UPDATE: I DID IT!

After almost 11 hours on my trusty steed, 270 km of asphalt behind me and countless hot showers I am delighted to say that I have fully recovered from my ride. I write this thank you note truly amazed with the out pouring of support that I?ve received since December when I decided to take on this new challenge. For your financial support, I humbly thank you. For not only what it means to me, but also what it means to the Princess Margaret and all the work that was made possible by the $18.1 Million raised by the Ride this year.

For your kind words of encouragement, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. With each day passing leading to the ride and throughout my time on the road I received countless messages showing me how lucky I am to have such wonderful family and friends. I kept your thoughts with me and routinely used them as fuel when I thought the rain couldn?t get any harder or the hill couldn?t get any steeper. I learned more about many of you as you shared your personal stories of how cancer has touched your lives. For your candor I also say thank you!

This has been a truly remarkable experience; one that I will never forget.

This is more than a physical challenge!

When I look around me I see family, friends, co-workers and those that just happen to cross my path. We have different backgrounds, are from different generations, and serve different purposes, to name a few. Unfortunately, we are the same for the wrong reason. We've all been touched in one way or another by this disease.

When I was a young boy, I struggled to understand the reason why my mother wasn?t home for two days. Through those eyes, I was afforded a then, unappreciated level of comfort because I was told, with confident words, that as the hours ticked by, normal would return. To my delight, normal continues to stay. Diagnosed with cervical cancer at the age of 40, advances in cancer treatment brought my mom back to full health and allowed her brush with this deadly disease to fade into a distant memory.

This triumph was not the case as I grew older. Cancer touched, and often took, people who were near me. A disease that has no regard for age, family status, or commitment, cancer cut short the lives of so many I knew. Oddly, as I reflect, even though I saw it regularly, there was always a certain distance that it stayed. My mom?s successful surgery gave me an odd sense of immunity, as if those who were really close to me would be spared the hardship.

This immunity was stripped in December 2006 when I lost an incredibly influential person in my life. My father had fallen into cancer?s grip, with no notice, and no time to say goodbye. With a complete disregard for the impact of stripping that man, my father, from our family, cancer knows no boundary. How was I supposed to know that a visit to take a break from my exam studies would be the last time we would speak? That through my 20 year old eyes, I had seen a symbol of strength and compassion that my younger brother would never witness. That ?good luck on your exams, I love you?, his last words as I left, would have been imparted with such incredible meaning to me.

Tackling the roads between here and Niagara on June 9th and 10th is more than a physical challenge and more than an exercise of mental toughness. It?s a complete understanding that gaining support from you is the only way to offer generations to come, the sense of immunity I once had, but this time for good reason. This time because there will be a treatment and there will be a cure.

I humbly ask you, my family, friends and co-workers, to courageously support my ride, in the hope that that the research being done right now at Princess Margret will unlock the key that will conquer cancer.