Dino's laugh lines cross his face, framing his blue eyes, his forehead, three on each cheek. They run deep, so deep that you start to wonder if the lines are eroding like a dry riverbed, searching for their source.
Dino has hepatitis C, a disease that's damaged his stomach, liver, psyche and more. If he'd listened to his doctor, he should have been dead a year ago. But rather than accepting a death sentence, he's become an activist against the disease and spends his Tuesday nights with the hepatitis C support group at the Community Counseling Center. He'll tell anyone who will listen that hepatitis C infects one in 50 American adults, is four times more prevalent than HIV and is the number one reason for liver transplants in the U.S. Plus, there's no federal funding for it—all of the funding comes from HIV research, which has a high rate of co-infection with HCV. Hep C is transmitted through contact with the blood of an infected person, or through sex; a person can go years without knowing he's go it.
Outside a Starbucks, dressed fashionably in a ruffly tuxedo shirt, jeans, pierced ears and silver chains, the 38-year-old talks about the disease, pointing out that if he says hep C loudly enough, the people sitting nearby will bolt (he does, they don't). Then he announces how he plans to deal with dying, with the fatigue, the depression: by getting on a bike and riding across the country.
His journey begins in May, and, no, he hasn't started training yet. But he's not terribly concerned. He'll start in Atlantic City and over two months ride across the country to San Diego, 2,960 miles across 14 states. It's not the first time he's taken on the open road. And not the first time his body's waged war on itself. Seven years ago, he was diagnosed with leukemia. He wanted to come up with a feat that he could beat, something he could control, because at that point his body and fate were being controlled by cancer.
"So I was like, what would be the most impossible thing that I could do? Because whatever that is, on a mental, physical and spiritual level, will be what I need to be doing. I don't know what told me that, but something told me that. So I'm like, 'What can I do?' Somebody said ride a bike. Yeah, ride a bike. I smoked cigarettes at the time. Ride a bike. OK. Sure. I was like, you know, that's a good idea. But not just ride a bike—ride it somewhere."
He rode from Telluride, Colorado, to San Francisco. He ran out of water in Death Valley, and, after devising a contraption that would allow him to drink his own sweat, he gratefully received a gallon of water from a passerby. He entered biking contests with people he met along the way. He shielded himself from rocks and bottles thrown from passing cars. He found peace.
"The freedom of the road, it's pretty amazing out there. Have you ever gone out in nature? Not just for an hour, I mean like for a day. You pass the point that your mind rushes with things, when you start to relax. Eventually, it gets to a point that there's just nothing there and all that you can think about is what's around you. And that's what happens during the whole rest of this trip. You can't look at some things anymore because there's nothing left. I love that, I love the peace, I love that you can really find things about yourself that you can't find here."
If he were to take five things on his journey, Dino says he'd take his journal, his spirituality, a picture of his daughter, water and food. Of course, in reality he can and will take more than those items, and he wouldn't mind some help in getting them—things, like, oh say, a bike. And a trainer. And sponsors for each mile, so that he can raise money for the American Liver Foundation.
Once those things start trickling in, he can better focus on a journey that, underneath all of his laugh lines and defenses, he earnestly hopes will cure him of the disease. The leukemia never came back after his first ride, after all. Still, he's no fool.
"I may die along the journey. It's very possible. But how many people get the opportunity to die a martyr?"
To learn more about Dino, Hepatitis C and his Ride for Life, see www.2003ad.net or call 813-5458.