Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.

It was 1995.   I was 24 - a normal 24 by most standards.  I had a girlfriend, a job, and plenty of friends.  If I had an enemy, I didn’t know it.  And then, it happened.  I got cancer.  A life changer if you can ever imagine one.  I was treated at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, was cured, and moved on.  But not really.  Along the way I was introduced to another life changer - the PMC.  A co-worker of mine at the time was a rider and dedicated his ride to my struggle.  It struck me doubly - first, that anyone would ride a bike 200 miles in 2 days was dumbfounding.  Why in the world would anyone subject themselves to such an ordeal?  And second, that anyone would, could, care so much about me and my plight.  We weren’t family or really, even friends.  It did get me to thinking;  so much so, that the next year, about 10 months out of treatment, I rode in my first Pan-Mass Challenge.  My life would NEVER be the same, although I didn’t realize it at the time.  It was a humbling, at times humiliating, experience.  I didn’t train (I did one ride, about 3 miles, in preparation) and I suffered duly.  Then I met someone else who rode the PMC.  She taught me how to prepare and introduced me to even more riders.  Yet again, a virtual stranger took time out of their life for me, for this cause.  I still ride with all those people.  They are some of my dearest friends, the dearest of which is my wife Jeanne, herself a seven-year rider.

That is the very nature of the PMC.  It’s a collection of truly selfless people so resolute in their goal of beating cancer that they have pushed aside the trials of life towards one common end.  So it has been for me as well.  I’m grateful for the health I have and the strength to ride each year.  Often I stop to think - why am I doing this?  Then another life changer came in a conversation I had with someone to whom I was dedicating my ride.  Undergoing treatment for cancer, he and I talked about some of the challenges he was facing.  I urged him to keep his family and friends close.  They would prove invaluable to his body and soul.  And then I realized why I really ride - something it had taken 15 years to come to grips with.  This way I can also keep my enemy, cancer, close as well.

We ride to beat cancer.  Yesterday, today, and tomorrow.  For me, for you, and for everyone we care about.  And for the PMCer on two very special days, that’s EVERYONE.

Total Raised

$50

Goal

$5,000

Progress