Riding For More Than Blog Content

TigerBlog had a chance to witness possibly the least empathetic moment of his entire life Saturday morning.

This happened as TB and Zack DiGregorio were about a mile from the end of the annual Million Dollar Bike Ride, which brings a lot of people to the Penn campus really early on a June Saturday. It's for a good cause, of course, as it is what its name says it is — a fundraising bicycle event

TB and Zack had been riding together. In SAT terms (or at least how the SAT used to be and maybe still is): Zack is to bicycling as TigerBlog is to golf; that is, those are pastimes they enjoy once a year.

The ride started near Penn's hockey rink and then headed through the streets of West Philadelphia, past the zoo and then onto Kelly Drive before turning around and coming back. There were police cars on every corner allowing the riders to go through, but that still didn't convince some that they weren't supposed to stop at red lights. 

In fact, as the large pack headed out 33rd Street, a group stopped at one such red light, leading the officer there to say this: 

"This is a race. You're supposed to try to win."

As TB and Zack were coming back down 34th Street headed back towards Drexel and Penn, suddenly Zack's chain fell off. 

As a public service announcement, if your chain comes off your bike, the best way to put it back on is to flip the bike over. Makes it way easier.

Anyway, as Zack worked to put the chain back on the bike, other riders began to pass them by. One gentleman, at full speed and without even slowing down, yelled out this:

"Dude, that sucks."

And then he went on his way. C'mon now. 

This was the 11th annual Million Dollar Bike Ride, which could actually be renamed the Two Million Dollar Bike Ride. In the first 10 years, the event has raised more than $20 million, all of which has gone to nearly 40 so-called "orphan diseases."

One of those orphan diseases — a rare disease that affects a very small percentage of people — is the A-T Children's Project. A-T stands for Ataxia Telangiectasia, a disease that, according to Hopkinsmedicine.org: 

" ... is a rare, inherited disease that affects several organs and systems, including the nervous and the immune systems. Most notably, it causes progressive degeneration of the cerebellum, the part of the brain that controls movement and speech. Symptoms develop in early childhood. Some of the complications of A-T include cancer (typically leukemia or lymphoma), recurrent infections and chronic lung disease."

TigerBlog had certainly never heard of it until Derek DiGregorio was diagnosed with it maybe 15 or so years ago. Neither had anyone else in the DiGregorio family orbit. 

Since then, the DiGregorios have raised a ton of money and awareness to fight the disease. Derek, from his wheelchair, has been the inspirational, dynamic face of the effort. 

The Princeton University Department of Athletics has had its fingerprints all over this challenge. 

Jason Garrett. Pete Carril. John Thompson III. Howard Levy. Steve Verbit. Charlie Thompson. Noah Savage. The list goes on and on. 

To see the way they have given their all to this has been amazing. TB has been proud to be a very small  part of all this, with the bike rides and other ventures. 

As TB rode along Saturday, he thought back to the first time he'd been in one of these, 10 years ago, after he missed the first one. He has not, by the way, missed one since.

He pulled into the parking lot at Penn Park at 6:30 or so in the morning that Saturday, half expecting nobody to be there. When he saw Steve DiGregorio (former Princeton assistant football coach known as Digger) and Zack DiGregorio there, he told them that this would have made the best practical joke ever.

It might have been in Year 2 or 3 that Zack mentioned that TB was "riding for blog content." And yes, it does make for good blog content.

Of course it's about so much more than that. It's about putting a human face on a terrible disease, and that face — Derek's — has never wavered in all this time. He sits there, observing everything around him, make one sarcastically snide comment after another. It's who he is. It's perfect.

Steve DiGregorio, horrifically, passed away nearly three years ago, from pancreatic cancer. The patriarch of the family and the driving force along with his wife Nadia in all this, he is missed by everyone associated with Derek and the family on a daily basis. 

It's nearly three years later, and TB still wants to pick up the phone and talk to him, even though he knows he can't.

Nadia sent TB a few pictures from the ride after it was over. They got to talking about life, and she sent him this message: 

For the very first time in my life  I had my own room when Steve died. I would have given anything to keep it “our room.” 

That froze TB in his tracks and brought more than one tear to his eyes.

Digger would have been there, front and center Saturday. His presence hovers over everything that happens. 

It's so sad, and yet so inspirational at the same time.

Zack managed to right his bike and made it to the finish. Hopefully between now and a year from now, he remembers to get it checked out before his next time riding. 

TB will be there too. He'll be there every year they have this. 

And for more than just the blog content.