Before we tell you about how to shave Bobke’s Head, I’d like to tell you all a story.
This is important, but if you have a short attention span, you can skip to the bottom.
I tried to post this yesterday, but just like the day before yesterday’s ‘Saturday Morning Post’ I’m a day late. This story takes place partly in Davis, California, my University alma mater, and yesterday’s start city. But alas, I’m a day late as usual on this tour. I guess it’s a theme I’m going to keep repeating.

This is a little story about my friend Gregg Lamorey.
Gregg and I met 33 years ago on a northbound freight out of Davis. It was a Friday night and a few UC Davis students had figured this out as a cheap fun getaway, away from studies and into the unknown. It was cold that night, dead of winter, snow dusting the Cascades as we headed away under a nearly full moon. The water froze solid on the steel boxcar floor but it didn’t matter to us. This was our first freight hop and nothing could wipe the grin off our face. It was cold and miserable and windy and rough and loud and uncomfortable. And we loved every minute of it and over the years we’d do again and again. Gregg embraced the cold as you’ll find out later in this story.

Soon after that Gregg and I became roommates. We shared 221 K Street, a few houses up from the tracks. At our Wednesday night potlucks (marvelous tradition), our guests would ask us how we could sleep with all that train racket. Gregg and I would just smile and glance at each other, a knowing look that needed no words. A lot of things happened in that house that won’t be recounted here. I drove by good old 221 K yesterday before the race, and the memories are flooding back to me now. They don’t need to be told. Not this time around. In fact they probably shouldn’t be told. It was the 70’s after all.

Gregg and I moved up to my family’s mining claim on the Yuba River near Downieville the summer after our senior year. We mined gold all summer. Didn’t find more than a few ounces, but that wasn’t really the point. I don’t know if there was a point, but what we did do was drink a lot of cheap beer, hang out, hike and read Carlos Castaneda books voraciously. Incidentally, there was no mountain biking up in Downieville then. Probably because there were no mountain bikes yet.

We stayed close after K street, after Downieville and after graduation. Somewhere along the way he met his wife Susan, who shared the wanderlust and had no need for all the creature comforts, they would go on to spend years on the ice sheets of Alaska, Greenland and Antarctica. They were denizens of winter, never missing an opportunity to get out on the snow. Susan was an archeologist and was used to roughing it. Good thing, because with Gregg it was about the adventure, not the luxury.

Gregg always regaled us with stories of great travels, at times even from temperate climates, like riding his bike through Yugoslavia when it was still called Yugoslavia. He toured all over, I even built him a couple custom bikes to accommodate the wanderlust.

The truly extraordinary adventures though, we’re in the cold. He and Susan was greatly talented back country skiers, and spent their winters skiing at the Alpine Skills International (http://www.alpineskills.com) up on Donner Pass in California’s Sierra.

Gregg was always the smartest guy in the room. Simply earning double concurrent bachelor’s degrees wasn’t going to do it. He went on to get his master’s in engineering, then a PhD in Hydrology. He became an accomplished climatological researcher, and I remember getting calls from my mom when she’d watch Gregg being interviewed on Nova or some other PBS show. He drilled ice cores two miles deep in the Greenland Ice Sheet, studied trapped gasses in the ice and learn all about earth’s ancient climate. Gregg never lost his thirst for adventure or for knowledge.

Gregg’s wife Susan died in her sleep of heart failure a few years ago. She was only in her mid 40’s, and most would mistake her for 10 years younger than that. Susan had a bad heart. We all knew she had some irregularities in the ticker department, but her death came as a shock. After her death we celebrated her life up at Spooner Lake in Tahoe, Susan had become a much-loved schoolteacher where they lived in Carson City, and the turnout for Susan was huge.

After Susan died, Gregg buried himself in his work. and came to me with fantastic stories his research, from groundwater movement under the 50’s Nevada nuclear test sites to the earth’s climate 10,000 years ago, gleaned from his ice coring.

I don’t think it was even 6 months after Susan’s death that Gregg found out he has colon cancer. He had it removed, but it had spread and he had inoperable huge malignant tumors on his liver, the size of a grapefruit and the size of an orange. Gregg fought and fought, learning a PhD’s worth about the disease, getting himself to the best specialists at Stanford Med, Baylor, the local oncologist or wherever he needed. He tried experimental procedures, which he explained to me in great detail.

During his battle he met a Saint of a woman named Kerri. She stayed by his side through all the chemo and pain and suffering and misery. They got married on the 1st of November, just a little over three months ago. Kerri brought untold joy to Gregg’s life, on their most recent visit to my house they were in their own loving laughing happy world, I can’t tell you how good it was to see Gregg in love in the midst of the horrible battle.

Gregg died last month. We had another celebration of life, this time it was Gregg’s. All of Gregg’s adventure buddies were there, so were his scientist friends and cousins, his mother, sister and brother. There was sadness and there was joy. A few of us stood around outside in the January chill of the Sierra Nevada mountains. We talked about Gregg for hours. We toasted Gregg’s life. I’ll never forget Gregg. It was an appropriate good bye, in a few days a bunch of his buddies were on their way to a remote hut for some back country skiing in British Columbia, a trip Gregg had done many years prior with them. He’ll still be there in everyone’s thoughts.

Gregg was one of the good guys and this evil disease has taken him from us. I talked to Kerri, and at a later date we’re going try and raffle off one of Gregg’s custom Ibis bikes, proceeds to benefit an organization that Gregg respected, the Lance Armstrong Foundation.

Here’s how this whole thing relates back to the Tour of California
Thanks for reading about Gregg. Now we have a more urgent and pressing matter. Cancer is in the process taking another wonderful person from us, Susan Nelson, who we’ve written about here before and in whose name you/we raised $37,505 to benefit the LAF last year through the raffle of an Ibis Silk Carbon Bicycle.
This year, in her name, we have a little challenge for you all. But we’re going to make it fun this time.

Working with Susan’s husband Elden, the blogger known as Fat Cyclist, is liveblogging the Tour and we came up with a challenge for you all. I asked Bob Roll, AKA Bobke, if we raised $5,000 in a Livestrong Challenge this week would he be willing to shave his head before the end of the Tour. Without a nanosecond’s hesitation, Bob said yes.

So Elden created a Livestrong Challenge page for Bob and away we go. We’re only a few hours into it and as of this writing we’re well over $900. [update a few hours later after some guy mentioned it on his twitter feed–$23 We have barely even announced it, so I think Bobke will be bald by the end of the week.

Here’s your part in this whole thing. Go Here And Give a little.

I’m working on a some other nearly impossible to get “prizes” that we are hoping to give away at the end of the Tour. We will be assigning numbers from each person’s donation, then dropping all those numbers into a hat, where we’ll pull out a few lucky ones. More on that later.

Meanwhile, here are before and after pictures of what we’re talking about.
Before

After

And because we really can’t help ourselves, here’s another.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 16th, 2009 at 8:10 pm and is filed under Whatchoo talkin' 'bout, Scot?. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.