I'M BACK. IT WAS A TOUGH YEAR IN 2024!!!!!

Why I'm back, I say. Well, go back in time to December 10, 2023. I get up around 4:30am and I walk out of my bedroom and collapse! Why? I don't know why. All I know I can't get up. I get to the local Emergency department, examined and admitted as a patient that has partial leg paralysis. In and out of hospital for 6 weeks when finally start physical therapy to re-learn how to walk. I'm home bound thru May when I am OK'd to start walking with a walker. I'm told by doctors they have no idea why I can't walk. 

I'm devistated. No PMC. I get depressed. No riding, no fund raising, nothing PMC. That's my decision. Fast forward to Jan, 2025. I'm now waqlking on my nown. Getting stronger. FF to April 2025. The doctors clear me to ride a bike. GREAT!  FF to May 2025. I register for the 2025 PMC!!!! I'm making the committment. Family and friends don't think it's a good idea. I do. Doctors say go for it but caution me to listen to my body for unusual aches and pains. My doctors are saying, although it can't be proven, but they are leaning towards the Covid-19 shots, any combo of initial shots and the one booster.

So, I frantically start setting up all my fund raisers in Florida and in Massachusetts. I begin serious riding and my fund raising. This is the start of my 42 PMC.

September 11 & 12, 1982. That's the first year I participated in the PMC. The PMC is a bicycling fund raising event that financially benefits the research and treatment programs at the Dana-Farber Cancer in Boston, MA. I rode my bicycle from Sturbridge, MA, 184 miles in two days to the Provincetown Inn at the tip of Cape Cod. I was one of 246 bicyclists that raised and donated $60,000 for the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston in 1982. My dad volunteered to get me to and from Sturbridge. Made sense. He brought home the 1982 PMC brochure from Auburn Bike Shop.

There was no opening ceremonies or rider check in on Friday night. The riders checked-in in the parking lot of Olde Sturbridge Village, and at 5:00am on Saturday morning September 11th. The 246 riders, including myself, took off for Provincetown at 6:30am. There was a single, small Columbia bicycle box truck that carried our gear. The registration table was along the line of trees at the front of the parking lot next to a beat up, white pick-up truck. There was this guy using a bull horn speaker making announcement after announcement all morning long.

This was my first year of my now 42 year history as a fund raising bicyclist of the Pan-Massachusetts Challenge. My page here of the PMC’s website is designed to be an easy way for people to be introduced to my participation in the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute’s largest fund raising event.

My father is responsible for me entering the PMC. He brought home a brochure from the local bicycle shop I was using. He was picking up some parts for me because I couldn't get to the shop to get them myself. Inside the bag was this tan brochure describing this bicyle ride to Provincetown. Well, I had never been to Cape Cod, so what the heck. Only $350 to raise. I raised $450.

It was a foggy 5am at the Old Sturbridge Village parking lot. A small group of cyclists were gathering and checking in. That guy in the back of the pick-up truck, speaking into a bull horn, was Billy Starr, founder and executive director of the PMC. Around 6:30am, Billy sent us on our way out to Route 20 east. A little over 100 miles later, we arrive at Camp Clark, a boyscout summer camp in the Miles Standish State Forest. I was lucky to be assigned the camp counselors cabin because I arrived so early (1:00 pm ). The next morning was another foggy morning as we walked over the Sagamore Bridge. Today, bicyclists of the PMC are allowed to ride in the right lane of the Bourne Bridge that is separated by highway cones from the other lane.

I joined in to several pace lines on Sunday. One line diverted off the route to visit their friends. So I joined along, met some kind people and then moved along minutes later. I arrived at the Provincetown around 12:30pm, had a bite to eat and then waited for the bicycle parade down Main Street, Provincetown to board, with my bicycle, the 3:30 pm Provincetown II ferry to Boston. This was the daily ferry returning to Boston. Today, the PMC has the P-town II ferry to ourselves and many riders take the daily high speed ferry back to Boston.

I returned to Olde Sturbridge Village around 9pm on Sunday where my dad picked me up and brought me home. Now, the check presentation to the JImmy Fund, the fund raising arm of the Dana Farber Cancer Institue. $60,00 dollars. Mission complete. Can't wait for 1983.

1983, 1984 thru 1991 came and passed. Each year a sucessful fund raising effort and a great ride. There was no motivating factor for me. No mother or father, or sister or brother that died because of cancer. I just want to ride my bicycle to Cape Cod and help out a worthy cause. Until 1992. In the spring of 1992, my family learned that my mother was diagnosed with a form of stomach cancer. An operation reveiled a tumor and she was given 6 months to live. She passed in early September, 1992.

In August of 2001, my wife Linda was diagnosed with a form of cervical cancer. She underwent radialogical surgery on September 11, 2001. Yes that 9/11. Following chemo therapy, she was free of cancer. So we thought. The cancer returned in Novermber of 2004. A very short 6 months later and I had lost another woman in my family. Today, I have a very similar story of why I participate in the Pan-Mass Challenge.

Well today, I am waiting for PMC 2025. We raised $75 MILLION last year. Our 45 year total,        $1 BILLION!!!! Our 2025 goal is $76M. 

For the past 22 years, the PMC has donated 100% of rider raised dollars directly to the Dana-Faber Cancer Institute. NO other fund raising charity does this. For over 20 years, the PMC has been the number one, athletic fund raiser for a single charity in the nation, if not the world.The money donated by the PMC accounts for over 65% of all monies recieved for cancer research and treatment by private organizations. There have been a large number of discoveries made by the Dana-Farber that have their funding from the PMC. Nothing slows or stops the PMC from its' fundraising commitment to cancer research and treatment at the Dana-Farber. Not rain or cold, extreme heat or winds. Not even a pandemic ($50M was raised in 2020).

The 2025 PMC is August 2nd and 3rd. I am very hopefully to be able to complete the ride given I still have issues as described above. I'll finish even if I have to walk.If you would like to make your tax-deductible donation towards my participation in my 42nd PMC, look at the donation section in the upper left of this page. If you have a problem, use your web browser and link to the following:

www.pmc.org/BD0003

Thanks

Barry