This year I have decided to help raise money for the Dana Farber Cancer Institute (www.dana-farber.org) in Boston by joining the 2024 Pan-Mass Challenge (www.pmc.org). 100% of every rider-raised dollar goes directly to the Dana Farber Cancer Institute. The Pan-Mass Challenge (also known as PMC for those who don’t like to type) has been raising money for cancer research since 1980 and this year is expected to reach the unimaginable total of $1 Billion raised. That’s right . . . ONE BILLION dollars and I’m honored to be part of it (and will forever believe that it was me who put them over the top).

“Why?” you ask. Well, since you asked, I’ll tell you.

Cancer sucks. Plain and simply, it sucks. I lost my first wife, Alice, to uterine cancer. I lost my father, Bruce, to stomach cancer. I lost my stepmother, Anna, to pancreatic cancer. I lost my lifelong friend, Eli, to pancreatic cancer. I lost my brother-in-law, Bob, to throat cancer. My sister-in-law, Eileen, has had two bouts of lung cancer (but thankfully is fully recovered). Alice’s stepmother, Carol, has had breast cancer twice, but thankfully has fully recovered.

Even my brother Carl has been diagnosed with cancer. His diagnosis is a subtype of non-Hodgkins lymphoma (better known as NHL). His doctor has told him “If you’re going to have cancer, this is the type you want to have. You’ll probably die from something else long before the cancer gets you”. Well, while I don’t doubt his doctor (despite my having watched all 431 episodes of Grey’s Anatomy I felt it best to concur with her diagnosis), the bottom line is Carl has cancer and cancer sucks.

The Pan-Mass Challenge is a 192-mile ride spread over two days as riders depart from Sturbridge on Saturday, riding roughly 110 miles before arriving in Bourne for a well deserved overnight break. On Sunday morning, they depart Bourne, riding roughly 80 miles to Provincetown and the conclusion of the ride.

Carl has been an active rider and volunteer for several years now. He has ridden the full 192 mile ride from Sturbridge to Provincetown multiple times and during Covid, he devised a ride of 1 mile in each of 192 different towns across the state of Massachusetts. Oh, and have I mentioned that he has cancer himself?

For the past two years, I have been a volunteer at the Pan-Mass Challenge, along with my daughter, Ella, and my sister-in-law, Barbara, who, conveniently, is married to my brother. We arrived at the rest stop in Franklin early Saturday morning (as in arriving at 5:00 a.m.) to help make sandwiches, cut up fruit, hand out water bottles and do whatever else we could to help the riders.

Each year I was overwhelmed with the gratitude and kindness the riders showed us when they were the ones doing the real work.

Knowing that my brother has his own diagnosis of cancer, I decided this year I wanted to do more.

Now, full disclosure, I have joined the Pan-Mass Challenge and will be riding this year. However, at nearly 63 years of age, not exactly in peak physical condition and not having ridden a bicycle (other than the recumbent bicycle in my basement that I ride when I’m not using it to hang clothes that can’t go in the dryer), I am taking baby steps (or baby pedals). I am riding the Wellesley-to-Wellesley one day route on Sunday, August 4. This is a 50 mile ride that is, I hope, at least downhill 50% of the time because that will mean I’ll only have to train for half the ride.