Friday Ramblings: Placidly Amid the Noise and Haste

I commonly tell new cyclists I mentor that they should surround themselves with people whose characteristics they would like to emulate. Over the past seven years, I have had the opportunity and privilege to work with two great men: Bob (the boss) and Brian (my manager). They have been the best mentors a young professional could be blessed with, and their tolerance, understanding, and support for my athletic pursuits has always been appreciated.

In February, Bob came into the office for the first time in months. My colleagues and I call this a “Bob” sighting. For health reasons, Bob had not been in the office since November. The dutiful baton of client satisfaction had been passed on.

I had my bike in my office, and I remember him asking, “New bike?” I explained to him it was just the new carbon wheels, and he took some time to question me about them.

Bob always took interest in the Tour de France and my own racing and, too. I remember when Floyd bonked in 2006, and I said, “It’s over for him.” Bob laughed and doubted me. The next day, we were both listening to Eurosport’s commentary on our computers when Floyd threw down his bold move that would effectively win – and lose – him the Tour.

After every race weekend, I would return to the office with sore legs. Bob would insist on hearing more about my results than I would usually share at work. When I told him that a friend captured a video of my first win, he needed to see it. I gave him the link, and through the adjacent wall of our offices I heard Joe Jefferson’s voice through the computer speakers and Bob yelling, “Oh look at those suckers back there!”

You don't know much about people when you first meet them. Bob met me on the other side of the building in 2003. I was a bored summer intern alphabetizing expense reports (seriously). My most exciting (note sarcasm) job task was reporting on congressional hearings for non-proliferation.

I was under-utilized, and Bob heard about the bored intern. He introduced himself and his program humbly, as a guy that needed help with a cool project. He then asked me the biggest understated question ever, “Would you be interested in helping?”

Seven years later, I am still helping.

But I was sold. One of the division Vice Presidents had hired me, but I never met him (and still have not to this day – he’s moved on to a different company). I would later find out that he was a former ambassador to one of the former Soviet states; he was a busy man that had little time to allocate to his intern.

Three years of busy summers and winter- and spring-breaks working in an office (instead of partying at the beach), I asked Bob if I could continue working as an intern after graduation, at least until I found a job.

“To hell with that,” he gasped. “We’ll keep you.”

Bob was a God-sent mentor and role model for a young professional. Among the ideals that I learned from him were to work hard, so you’ll always have work. Good work begets more work. He encouraged his people to take care of their people – our work family understood that our real families take precedence.

He also understood and sympathized with a healthy dose of leisure. Even in his late 60s, he was among the better tennis players nationally for his age, and would travel with his wife to Colorado for skiing and mountain biking. As my career bloomed under Bob’s guidance, so did my obsession with cycling. I bought my first bicycle during my first summer internship, and continued growing as a cyclist-turned-bike racer through the years.

Around 2004, Bob was diagnosed with spreading colorectal cancer. Throughout the past five years, he has had multiple invasive surgeries I do not need to describe, and has had his taste buds burned by at least three chemotherapy cycles.

Because of his personality, you never would have known about the cancer, but recently, it returned with a serious aggression. A new, growing tumor was surrounding some digestive organs, which made it inoperable. Chemotherapy treatments were proving to be ineffective. Worsening liver and kidney problems gave his skin and eyes a yellow hint, from jaundice.

When Bob visited in February, he told us that he found it disturbing how people show denial by distancing themselves from those struggling with illness, though I could tell he made little of it. He had cancer, and he could not deny it, so he did not let others’ denial affect him. True to his personality, he always addressed his worsening condition with us directly.

Perhaps it was still a farce; Bob was too strong for me to understand the seriousness of his condition.

His recovery periods from surgery and chemo were not as relaxed as you would expect from a senior-citizen victim of disembowelment and chemotherapy. During a recent recovery from surgery this past fall, Bob traveled to Vail. "It's all about the process,” he would say about life. Cancer would not stop him from enjoying himself. If he had to suffer, it could be on his terms, at least some of the time.

"First my goal was to put on my skis,” he told me during the most recent Bob sighting, in March. “Then it was to make it to the top of the lift. Once I got up there, well..."

That’s Bob, and his recovery was in his happiness. His happiness – his life – was in the process.

Before leaving the office after this most recent Bob sighting, he asked me about racing. There was little to report – I had not yet raced in 2010, but I assured him that I was riding well and was excited to race.

That was the last conversation I would have with Bob. It was about life in general, and bike racing.

When I arrived in the office on Monday morning of this week, a colleague told Brian (my manager) and me that Bob’s wife had just called him. Bob had passed away Thursday.

Bob had explained his condition to us; he had not hidden many details. His strength, though, was deceiving. Though we knew he was constantly in and out of the hospital, he would visit in high spirits often. None of us thought his five-year fight would end so abruptly because of the new developments of cancer in his body.

A cyclist who does not dream of winning a bike race is nary a racer. Such is the same with life. A person who does not swing for the fences, at least occasionally, does not live.

Bob was a West Point graduate that was catcher and captain of their baseball team when West Point used to scrimmage the Yankees (at his house he has a picture of him catching with Mickey Mantle at the plate). Baseball was a strength, but he was an incredible skiier and was still regionally ranked as a senior tennis player, too. His enthusiasm for sport never let up, even while encouraging others like me.

Bob retired from the Army as a Colonel, having served in Vietnam and further. He had a master's degree in Missile Engineering, which he less-humbly admitted when he made the trite quip, "It's not rocket science." Through his current work, he never fully removed himself from serving his country. He was a proud husband, father of two, and grandfather. Bob was a friend to many, and an example to more.

Imagine if for any single pursuit in life, you possessed the calm toughness that Bob possessed for the past five years. I cannot fathom his insufferable pain, but imagine if you could ride, race, or live with the desperate hardiness of a man dying of cancer.

If life is in the process, as Bob says, then death is the abrupt, dark finish line in a race against life. Having endured so much, passed on so much, and enjoyed life to the fullest, how could he not have won, even against such an undefiable opponent?

I do not really know if this is my own sort of eulogy, my method of grieving, or a challenge to myself to live and race by Bob’s indelible guidance. Perhaps they are all one in the same. On a wall in his office, though, he had framed the words of a poem he seemed to live by, which I will not soon forget: Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence... With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.