Paddler News Feed

 

•	Letter from the Editor
•	Features
•	Earth Matters
•	Gray Matters
•	Know How

< Nov-Dec 2007
	Letter from the Editor
Living Strong Mike Kord

It’s January 2003, a memorable time in Andy Knapp’s life, but for all the wrong reasons. The hyper-fit 55-year-old outdoors jock experiences some vague aches, and sees blood in his urine. So he goes to the doctor and has some tests done. Life goes on as usual while he’s awaiting the results when his own personal 9/11 jolts him from his routine.

“I’d just gotten back from the Winter Market (trade show) for 20 minutes when the doctor called and said, ‘You’ve got a golf-ball-sized tumor in your kidney, and it’s got to come out.’ ”

Andy is a pioneer of modern sea kayaking in the Upper Midwest; if he saw a boat on a car top in the 1970s, he knew the driver. He has worked at Midwest Mountaineering in Minneapolis since 1973 and has been the store’s buyer of paddlesports goods for more than 25 years. He has a life resume of exploration you wish you had: There he is on the summit of Denali, crossing Lake Superior from north to south, and riding his bike solo from Minneapolis to Alaska.

Somehow, he’s able to balance work, adventure, and family; he and his wife, Denise, get married in 1984, and some seven years later, their daughter, Kaitlyn, is born.

“We go to the Boundary Waters almost every year,” Andy says. “Kaitlyn’s cloth diapers froze on the line our first trip.”

And then a phone call threatens to take it all away from him.

“I went through the Why-Me stage, the I’m-not-going-to-live-to-see-my-daughter-grow-up stage. But the bottom line is, you’re in it yourself. So I tapped into that mental attitude I’ve learned in the outdoors. Giving up is not an option.”

Surgeons remove his cancerous kidney that winter, and Andy begins his lengthy recovery. Co-workers donate their sick days to him so he can keep receiving a paycheck. But a year and a half later, cancer shows up in his other kidney. They remove as much of the tumor as they can, but they can’t get it all, so he undergoes radiation treatment. Then more tumors appear, and the oncologist tells him, “We’re running out of options.”

Some people would consider it closing time, but Andy meets with the doctors at Minneapolis’ Masonic Cancer Research Center and begins a course of clinical-study drug treatments. The meds don’t even have a name yet, just a code number. But soon, one tumor disappears, and the other two shrink to half their size. Andy starts feeling fired up again. On June 15 this year, the doctor gives him the green light to embark on another trip. To commemorate the 40th anniversary of his Alaska bike journey, Andy, now 59, rides from Minneapolis to Skagway, Alaska. That’s 2,655 miles in just 24 days.

“A lot of people thought I was nuts. But people who know me associate me with the bike ride to Alaska.”

Andy discovers that despite the three-plus years of hell, he’s in much better shape than he imagined. His endurance is still there, and he’s getting stronger. He hammers up mountain passes faster than he handles the flat, windy Dakota plains. It’s hard, especially with arthritic knees, but feeling pain beats the alternative.

“I learned early on with the cancer thing—with all the bad news, being poked a million times—that it’s the same as when you’re staring at a series of huge waves coming in, and you have no good place to land. You just tough it out. Just like you do with paddling.”

When you ride your bike for nearly 2,700 miles, you have a lot of time to think, and Andy’s trip inspires thoughts to next year. This time, he’ll be up for two weeks of sea kayaking, possibly back in Alaska. And he wants to do another family trip to the Boundary Waters. Andy may have had those Why-Me thoughts, but when you’re too busy being yourself, too strong to just give up, too full of life, those thoughts shift to a resilient Not Me, Not Now.

“The answer isn’t rocket science. Look forward, don’t look back. Be positive. Don’t put things off. Do them now. Don’t let anybody say you can’t do this or don’t do that.”