This past weekend, I rode in my fifth Pan-Mass Challenge, a 2-day cycling event across Massachusetts benefiting the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute through its Jimmy Fund.  I was a bit apprehensive this year since I had fallen off my bike only two weeks before the ride and fractured two ribs.  As it turned out, though, the [...]

This will be my fifth year riding the Pan-Mass Challenge, a charity ride benefiting the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute through its Jimmy Fund.  It’s a great ride that raises gobs of money for a fabulous charity and a truly worthy cause.

The ride is a two-day event that takes cyclists across most of Massachusetts.  While [...]

Yesterday, I rode in the annual 50 mile Positive Spin for ALS ride in Massachusetts.  Like most charity rides, this one had a variety of cyclists participating.  Some strong and some, well . . . not so strong.  I generally fall somewhere in the middle.

As I’ve mentioned before, officially, charity rides are not “races.”  Most [...]

In the suburbs around Boston, one frequently runs across strange symbols painted on the road.  Most of these are geometric shapes, arrows, directions and short descriptions to guide those responsible for fixing, destroying, burying or replacing parts of the local infrastructure.  Some of the road graffiti has a more subtle meaning, though – gently acting [...]

This past weekend I rode in the Pan-Massachusetts Challenge, a two-day charity cycling event through Massachusetts with donations supporting the riders and benefiting the Jimmy Fund of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.  I covered the ride and the cause in an earlier post, so I won’t bore you with the details here.  What I will add, though, is [...]

There are some that are calling for this year’s Tour de France to conclude without crowning a winner.  That seems patently absurd to me.  To punish those who are clean because some used drugs or doping to compete makes no sense.  It’s like calling off the World Series because some players were found to be [...]

Holy crow!  What a disaster.  So, the Tour de France started with several top riders accused of doping being banned from the race.  Then, during the Tour, a few other riders were kicked out for failing blood tests or illegal blood transfusions, including Alexandre Vinokourov, who was favored to win.  In fact, the manager of [...]

While looking for some information about the Tour yesterday (other than controversy about doping, it’s really difficult to get decent information about the Tour de France in English), I stumbled across this great website.  It’s a mashup that superimposes today’s TDF stage on a Google map, adds a chart of the elevation of the stage, then, [...]

The Pan-Massachusetts Challenge (PMC) is a charitable, 2-day bike ride across the state of Massachusetts that raises money for cancer research and treatment at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute through its Jimmy Fund.  The ride was the first fundraising bike-a-thon in the country, starting in 1980.  Since then, over 42,000 riders and 25,000 support volunteers have made it one [...]