Tour de Max, Sun Aug 14

Jo Insomniac came across this on the Western Wheeler's homepage ...

Tour de Max - Sunday, August 14, 2005
Ride For A Reason! Team Tour de Max brings you a special opportunity to enjoy some of the best roads on the Peninsula...from the rolling bike lanes of Portola Valley to the beach to some of the best climbs around! The Tour de Max is a fully-supported tour of the San Francisco Bay peninsula, with three routes (15-mile, 30-mile, Metric Century) for riders of all abilities. It's not over after the ride! We're combining the rides with a special screening of the cult bicycling movie "The Tour Baby", a reception with great food & cash bar, and a great silent auction...this is really a celebration of cycling! What's le Tour de Max About? Maximum fun. Maximum challenge. Maximum opportunity to own bits of cycling history (& other cool schwag). Maximum benefit for the great programs sponsored by the Lance Armstrong Foundation. At least 80% of rider proceeds go directly to LAF; this is a tax-deductable ride! We are organizing this ride in loving memory of Max Yonker. She was 34 when she was diagnosed with Breast Cancer and after 8.5 years of her valiant battle, she passed on 21 May 2005. Max taught us the meaning of LiveSTRONG and "Attitude is Everything". Max's secret was that she refused to let her cancer define her life. She had a huge impact on everyone who knew her. See www.tourdemax.org for details! -- Thomas Yonker


This looks very cool - great routes through Woodside/ Portola Valley/ Palo Alto - one of my favorite areas to ride - followed by a screening of "The Tour Baby", and a silent auction to benefit LAF.

Anyone else interested?

- Jo.

Jo, you are turning into a monster! Next time you whine about that "freakin' hill" at Lake Chabot I am just going to ignore you. 7,000 ft in a metric!

Have you ridden these hills? Tell us more. What about traffic? And, most importantly, tell us about the weather. Bubba was talking the other day about donating to the LAF again and maybe he'll be willing to do it through this. But . . . if it's going to be hot, he won't even consider it. I've only ridden in Palo Alto once during the first Specialized Women's Bike Summit and the traffic was scary in some of those canyons. Tell me more, tell more more. ;)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by SadieKate

Jo, you are turning into a monster! Next time you whine about that "freakin' hill" at Lake Chabot I am just going to ignore you. 7,000 ft in a metric!

Have you ridden these hills? Tell us more. What about traffic? And, most importantly, tell us about the weather. Bubba was talking the other day about donating to the LAF again and maybe he'll be willing to do it through this. But . . . if it's going to be hot, he won't even consider it. I've only ridden in Palo Alto once during the first Specialized Women's Bike Summit and the traffic was scary in some of those canyons. Tell me more, tell more more. ;)

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from yesterday cyclingnews.com SK

"Armstrong uses final Tour as LAF fund-raiser

Lance Armstrong is inviting his fans and supporters to sponsor him in his final Tour de France to raise finds for the Lance Armstrong Foundation which supports cancer research and survivorship.

"Since my battle with cancer, I've been riding with a deeper purpose," Armstrong wrote in an email to LAF supporters. "I want to do everything I can to help others win that battle. I ride knowing millions of people living with cancer are cheering me on. They inspire me. That's why I'm asking you to join Team Lance and sponsor me as I ride in this year's Tour de France."

To make a donation to the Lance Armstrong Foundation go to www.livestrong.org/donate/e-05june1. "

Thanks, Corsair. I meant "tell me more" about the ride. We already get inundated with LAF mailings and are regular contributors. This ride says 80% goes to the Peloton Project so I may encourage Bubba to donate through the ride this year rather than the direct route. I like that 80% number (you may have heard me gripe at other times about where ride fees go).

Bumping this up again - our local rag has an article on this ride. Warning - heart tugger!

Cyclist honors wife with Tour ride

WIDOWER ALSO PLANS FUNDRAISER ON PENINSULA

By Kim Vo

Mercury News


Tom Yonker is pedaling along the Tour de France route right now, his wife's ashes tucked in his back jersey pocket.

Max Yonker died May 21 at age 42 after enduring two bouts of cancer, two mastectomies and reconstructive surgery. Despite her illness, she managed to ride along the Tour route in 2003 to raise thousands of dollars for the Lance Armstrong Foundation.

