This was the big weekend. Gail, Paul, Dennis and I rode the PMC from Wellesley to Bourne. I started this whole thing a few months ago by challenging the Spark Team to do the ride, never thought for one second that we’d actually do it when Paul and Dennis bit. I even tried to bail out at the last moment using some lame excuse, but here we are! It was a very well organized charity event that was extremely uplifting. There were spectators all along the road, offering water, offering to cool down riders with their water hoses, holding up banners and most importantly encouraging everyone: I don’t remember how many times I heard someone yell “thank you” along the way.
The event for us started at Babson College with a throat cancer survivor and rider - who at some point was told she may never speak again let alone sing - singing the national anthem and hitting the high notes beautifully. We then rode through back roads all the way to Bourne - an 86 mile route with water stops about every 20 miles. At one of the water stops, the organizers had put together a path of pictures of cancer survivor children. There were many riders with names of people on their jerseys - survivors, fighters and people who have lost the battle.
I am ashamed to say that the enormity of the event did not hit me until we got going. I got into this for selfish reasons (motivation for weight loss) but along the way I thought about my father, my wife’s father, my grandmother - all of whom we have lost to cancer. I thought about the young daughter of a colleague who is battling leukemia. This PMC event apparently raised over $27M for the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the Jimmy Fund. More significantly, according to the PMC web site 99% of the donations actually reach their intended destination which as far as I know in the charity world is unprecedented! I am going to do this event again next year and I will spend a lot more time fund raising. If any of you are interested in donating, please donate at the PMC web site: http://www.pmc.org/egifts/.
Here is the Spark team before the start:
Here is the route (I forgot to turn on my Garmin GPS for 15 miles - the red arrows, the whole trip was a bit over 86 miles according to Paul’s odometer):
Here is the elevation map, we spent quite a bit of time going up and down some steep hills:
Here is the team at the finish line:
(via This and That)