The Question No One Asks

It’s surprising, but true. Over the last 8 months I’ve taken every possible opportunity to talk to family, friends, and anyone who will listen about my plan to row an ocean and have tackled dozens of questions that I haven’t expected and didn’t known the answer to. Interestingly, there’s one question that I always expect to be asked and haven’t, except for in one instance, It is:

“Why do you want to do this?”

I’m not sure why I always expect people to ask this seemingly simple question. Maybe to some extent I’m hoping that answering this over and over will help me to organize my thoughts and formulate a more organized understanding the reasons why a challenge like this has so quickly and completely captured my interest and become the focal point for seemingly all of my spare time and energy.

While my personal motivations for rowing the Atlantic have complex origins, there is one aspect of this project that is extremely important to me and is much easier to understand. As I’ve mentioned in previous posting, a central goal of this initiative is to raise a six-figure amount of money for charity. When I was 17 my mother lost an alarmingly short four-month battle with late stage malignant melanoma. She was 49. Later that year my father was also diagnosed with cancer. Thanks to recent advances in cancer treatment, he’s been cancer free for five years. While this could seem at first glance like an unfortunate coincidence, the fact is that one in four Americans will be effected by some form of cancer in their lifetime. With this in mind, I’ll be rowing with urgency in support of a prominent U.S. cancer research foundation or hospital.

If you're interested in staying up to date on my trans-Atlantic row for charity I’d encourage you to check this site on a regular basis (a “real” website dedicated to this project is in the works). For now, I can also be reached by e-mail at pridley@gmail.com.


“Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.”
-Anais Nin