Update for 2020: We ride again! Though, this time it will be like none of the previous 18 PMCs. Because of the pandemic, the PMC has been reimagined as a remote event. Jennifer and I are in California, but plan a 100 mile ride from our house to the Southern California coast and back on day 1 and a ride into the San Gabriel Mountains for day 2. Things are going to be different and we will sorely miss the camaraderie of Team Eric and the other 5000+ PMC riders and volunteers, but cancer has not gone away, and the needs of those battling are only made tougher and more complex by Covid-19. Please support us by donating what you can to the PMC!
Update for 2018: Seven years ago I wrote this note:
After ten straight years of riding in the Pan Mass Challenge and a total of 48 days and 4,500 family fund-raising miles that Jennifer, Claire, Alex and I have completed in aggregate, we had a feeling last fall that maybe it was time to take a break from the hard work of training and fund raising to fight cancer. After all, we’d raised a lot of money, ridden a lot of miles and done a lot of good…. But, something got us to sign up again, and then cancer hit closer to home and we knew this was no time to rest. First, Jennifer’s sister Emily was diagnosed with breast cancer (she is undergoing aggressive therapy and doing well), and then we heard that our son Alex’s close friend Eric Chase had been diagnosed with leukemia. Tragically, heart-breakingly, Eric died on June 28th as a result of leukemia at the age of 21. This news is still hard for us to comprehend as we can only think of Eric as a really good kid with a mop of hair loping across the soccer fields of Wayland with a big smile on his face. So please help us fight back and fight cancer. We are so happy that we’ll be taking to our bikes again this year on August 4th and 5th to ride across Massachusetts to support Emily and remember Eric.
And this year again we wondered - should we really sign up for a 17th straight PMC?
And sadly, the answer came again when my life-long friend Paul Lyons died this spring from brain cancer after a 15 year battle with what started as skin cancer.
So now we ride in memory of Eric and Paul and in support of all those battling.
The PMC is a vital support for the great work being done at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute. Please support us again!
Fred (rider ID FL0005) and Jennifer (rider ID JL0035)
Thank you for your support!
Simply go to
www.pmc.org click on the eGift link. My rider ID is FL0005.
Thank You!
- Fred
