How to Make Your Mark

For his part, Irons just took the help that he was given and went forward. But he also made it part of his agenda to raise awareness among MS patients of their role in the fund-raising process. Irons's ability to persuade people to become part of his vision is uncanny -- much more so because he is not a particularly charismatic or eloquent speaker. He is plainspoken, but his words are heartfelt, and his story is compelling.

"The great thing about Nick is that he's a regular guy, and people relate to that," says Lt. Colonel Oliver L. North, who hosts a national radio show and has interviewed Irons about his swim and his bike ride. "He's just an ordinary guy doing something extraordinary."

People along Irons's bike tour have responded in kind. In June, when Irons passed through Deming, New Mexico, a local rancher organized a livestock auction as a fund-raiser. A bank in the area gave a three-week-old calf to the auction and asked that the proceeds from its sale go to Irons. Irons stood in the ring holding the calf as the bids came in. It sold for $375. Then the person who bought it returned it to the auction to be sold again. And so did the next person. The calf was auctioned 16 times, raising more than $6,000.

In Cedar Rapids, Iowa, locals organized a black-tie fund-raiser and persuaded one company to buy out the seats at a minor-league Cedar Rapids Kernals game. The money went to Irons. The local hockey team also got in on the action, organizing a "skate-along."

When Irons finished the bike tour in late August, he had already raised more than $500,000 toward his goal of $3 million. Since then, he has been fund-raising in earnest, speaking to the public about his journey. He knows that ultimately, $3 million toward researching a cure for MS is only a drop in the bucket. But his real impact and mark on the world won't be measured in dollars.

To Irons, the real effect of his contribution is more subtle. "Among MS patients, there really was no hope out there that a cure was on the way. I've been able to draw people's attention to the medications and research out there. I think that's one thing that the bike ride and the swim have been able to give people -- hope that there are people out there trying to find a cure."

Shortly before Irons hit Seattle during the bike tour, he received an email from a woman his own age who had been diagnosed with MS two years earlier. She had read that pregnancy often worsens MS and had decided for that reason not to have children. She also did not want to burden her children with her illness. Then she read about Irons in USA Today. "She said that she thought about what a caring relationship I must have with my dad to do this and that if we had been able to find so much good despite his illness, then that was worth the risk for her," says Irons. "She changed her mind." Irons smiles his regular-guy grin: "I'd do it all over again just for that one person."

Louis Monier: Success at What Price?

Louis Monier and his wife live in a modest three-bedroom home in a suburb just off of famed Sand Hill Road in Silicon Valley. But even with northern California's soaring real-estate prices, the house could not be mistaken for that of a dotcom millionaire. By now, Monier's wife, Evelyne Monjoin, is used to the puzzled glances of her guests when she greets them at the door. "People who are familiar with Louis's background assume that by inventing AltaVista, he got very rich," she says, laughing good-naturedly. "That's not the case at all."

It's one of the ironic twists of the world of Net companies that fortune is not necessarily linked to achievement. There are plenty of dotcom-ers who flipped companies based on bad ideas and even worse technologies who are parking their brand-new Porsches in garages on Half Moon Bay. And then there are people like Louis Monier -- one of the architects of the Web as we know it today, co-creator and guardian of one of the Internet's best-known brand names, and owner of a three-year-old Acura. But don't feel sorry for him; he certainly doesn't.

From Monier's perspective, AltaVista was perhaps the project of a lifetime -- a satisfying moment when an inspiration became a technology that affected people's lives. Even if Internet history one day records AltaVista as one of the Web's biggest missed opportunities, Monier will not regret the five years that he spent nurturing his invention and protecting it from the ineptitude of the companies that owned it. His commitment to the technology, and to his team, allowed him to make his mark in ways that were more important to him than cashing in.