I don’t know how to do this, so I’m just going to come out and say it: one of my very good friends was diagnosed with breast cancer yesterday afternoon.

I came home from a dinner with Sal and checked my email and there it was in my inbox.

Electronic sucker punch take down. Bam. Gut blow.

This is how it works. You know this shit is out there. It gets close to you and then fades away a little bit. Then it comes back and gets all up in your face.

My aunt died of breast cancer when I was in high school. Until now, that’s the closest I’ve been to the disease in my life. I saw things then that I never want to see again in my lifetime. I can still remember the way the light was coming into the house during the last time that we visited. Everything white and bright and still. Her hospice bed with a view out the window toward Mt. Rainier. Hardest was watching her family stand by in those final days.

That wasn’t my battle and it’s not my story, but it taught me a lot of things about living. It taught me a lot of things about courage and tenacity and fight.

Now Cancer is here again. Right next to me. Going after a girl I love. A girl my age. A girl who has ridden me (and most of the Oregon women’s peloton) into the ground. My Vegas accomplice, a bourbon aficionado, my fellow dump truck.

Thing is? Cancer picked the wrong fight this time.

Because you just don’t fuck with LK.

If there’s anyone feisty, plucky and cantankerous enough to beat the crap out of a disease like this, it’s her.

Today she’s in waiting rooms and offices – meeting with doctors and specialists. While she does the recon, I’m sitting at a computer in Tucson – seething and plotting. Planning a counterstrike.

The troops are mobilizing now. Large armies rolling in to action. The main battle is hers and hers alone, but a few good wingmen and an out-of-nowhere flank attack never hurt any battle plan, did it?

We’re going to take this fucker down.

Standby for updates and attack strategy.