Latest Blog Posts
Jun 19, 2019 11:30:58 AM
#WhyIPMC guest blog by Mark Bamford, 5th-year rider, Captain of Team A-Bam
Read Blog PostJun 13, 2019 12:43:13 PM
This coming August will be my seventh year of volunteering for the PMC at Mass Maritime Academy. Following treatment for my aggressive breast cancer in 2012 and 2013 I was looking for a way to give back to Dana-Farber and to express my gratitude for the incredibly compassionate and knowledgeable care I had received from the nurses and doctors. I had always heard about the PMC and was impressed with their organization and fundraising goals. My manager from work had been volunteering for a couple of years and provided me with more details. I happily signed up to work the luggage tent on Saturday morning. I also set up tents for the riders who would be staying overnight at MMA. I met so many wonderful volunteers and riders that I knew I would be volunteering the following year. In 2014 I worked on Saturday morning at MMA and the next morning before the sun rose I was at the Barnstable Courthouse making Fluffernutters for the riders. One of the most moving parts about volunteering is the exceptional gratitude the riders express to each volunteer. I get chills thinking about the gracious “thank you’s” I have received over the past six years. To me though, I am eternally grateful to those riders who have trained and sacrificed to be able to participate in the PMC and raise funds for cancer research. They are the heroes, they are the ones who are literally riding for a cure.
Jun 12, 2019 10:08:04 AM
Year 1 - Hitting Home
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Jun 6, 2019 10:35:26 AM
Why do I ride? Why wouldn’t I? My wife of nearly forty years died of breast cancer in early 2011 and then my son passed away from melanoma in 2015. My family and I have experienced much too close the heartaches, the emotional roller coaster, the stressful toll that it takes on the innocent victim and all those in their circle. We have seen and felt the care of physicians, nurses and staff at multiple institutions trying to make the disease go away and at the same time support the patient in the other aspects of their lives. And I am a scientist and so I know firsthand how difficult, but how vital it is to have the funds to support the discovery and development of the new therapies that will be needed to combat this ruinous and aggressive foe.
Read Blog PostJun 5, 2019 10:58:25 AM
2019 represents the 3rd year I’ll be riding in the Pan-Mass Challenge. I’m just as excited this year as the first year I rode. Three years ago I would never have dreamed I’d be biking in an event that covered 192 miles over 2 days. The atmosphere I experienced during my first ride was amazing and I became addicted to the event and more importantly, the cause.
May 29, 2019 12:05:33 PM
As a child, I grew up going for long bike rides with my Dad. We would ride to ice cream shops, parks, and all around our small town of Topsfield, MA. Through my teenage years I began to opt out of those bike rides, but my dad continued to ride on his own. He loved to venture through the North Shore on his bike, finding beach alcoves and hidden gems along the way. In January 2015, this all changed: at the age of 54, my dad was diagnosed with an incurable, cancerous brain tumor called Glioblastoma Grade IV, and we lost him in September 2016.
