Cancer survivor bikes through Boundary

By KATHY NUSSBERGER

Managing editor

A German man, Randolph Westphal, who has nearly completed his fourth trip of circling the world on a bike with sled dogs, made his way through Bonners Ferry last Wednesday, Dec. 20.

He spent the night at the Kootenai River Inn and headed for Sandpoint on Thursday morning as he continued on the next leg of his journey. Westphal began traveling the world after he was diagnosed with cancer in 1987 and given between six months to a year to live.

After surviving that first year, Westphal decided to take a bike ride across the Alps, a 3,500 kilometer trip that he made in just seven weeks.

"It's easy to die, it's hard to live," Westphal said. "For me it was mind over matter, I believed that if I could remove the negative aspects from my life and live with only positive thoughts and actions, I would beat the cancer. Now, 20 years and 26 surgeries later for melanoma's, five deadly, the rest non-malignant, I am still alive and biking around the world with my dogs."

While traveling through Argentina in 1996, a semi truck rolled over him and the dogs. "The driver put me in the ditch and left me for dead," Westphal said. "I spent the next five years in and out of hospitals, my leg had to be reattached and I had severe head trauma, so I lost most of my memories. I had to relearn everything including how to speak and walk."

"I did it to prove to myself that I was not sick, I just had cancer," he said. "That's why I am doing this, I want to prove to other people with cancer that they can survive and should not give up. I even made it into the 1998 Guinness Book of World Records for biking with dogs with 40,000 kilometers. In 2002, I decided to begin my travels again to let people know there was life after and or with cancer. Today, I have close to $151,000 kilometers, so I only need approximately 9,000 more kilometers which will be equal to circling the world four times."