She was an ardent believer, her husband said, in Armstrong's ``Live Strong'' motto.

``The secret for her was to never, ever let her cancer define who she was and what she could do,'' Yonker said. ``Unless she couldn't move, she refused not to move.''

So he is carrying some of her ashes in a small urn during this ride, allowing Max to scale the famous heights that she had trained for last year but in the end was too sick to ride. ``Max always wanted to do these climbs,'' said Yonker, who is not competing but simply traveling along the course.

She'll be by his side again Aug. 14 when Yonker, a resident of Emerald Hills near Redwood City, launches a much smaller ride along the Peninsula, dubbed the Tour de Max. The couple in December began planning the inaugural ride, which they hoped would raise $100,000 for the Armstrong Foundation.

``We thought it'd be good to do something to raise more public awareness and be good for cycling,'' said Yonker, who hopes to make the Tour de Max an annual event. ``And I wanted to do something that honored Max, that told her story a bit. It pumped her up to know the ride was for her.

``When she died, it was kinda more important to do it.''

About 70 people have registered for the ride so far, and Yonker anticipates 200 will sign up. Yonker, who has long handed out yellow ``Live Strong'' bracelets to strangers, is distributing tour fliers during his frequent bike rides -- in hopes that 500 riders will show up tour day, increasing the chances of raising the six-figure goal he and Max had set.

Max created the tour's motto, ``Ride for a Reason,'' and the Peninsula course incorporates the Portola Valley loop she favored. ``She loved going down that hill on Alpine'' Road, her husband said. ``She liked going fast.''

Max Yonker was first diagnosed with breast cancer in 1997 and later had a recurrence. She is featured on the Lance Armstrong Foundation Web site, talking in a soft British accent about coping with her cancer coming back in 2003.

``But as you go through this process, there is always hope,'' she says on the site. ``There's always a light at the end of the tunnel. And as you move through each process, you realize that it's not half as terrifying and half as scary as you think it is.''

Tiffany Galligan vividly remembers interviewing Max for the Armstrong Web site.

Despite ``the array of the treatments she had, the diagnosis she had, the attitude was there: I'm going to live every day of my life with every ounce of my being. I'm going to love my husband with every ounce of my being. . . . I'm going to talk about what cancer is and how it's not going to ruin my life,'' Galligan said.

Charles Albert, a friend of the couple's, found Max's attitude humbling.

``Maxine was such a special woman, and through the eight years she'd been suffering with cancer she never complained. Her attitude was always: This is what I have to do to live,'' said Albert, who is helping organize the August race.

``It was phenomenal to me. I love to gripe and moan about the little things in life -- my 5-year-old won't listen to me,'' he said. Now, ``I'm grateful for the air I'm breathing. I'm going to hold my wife's hand, and maybe we can have a date night.''

Strength was one of Max's hallmarks, her husband said. Two days before she died, she was negotiating how to get her oxygen tank on a plane so she could travel to Washington, D.C., and lobby for more cancer funding.

``At the end of the day, no one knows how long you're going to live,'' Yonker said. ``But you can decide how you live.''

Hi gang!

I'm sorry, I missed all your follow-ups.

Would any of you be interested? I'm game. It's really a nice route.

And I've never seen "The Tour Baby" so I could easily be talked into the party afterwards !

SadieKate wants me to tell her more ... OK !

The metric century is pretty hard (7800 feet of climbing, gee ya think?!?! ) - I've done parts of that route but not all of it, I've yet to do the climb up Tunitas Creek. I honestly don't know if I could handle all of it. The good news is the climb up Old La Honda (I know) and Tunitas Creek (I'm told) are fairly shadey, but still, if it's hot out it would be a bear.

The half-metric on the other hand is quite doable, lots of rollers but no major climbs. There are some moderate traffic areas but in general the shoulders are quite good on those roads. I really enjoy that particular route.

I'm such a dork.

Lee and I were talking today about going to the Dave Matthews concert at SBC park, which would be the night before, and maybe staying the night in downtown SF. So I might not be able to swing the ride after all. Duh.

But I'd still be up for "The Tour Baby" screening later that day - yoo hoo, snap?? :D

jo "I really don't get out much!" bob