I know, I have been a very bad, absentee blogger. More on that tomorrow.
This has snuck up on us but the annual Ride to Conquer Cancer, a two day bike ride from Vancouver to Seattle to raise money for the BC Cancer Foundation is closing registration at the end of business today.
If you would like to join the PH&N Friends and Family team or Cynthia's team (name pending) please go to www.conquercancer.ca and follow the registration process. Sign up as an individual and we'll get you transferred onto one of our teams later.
Here is an internal email I sent out that I think is self explanatory.
I'm back. Tomorrow's entry will be "Monday is the new Wednesday." Deep, eh?
From: Paul Balfour
To: All PHN Vancouver; All PHN Victoria; All PHN Calgary
Sent: Tue Feb 01 02:33:14 2011
Subject: I need your help ... Today! (We're number 8?)
Today is the last day to register to ride in the third annual Ride to Conquer Cancer, a two day bike ride from Vancouver to Seattle to raise money for research at the BC Cancer Foundation.
It costs 75 bucks to register. If you’re not sure whether you want to ride, or whether you can ride, (we’ll revisit this point shortly) sign up anyway and if it turns out that you can’t we (me and some like-minded old PH&N Horny Goats) will reimburse your registration fee. You don’t have a lot of time to think about this. Don’t think. Sign up and we’ll figure it out later. (disclosure: this will be a pretty personal and shameless appeal, if you want to stop reading now, please do. Seriously.)
The first year this Ride was held, it raised over $6 million for cancer research. PH&N was the top fundraising team and I had the privilege of being the top individual fundraiser. Last year I was thrilled that PH&N was only second – thrilled because Team Finn, with well over a hundred riders, compared to our 45, raised more money than we did and overall, the Ride raised in excess of $9 million dollars for cancer research. I was third in fundraising, I don’t remember who was first, but our very own Michael Borden was second. (And we kicked Team Finn’s butt on fundraising per rider!)
I had a front seat on this event in those days and frankly I was a bit cocky. But life can be pretty humbling sometimes. (Anyone who invests knows that – and if they don’t, they’re about find out!) I was on the board of the BC Cancer Foundation, vice chair in fact, I was the top fundraiser and was interviewed on the radio at a live fundraiser at the Lions Pub (now that’s fame). I was asked to speak at the “Opening Ceremonies” the first year and at the overnight camp festivities the second year. I felt pretty smug, I think. I rode in honour of my late wife Pam who died from brain cancer almost six years ago now and my kids were thrilled with the success. I thought the Board was doing great work (it was). I was, I think, generous and sincere, in offering advice to people who were recently diagnosed with cancer or had a loved one diagnosed with cancer. I was industrious in fundraising activities and did what I thought was the best I could to raise money and spread the word.
I wasn’t really conscious of it at the time but I had this intrinsic belief that I had done my part, this underlying belief that I had paid my dues - and then some – an irrational belief that somehow my family and I were “protected” from cancer, I remember thinking many times, thank the gods I don’t have to do that again, that these efforts somehow afforded me some immunity.
And then, as you know, that belief set (irrational as it was when I think about it) came crashing down around my head when Alex, my son, who lost his mom when he was 7, was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia on July 19th, barely a month after the last year’s Ride. I was dumbfounded.
You never know when it can happen to you.
It has been a long tough grind for Alex for many months now and he has a long way to go. I cannot tell you how it has turned our lives upside down. It has been really hard for him and his new extended family.
It was about noon on a hot sunny Monday in July while I waited in a tiny foyer of the drop-in clinic I had taken Alex to the afternoon before when the blood test results came in. I was told to get Alex to BC Children’s Hospital. Now. Do not pass Go, get him and take him to Emergency, now. I had about a five minute drive home to, one, take a deep breath and, two, figure out what to tell him.
Live and learn. Telling my twelve year old son he had leukemia was hard. So hard. Was it the hardest thing I’ve had to do? After Pam’s illness and death, telling the kids, her parents, I stopped playing the game of what’s the hardest thing you’ve ever done, something worse may be coming.
Those were, and remain, hard things.
