A day at the Northwest Cancer Summit

Today was our off day in Portland meaning I got up at 7 a.m. to head to the Northwest Cancer summit. Nick, Jon and I got on our bikes around 7:45 a.m. and headed down to the Portland Convention Center arriving around 8:15 a.m. Upon arriving we talked with a number of people before walking around to explore the vendors, picking up some breakfast from the continental spread and heading into the conference room to find a seat for the day. Sue Frymark welcomed everyone and introduced our group even though there were only three of us there at the time. We then listened to another speaker before listening to the band Wideawake play a selection of songs including “Maybe Tonight, Maybe Tomorrow” aka. the LIVESTRONG song. A bunch of our teammates showed up around 9:15 a.m. with a few more trickling in at 11 a.m. and noontime. The morning session consisted of a number of different speakers many of whom were cancer survivors with stories to tell. At around 12:30 p.m. the conference broke for lunch which consisted of boxed lunches with sandwiches, potato salad, chips, apples and brownies. We took a group photo with the organizer of the event after which many left to go out and explore Portland. A group of about five of us stayed through the presentation by Kathryn Fitzpatrick from the Lance Armstrong Foundation departing the convention center at around 3:30 p.m. I rode my bike around downtown for awhile before heading back to the church stopping by the bike shop on Sandy Ave. on the way. When I arrived at the church I found Brad outside cleaning the garbage out of the van and trying to arrange things into some kind of order. I helped him for awhile before heading across the street to Albertsons where I purchased a new pair of shoelaces for my bike shoes and ice cream for post-dinner snack. I then headed back to the church where some women from the church were preparing dinner for the team. When the majority of the team was back we started dinner which consisted of a veggie and noodle stew for the non-meat eaters and a turkey noodle soup for the meat-eaters. There were also many salads to go along with dinner including brownies and ice cream! Jill and fellow University of Illinois alum Susan ate dinner with us and then loaded a group of eight of us into their cars and took us to nearby Beaverton, Oregon for a tour of the Nike Campus where Susan works. The tour of the campus included a look at the outside of the Tiger Woods building, a stop at the track made of the soles of running shoes and visits inside the Mike Schmidt and Lance Armstrong buildings. It was almost 10 p.m. when we left the campus and around 10:30 p.m. when we arrived back at the church. I still had the ice cream that I’d bought earlier in the freezer however after already having had ice cream couldn’t come close to finishing it so I put it back in the freezer to offer to my teammates at breakfast. I then journaled for awhile before heading to bed around midnight with a 90 mile riding day to the ocean to wake up to in the morning!

The team at the Northwest Cancer Summit in Portland, Oregon