It's not about the Bike

Ever since I gave SL the heave-ho (not really, but sort of) I've been reading again (not really, but sort of). My latest book is "Its not about the Bike" - My Journey Back to Life - By Lance Armstrong. (who started out as a triathlete, by the way..)

I have a class of book that I really enjoy reading that I use not unlike a swordsman would use a sharpening stone. I firmly classify Jon Krakauer into this category , cf. "Into Thin Air" , and "Under the Banner of Heaven". I also enjoyed "The White Spider" by Heinrich Harrer. Lance's book fits into this category. There's a passage in the "Its not about the Bike" that I find fairly intriguing. It is his personal account of the first moments Lance awakens after radical brain surgery (removing necrotic tissue, not unlike a stroke, of sorts - stroke survivors weather internal damage without biopsy).

Lance goes down for Brain surgery, and he's given three things to remember "Ball, Pin, Driveway". He will be asked to remember them later. After the surgery , he does - and they ask him who he is and he responds "I'm Lance Amrstrong and I can kick your ass on a bike any day". :) Then he slowly realizes he's had major surgery and he's really laid up and he looks up and sees his mom. Here is what Lance said after his near-death (and after they removed part of his brain) - He turns to her, and his mom holds his hand - and he realizes that when he was a baby she counted his breaths in the night. She thought she had gotten him through the hard part, before this. And he turns to her and says.

I love you. I love my life, and you gave it to me, and I owe you so much for that.

Remember that.