Kevin Wallace may have to change the name of his Port Credit bike shop from 'Gears' to 'Tears' right about now.
That’s because the crying quotient at the spinning classes the shop sponsors have gone through the roof in the last 10 days as Wallace sped across the heartland of America in his unmistakable pink suit, racing against time and disease.
The idea of doing anything for 10 days with just a few hours of sleep is horrifyingly foolhardy in the first instance. But to add insult to insomnia, the Clarkson resident and 14 other solo racers were braving desert heat, prairie wind and steep mountain inclines to achieve the butt-breaking goal of being the first to pedal 4,900 kilometres from San Diego to Atlantic City.
Wallace was riding for his mother Betty, who died of breast cancer when he was 23. Thus the pink, and thus the passion Wallace has for the cause.
He and his dedicated crew turned the race into a community fundraiser for the Betty Wallace Centre established in his mother’s name at the Trillium Health Centre campus in Etobicoke.
In the process, they touched some deeply-felt emotions in the many people whose lives have been touched by cancer. An incredible number of people spent the last 10 days watching a little ball move across a map of America on the front page of www.teamrace.com.
They also poured out their hearts, and their stories, into the site’s guest book.
“Kevin, your little bike shop and you are the heart of a truly inspiring community,” reads one of the 685 messages, in reference to the close-knit (good kind) of biker gangs that form among cycling afficionados.
Wallace friend Robert Minnes was riding in the French Alps when he met a 62-year-old man who was doing a 3,500 km. tour around France to visit all the places he and his wife, who had died of cancer in January, had seen together.
“He was glad to be visiting all these familiar places because now he couldn’t bear to go to new places without his wife, so he was finding comfort in this pilgrimage through the years of his marriage and his travels with his beloved mate,” wrote Robert. “Stay strong Kevin. We are all there with you every minute of the day. And know that you have a soulmate who shares your commitment and who is on his own solitary journey of profound importance somewhere in Provence right now, with the sun keeping him warm and with a smile on his face, as he heads towards his next memory.”
The crew members who shared the e-mails with Wallace — messages that he admitted helped him to survive to the finish— sat in what they dubbed, “the crying chair,” for obvious reasons, to read them.
An e-mailer who signed herself Jane D., who was in a Gears class when Kevin updated the group via telephone about his progress from his bike, remembered the death of her Dad 20 years ago, a death that took place in a clinical and frightening environment.
“This week I’ve been thinking a lot about my Dad,” wrote Jane. “If he had had a place like the Betty Wallace Centre I think things would have been a little easier. We could have faced our situation together as a family and been there for each other more. My Dad wouldn’t have needed to battle his illness on his own. A kind and compassionate environment would have meant the world to my Mom too. Although cancer is still out there, you’re waging war on the fear and isolation that patients feel by giving them a warm and reassuring place to receive testing and treatment. You’ve given them the human touch - something they really need in order to win against cancer. Thank you for making the Betty Wallace Centre a reality in our lives. We are so lucky that it’s there.”
Yes we are. And it shouldn’t really take a monumental act of commitment like Wallace’s to compel us to give to it, should it?
Wallace has raised about 100,000 tear-stained dollars so far. You can still give at www.teamrace.com.