Michael Wo was biking the south mountain road retracing the route of his hero Lance Armstrong in the 1996 Tour Dupont, second of two that Lance had won. Not many remembered a race that was over before Michael was born. In Michael’s home state of Delaware Dupont Chemical was still a presence and the race the company had sponsored was not altogether forgotten. For Michael the old Dupont route was accessible to him unlike the Tour De France stages. His personal objective was to do the stages and compare times with the legendary Armstrong. He had his personal reasons too.
This day he biked alone up the country road that had light traffic, which was good because the shoulders weren’t that wide and there were no traffic redirections as there had been for Lance. Michael was keeping time logs and pushing hard to see how well he could do relative to his hero. He intended to do the whole 1130-mile route this summer. He knew that biking alone wasn’t at all like biking in a world-class race. There was no peloton to contend with. The adrenalin had to find substitute incentive. Yet, he did feel exhilaration as a result of the exertion and the accomplishment.
The exertion of the climb made Michael breath heavily through his mouth. Then one of a biker’s least favorite things happened short of a crash – something in the air was sucked into his mouth. Damn bug! He coughed. Nothing came out. He felt weird. Determined as he was to keep the pace, he stopped. He reached for his water bottle but as he bent down he kept on going and collapsed on the side of the road with his left shoe still clipped securely to the peddle.
He awoke in an awkward position entangled in his own bike. He unclipped his foot pushed up his bike and rolled out from under it. He stood and wasn’t dizzy. He took a sip of his water. He felt fine. What kind of bug was that? He had never passed out from swallowing a bug before. He straddled his bike, looked for traffic, and pushed off. He hammered it, was soon up to competition speeds that would have raised suspicions of doping.
As Michael Wo, disappeared at a super human rate over the crest of the hill he held one more thing in common with his hero. Not only did he love cycling, not only was he particularly suited for it mentally and physically, but as of this afternoon, although he didn’t know it, Michael Wo was free of potentially lethal cancer.