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Riding With The Blue Moth
Bill Hancock
A memoir of dealing with grief...
Sports Publishing LLC
August 2005
252 pages ISBN: 1596701048 Hardcover
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Non-Fiction Memoir
After the death of his son, Will, in the 2001 airplane crash
that took the lives of nine additional members of the
Oklahoma State basketball team and support staff, survival
became a common word in Bill Hancock's vocabulary. Bicycling
was simply the method by which he chose to distract himself
from his grief. But for Hancock, the 2,747-mile journey from
the Pacific Coast to the Atlantic Coast became more than
just a distraction. It became a pilgrimage, even if Hancock
didn't realize it upon dipping his rear tire in the Pacific
Ocean near Huntington Beach, California in the wee hours of
a July morning.
On his two-wheel trip, Hancock battled searing heat and
humidity, curious dogs, unforgiving motorists and the
occasional speed bump-usually a dead armadillo. Hancock's
thoughts returned to common themes: memories of his son
Will, the prospect of life without Will for him and his
wife, and the blue moth of grief and depression. That pesky
moth fluttered around Hancock as if he was a beaming lamp
pole in an empty parking lot. Some suggested Hancock cope
with medication; others suggested he get back to his job as
director of the NCAA men's basketball tournament as soon as
possible. But, Hancock found himself a glutton for his own
punishment, unable to shake that blue moth from shadowing
him on each step of his everyday routine. So, Hancock chose to battle the beast one-on-one, taking the
moth on the ride of its life across America in the hopes of
shaking free of its constraints. Possibly, he could lose it
around a corner in one of the small towns he would traverse
through: Hope, Arizona; Chickasha, Oklahoma; Onward,
Mississippi; Pleasant Hill, Georgia. On a muggy August morn,
Hancock dipped his front wheel into the Atlantic Ocean along
the Georgia coastline of Tybee Island. The bothersome blue
moth was still loitering nearby. But, by completion of the
trek, the pest had taken on a new role for Hancock. The blue
moth wouldn't be drowned in either ocean, or in the buckets
of perspiration that Hancock shed along the highways of this
country. He was with Hancock for the longer haul, and for
once Hancock was okay with that.
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