Dear Friends,
Note: A big thanks to my friends at the Village Automotive Group and Swedish super car builder Koenigsegg. This weekend they donated several raffle items at the Swedish Car Day car show held in Boston. We were able to rasie $1,500 more for the Dana-Farber. Looks like we are close to the $16,000 figure now. Yes, we have more than doubled my initial goal and the 2016 ride is over but they don't close the donation window until October. Nobody beat cancer by quitting early.
Jim - August 29th
This is the weekend of my sixth annual 200 mile ride across the state to raise funds for the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. I'll actually be riding an extra 100 miles the day before just so I can say I rode across the entire state. Thanks to all the rider sponsors we reached the goal of $45,000,000 in 2015. In doing so we raised the historical event donation total to half a billion dollars. That's billion with a B! I’ve always been amazed that a bunch of cyclists and their sponsors can do that in just one summer weekend, and do it year after year. There is truly no event that even comes close to this anywhere in the world. Every single penny pledged to a rider goes directly to the DFCI. All overhead is covered by benifactors & corporate sponsors.
This summer I’ll also be celebrating my third year of riding cancer free and six years since I was first diagnosed. I'm healthy but the work is far from done. I have several friends & family fighting the disease. I want each of them and the millions of others who have been affected by cancer to have the same chance the medical professionals at the Dana-Farber were able to give me. To be fair I need to send a shout out to those at Newton/Wellesley who have also guided me along on my cancer odyessy.
The Dana-Farber is truly on the cutting edge of cancer research. Long gone are the days of having no choice other than radical surgery or bombarding the body with radiation and/or chemo. Those are still treatments but they are making great strides in immunotherapy and using the body’s own genes to fight cancer. These innovative approches avoid many of the often debilitating side effects of traditional treatment. Last week I attended a seminar at the Dana-Farber and heard one of their premier oncologists remark that 60 years ago nearly every cancer was a death sentence. Admitting that the ability to cure 100% of cancers is not on the immediate horizon he truely believes that in the near future many cancer diagnois and treatment options will be no worse than being told you have strep throat. Perhaps just as important they are doing research into the root causes of cancer so nobody needs to hear the news that they have the disease to begin with. I got that diagnosis four times. It’s no damned fun.
To those who have supported my past rides I thank you with all my heart. I hope I can count your support in 2016 as we try to up the game and raise 46 million dollars. Every one of the 5,500+ riders have committed to raising a minimum of $4,600 but I hope to sprint past that mark. Last year my supporters tripled that figure. If I can get some new people onboard it may be possible to surpass that. But as always I just ask you to think about all those you know who have been affected by cancer. After doing so please consider a donation in any amount if you can so that someday I and the other cyclists no longer need to make this annual plea.
