. We had just relocated to DC, and my wife was starting a new job. The treatments were harsh and lasted two years. I felt like I was walking through life in a Damocles-like cancer fog. Last year, the cancer came back, and I received new treatments at Georgetown University Hospital. At the time, last year’s treatments didn’t seem that bad. But so far 2024 seems almost like the worst year of my life due to the cascade of other health problems caused by the cancer “treatments” of 2023. Gosh! I didn’t see it coming. Moreover, last year when raising money for the 2023 BellRinger ride, I heard dozens of stories of cancer survivors and deaths from around the country. All of them moving.
This was my second round. My son is now 18 and will be off to college in the fall. I was in the radiation oncology waiting room and got to know a woman who was fighting her fifth cancer. When cancer happens, it’s quite shocking, but we don’t really have a choice. We have to bear up and face the disease and, for many of us, the consequences of the treatments. And that changes us. That’s why I'm riding, and that’s why I volunteered to be team Captain for the inaugural K&L Gates 2024 BellRinger ride.
By the way, the name “BellRinger” has nothing to do with bells on the handlebars of our bikes. At the end of cancer treatments, there is a bell at the nurse’s station that the patient rings in celebration of the end of treatment. The collective cancer patients’ “BellRinger” is the ultimate goal of raising money for cancer research.