Index: Don's Photos of Mike

In Memory of Mike Kucher (1964-2003)

Mike was a friend of mine from grade school, though he was my brother Kevin's age and really closer to my brother. We basically grew up together and, especially in our late teens and early twenties we -- me and my brothers, Mike, a few others -- were inseparable. (This was also about the time of his first bout with Hodgkin's Disease, which he managed to beat.) Eventually, we all went our separate ways, but we were still pretty good friends, and the bunch of us would often get together for special events like camping or canoe trips... About the time I first started mountain biking I discovered that Mike was also just getting into it, and so we would get together for rides as well in those first few years. Mike, who had fatigue/endurance issues as a result of his chemo & surgery, was never as into it as I eventually became, and after a few years we didn't really get together as much, at least not to ride.

Mike's first battle with cancer was not his last, and after a tough, two-decade-long fight he passed away last year. This gallery is something I made for his fiancee, photos that she had probably never seen before, scanned & put on a disk. She's the person I'm addressing here.

As follows...

"The secret to being a bore is to tell all." -- Voltaire

These photos were (mostly) taken at various mountain biking events and other outdoor stuff, in the early and mid '90s, otherwise known as "my shutterbug years." I'll look around for more, but I believe this is the complete set of my photographs of Mike. Not every shot is great, but they're all here, with all the info I have about them; I have my faves, but you can choose your own without censorship from me. Click on the thumbnail below, and it'll open a page with the full-size photo and a little blurb about what's going on in the shot. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it) I wrote the salient facts of who/where/when on the backs of most of these, so I was able to give the background on each photo in obsessive boring detail...

Don

PS Chris sent me a few photos which I included in a separate section. Click here to access them. - DK

Click here to return to the Photo Galleries.

Here they are:

1992-06-canoe.jpg	1992-08-cheesequake.jpg	1992-10-GodsCountry1.jpg	1992-10-GodsCountry2.jpg
1992-11-allaire.jpg	1993-04-JimThorpe1.jpg	1993-04-JimThorpe2.jpg	1993-04-JimThorpe3.jpg
1993-04-JimThorpe4.jpg	1993-04-JimThorpe5.jpg	1993-04-JimThorpe6.jpg	1993-04-JimThorpe7.jpg
1993-06-Delaware1.jpg	1993-06-Delaware2.jpg	1993-06-Delaware3.jpg	1993-06-Delaware4.jpg
1993-06-MTBWeekend1.jpg	1993-06-MTBWeekend2.jpg	1993-06-MTBWeekend3.jpg	1993-09-JimThorpe1.jpg
1993-09-JimThorpe2.jpg	1994-06-MTBWeekend1.jpg	1994-06-MTBWeekend2.jpg	1994-06-MTBWeekend3.jpg
1994-06-MTBWeekend4.jpg	1994-06-MTBWeekend5.jpg	1994-09-JimThorpe1.jpg	1994-09-JimThorpe2.jpg
1994-09-JimThorpe3.jpg	1994-09-JimThorpe4.jpg	1994-09-JimThorpe5.jpg	1994-09-JimThorpe6.jpg