Pan Massachusetts Challenge - 2007

Get ready! The 28th riding of the Pan Mass Challenge is scheduled for August 7 & 8, 2010. This year, our goal is to raise $31 million to benefit the Dana Farber Cancer Research Institute and the Jimmy Fund. More than 5,000 riders and 2,600 volunteers are expected to take part in this, the nation's largest single athletic fund raising event. If you would like to be part of the PMC by making a contribution, please make checks payable to the Pan Massachusetts Challenge or PMC and mail them to Pan-Mass Challenge, P.O. Box 414575, Boston, MA 02241-4275. You can also mail them to me at 122 Hawktree Drive, Westwood, MA 02090. The only difference is that I will ensure that you get a 'thank you' note...can't guarantee that the bank will do that for ya!

                 Pan Massachusetts Challenge - 2006

The week before had been hotter than the hinges of hell. Like much of the rest of the country, Massachusetts was in the throes of a heat wave. Many of us were concerned that if the heat persisted through the weekend, the more than 4,000 riders and 2,000 plus volunteers could be in serious trouble. The Good Lord had other plans for the 2006 PMC however, and Thursday afternoon, the temperature dropped about 20 degrees. That allowed the 'set up crew' to do their work without having to IV water. Set up, in this case, means getting all of the bike racks in place as well as setting up saw horses, tables, chairs, etc., in strategic areas. It also means bringing trucks from PMC headquarters that are loaded with supplies for the weekend...pallets of water, tons of merchandise, etc., as well as taking possession of a number of portable toilets that had to be spaced around the Babson Campus, golf carts, a forklift truck, and portable lighting that can make a football-sized parking lot look as if it's in perpetual daylight. People who work set-up and clean-up don't receive enough credit (except here) for the dog work that they do; it's hard work and they are just so great.

Friday, as usual, we faced the prospect of rain. Thankfully, it was a morning event. By four o'clock on Friday afternoon, registration and organized chaos were in full swing. It's easy to kid about the chaos being organized but that's exactly what it is. The planning that began shortly after last year's event, the meetings throughout the year, the constant e-mails and telephone calls, really pay dividends when 'crunch time' happens the day before the ride. It's difficult for anyone who hasn't been involved with an event of this magnitude to fully appreciate what takes place long, long before the event gets going. Suffice it to say that yours truly bailed out early Friday evening, leaving the younger folk to do the real dirty work...ah, another benefit of aging.

Saturday morning dawned bright and sunny, but certainly not too warm for a little ride from Babson College in Wellesley to Mass Maritime Academy in Bourne - just a short jaunt of 84 miles. Over 1,700 riders gathered, all of them - no matter what they said - still with a few butterflies in their collective stomachs. The crowd leaving Sturbridge numbered over 2,300, and their ride would be 110 miles with many more hills than the Babson riders would incur. By 7:30 a.m., Larry Luchino of the Boston Red Sox, himself a cancer survivor,  and Uta Pippig, Boston Marathon winner and first-time rider, had wished the crowd good luck; the National Anthem had been sung, and the barricades had been pulled away for the first riders to begin their trek. As they passed under the gold and purple arch, I wondered what was going through their minds. Was it thoughts of a loved one who had died, a friend or the child of a friend who was going through chemo, and I thought of the pedal partners program which pairs up a sick child with a rider. This year, Babson saw the first pedal partner survivor take his place among the riders. Where was he? What was he thinking? My thoughts drifted back to Helen White, a secretary at Northeastern who had died of breast cancer. I pictured a visit to Children's Hospital to visit Liza Donovan, a child with a tumor larger than a basketball, and one that would take her life before it had hardly begun. I thought about my Babson colleague, Diane Coryell, Editor of the Bulletin, the College's alumni magazine, who'd come down with what she thought was a cold in February and was buried in May, a victim of pancreatic cancer. I know that others were occupied with their own thoughts and our eyes were moist from the memories of those we'd not see for a while and these people who were riding bicycles a long way in an attempt to help wipe out this insidious disease.

It would be possible, I suppose, to tell you about the riders who made a one-day trip from Sturbridge to Babson - the first time that venue had been available. It would be nice to tell you about all of the riders who arrived at Babson on Sunday, after having spent the night in dormitories or under the tent at Mass Maritime. My friend and colleague, Hillel Bromberg, was one of those returning riders. He and his riding partners were met by Katherine, his wife and Elisa, their youngest, with sweaty hugs and kisses, and, as Hillel put it, "an awfully sore butt." I guess riding a bike for the better part of two days will give you one of those. I say, "it would be nice," but it's not possible to describe in words the wonder of a Pan-Mass Challenge weekend. Words like camaraderie, love, respect, caring, warmth, humility, memories, tears, joy, and just so many others could fill this page over and over again.

As I mentioned earlier, this was my ninth year with the PMC. I'm 72 now and my knees are pretty well shot. I have emphysema and five stents in my heart. I don't recover from a PMC weekend as quickly as I once did, and I thought that perhaps this would be my last hurrah. I don't know now whether or not it will be. If God grants me the time and the strength, I'd like to volunteer again. It's truly energizing to watch those people ride. It's equally energizing to watch the volunteers who, by the end the weekend, are completely exhausted. It's nice to have a rider say, "thanks for all you've done," to realize that he or she means it and doesn't think that what they did was a big deal. You look at them and respond, "No, thanks for everything you've done;" then the two of you turn away quickly because you don't want the other to see the tears in your eyes. This is the PMC. This is charity at its finest. This is something you have to see to believe. Who knows, maybe you will.