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.''