Picked up cycling

Having replaced walking across campus with late-night coding sessions fueled by Mountain Dew was not good for my health. I read on someone’s personal site about their pride in earning a century medal by cycling 100 miles in one day for the MS ride, and set my sites on that goal.

I intended to start small and signed up for a different ride earlier in the year, the Tour de Cure for diabetes. I started asking friends if they would sponsor me and a few were interested in joining, and before long I had a large team, had the company sponsor us with jerseys, and was leading training rides.

I don’t know how it all escalated so quickly, but was quite proud to raise a lot of funds for charity and help a lot of my colleagues stay fit. I kept the team going even when I changed employers, and collected a lot of those century medals before I left Missouri.

In 2004 I upgraded to a racing bike.