Riding for Roses

We’re sitting at home watching “Chasing Lance: The Fans’ Story” on the Travel Channel right now. It strikes me that I might get a little blog traffic, so I am putting up this article to write something about what we see and what has happened since the show finished filming.

It’s over. I loved it. Congratulations to Talia Pulver and Bill Delano on an excellent show. I think it did an excellent job of capturing the full spectrum of how Lance and the LAF have touched people.

I have to go with one change. I can’t call this “Rob’s Story” or “my story” when talking about the part of the show where they talk about me. It’s Spencer’s story. He’s the reason we were worthy of interest to be in the show. So, I’m going to call it Spencer’s Story. I’m going to skip commenting about the other stories, though I do need to go get their email addresses so I can express my awe. I am not worthy.

The Timeline

I think we need to get one thing out there right now. The footage in the show is all factual. The timeline depicted (for Spencer’s story) is slightly altered to make a better story. His immune system shutdown was at the start of the Tour. By the time Aix arrived, Spencer was bald as a cue ball (or Q ball if you are a Ben’s Game player), but starting to recover enough to hit the Tour Watch event. On his worst day at the Tour Watch, he got more donations that we got on our best day without him. He’d just work the crowd and come back with fists full of money asking for more wrist bands, fans, and newsletters to hand out. Although we did go on a ride to celebrate Lance’s victory, the ride in the show is actually from earlier. As I said, true footage, but a slightly modified timeline.

Special Thanks and Floor Footage

It was interestingto not see the footage that didn’t make the cut. The “Special Thanks” at the end had a lot to say. Special thanks went to:

• The Driskill Hotel
• Wonders and Worries
• The Lance Armstrong Foundation
• Central Market

All of these were footage for Spencer’s story. I think Wonders and Worries appeared briefly in one of the B shots. I don’t believe the Driskill made it into the show. The crew did a bunch of filming at the Driskill as an Austin destination. We got a personal tour of the hotel. Spencer became a “Driskill Deputy” and the dessert chef made him a special “Lance Sundae” that had a beautiful chocolate and yellow bicycle climbing the Sunday, looking like Lance climbing the mountains. They also filmed us at a parent/child relationship class at Wonders and Worries. The LAF footage was used at the beginning of the story to show us preparing for the Tour Watch event. The LAF supplied several boxes of materials and a bunch of LAF interns and volunteers to help with the booth on the weekends. Without that support we couldn’t have done the Tour Watch event. Central Market was willing to host the Tour Watch event – allowing us to completely take over the cafe on the big days – and allowed the crew to film us.

Thanks to all of these organizations for allowing the filming that made the show work, even if it didn’t get included, and support the fundraising to help cancer survivors.

Since the Filming

What has happened since the filming?

The Tour Watch event was very successful for fundraising. Spencer raised money from that event, a cancer survivor event at our church, a raffle at the It’s a Grind coffee shop near our house, and direct solicitation (email, mail, this blog). His total was $32,523.00 from 263 donors (including several large checks that were teller checks from cash donations from dozens fo people).

The Ride for the Roses weekend was awesome. It was humbling to meet all of the other people, cancer survivors or not, who raised so much money and empowering, and sometimes very sad, to hear the cancer stories. We are so lucky that Spencer’s cancer is one that is very treatable and that his treatment is going well. We got to ride with Lance and we beat him up a hill, though full disclosure does require that I mention he was pushing us at the time we beat him up the hill. The peloton dinner that (Friday) evening was impressive, though I may be in trouble with the state for allowing Spencer to listen to Robin Williams. The kids events on Saturday were immensely fun, and may redeem me for the Robin Williams incident. In the Ride proper, we managed to complete the 40 mile ride a little ahead of our target schedule. Spencer was a trooper, not only riding hard, but tolerating the joking comments from passing cyclists telling me he was slacking.

Spencer’s treatment continues to go well. He completed the delayed intensification, with the immune system shutdown and loss of all of his hair (again), without major incident. He’s been hospital briefly twice since then, both times for high fever that didn’t cause any big problems. Once was right before he started kindergarten – he was in the hospital 7:30 PM Sunday to 7:30 PM Monday, and hit his first day at kindergarten at 7:30 AM Tuesday. A week and a half ago he was in Friday night at midnight and out Sunday about noon. He missed a couple more days of school because the fever kept coming back and he was wheezing, but it all resolved.

The Future

Spencer has two more years of “maintenance” level chemotherapy. He will likely be hospitalized for minor stuff a couple more times. All indications now suggest that, as the oncologist said, we’re just putting in time now.

We’ll be back on January 2 or so with the initial planning for the first year of Livestrong Rides replacing the Ride for the Roses. In addition, Spencer is going to be an honored hero for a Leukemia Lymphoma Society Team in Training, helping them to raise money to fight leukemia and other blood cancers.