It's Not About the Bike

It's not about the bike, I guess we've all figured out as much. 

But what was it about?

I was taken immediately with Lance Armstrong's story when I read his memoir
It's Not About the Bike. This mischief maker with energy to burn was once

so unable to be contained his mother said, as mothers do, go on! Take your bike; go for a ride! So he did, he road for miles and miles and miles and miles, ending up many towns away and when he reached his mother by phone, she told him essentially, you got yourself there, now get yourself back. 

I thought about how the bike took him along all those Tour de France routes, up and down the Alps or the Pyrenees, speeding through the lovely French villages, through the time trials, 2,000 miles over 21 days. How he won the tour  seven times in a row and that was after he beat cancer in a harrowing, intense fight. 

I remember doing the same thing I did when I first read Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes. At one particularly wrenching moment in the book, I had to look at the inside back cover to see McCourt's photograph, to assure myself he'd actually survived the hunger and heartache he was describing. You lived through that? I did the same  after reading about Armstrong's cancer battle. You lived through that and then won that race seven times in a row? How could that be?

Like many people, I bought into the story fully. I ordered a box of Livestrong bands and everyone in our extended family wore them to honor a family member we all loved. 

Lance Armstrong won a grueling battle against a terrible cancer. He went up and down those mountains, sprinted those time trials, raced thousands and thousands of miles on the bike. And yet...it turns out he didn't really win. 

So what, then, was it really all about?

On the morning after the "world-wide exclusive" interview that four million of us watched, I woke early. The  little cafe and gas station across the street were opening; the city bus roaring by again with people heading to work, the fishing boat was out in the water just off the coast a couple blocks away. 

It was just a bit past dark on a windy, wintry Friday morning and the mechanic and his son, the bus driver, the cafe owner, the short order cook, the occupational therapist and the house painter were off to work as usual. 

There wouldn't be a medal, endorsements or a world-wide exclusive, but there was a truth to it. Something to admire and believe in.