I was feeling pretty sorry for myself a while back when Alex and I had been in the hospital for 19 days straight. The kids are there getting their chemo and a parent sleeps on a cot in the room. That was hard. And then I found out that the kids who had acute myeloid leukemia (not lymphoblastic which Alex has) are regularly there for a six month stretch. You think something’s hard but inevitably something comes along that’s a lot harder. A great chef in town here has a daughter, now 11 or 12 I think, that spent pretty much three years in BC Children’s Hospital between the ages of five to eight being treated for cancer. It’s all relative I guess, better to witness that than to experience it. I guess. But it’s hard. It is devastating to see what Alex has had to go through, it eats me up.
***********
Okay, you’re through the hard part!
So how hard is it to ride a bike to Seattle? It’s not that hard.
Here are the excuses. It’s on Father’s Day weekend and it’s wedding season and it’s summertime and there are a thousand other reasons why we’re too busy to do it, and I don’t know if I can, I’m not sure if I can get a bike, I’m really busy, I think we’re away that weekend and what about the fundraising… and… And what?
It’s not that hard.
Riding a bike is not that hard compared to what cancer patients go through.
The way I see it, the way we are going to lick this whole cancer thing is through research and (email me if you don’t believe me or want to know more about this) and the research being done at the BC Cancer Agency is world leading. Literally. BC Cancer researchers have been published in the scientific journal Nature, with ground breaking results, three times in the past year and four times in 16 months. (If you want to know if that’s significant, or how hard it is to get published in Nature, please ask my friend and colleague Dr. S B.) We’re making huge progress here. Residents of BC enjoy the best outcomes, significantly, in Canada. Your dollars at work.
But they need money. Lots of it. This is where you come in. As Andrew Sweeney wrote recently, if we can match what we raised last year, PH&N will have raised a million dollars for cancer research over three years. That’s incredible. To me, that exemplifies our corporate spirit and humbles me as much as any personal setback ever could.
Here’s the real, not so secret: it’s fun! Ask anyone who’s done it. It’s rewarding, and many of us have discovered a fantastic new sport.
The Goats are highly regarded now in Vancouver cycling circles. We’re sort of the bad ass yet nice guy cyclists. We have an edgy name but we raised more money than any other team in the first year and were second last year but with less than half the riders of the top team. Over two years, and I’d like to think, three, we’re clearly number one. We have … attitude and people know, they know that PH&N has raised all this money. And they like that!
Right now and, okay, I know we haven’t started yet (but did I mention that today is the last day to register?!) we’re number eight. Us? Number eight?
Time doesn’t permit (and I’ll take the blame for this) a lot of campaigning to sign up people. It’s today. So, to remove any anxiety, if you’re not sure, sign up and if you can’t make it, we’ll reimburse you. Worried about not raising the minimum in fund raising? Don’t be. Everyone has been surprised at how well this goes given a modest amount of effort. Not sure if you will have, or can line up a bike? Sign up anyway, we’ll figure it out, what do you have to lose?! (Last year, for example, a kind benefactor offered to pay for people’s bike cage fee … this year, who knows?)
It’s not that hard.
We will help you train. Andrew S has been unwavering in his support for all riders, the novices and experienced alike. Bang Bang and David “The Banana” (and many others) have always been a big help to all our Goats. We have a Friends and Family team if your … friends or family want to join us.
Andrew and I are thrilled with all of you have returned again to ride this year or be a member of the “Crew”, the uber-volunteers who really make this happen. And we are ecstatic (we’re really sensitive guys, you know) to welcome new Goats like Lance B H (who just had a nasty bit of kidney removed) and the brothers Andy and Frank M ( a little cycling joke). Andrew “call me Alberto and it really was just a bad steak” M and the Badger, Doug C are coming out from Toronto. Monty's’s sorry ass is out there for scrutiny (no need to look closely, avert your gaze) again – and he’s not busy at all. You’re too busy? You’re too busy? Really.
This will be a ton of fun. Honestly. Please, please join us if you can, or even if you think you can.
You will make a difference.
Cynthia lost her husband, Bill to cancer. Her kids also know how hard it is to lose a parent. Miles, the eldest at 17, now has done the Ride the last two years and Michaela, 16, is a rookie doing it this year. Alex, Nathanial and Samantha are below the minimum age requirement (and Alex has previous commitments) but they would be on their bikes in a heartbeat if they could.
We would all consider it a deep and profound personal favour to our family if you could join us.
www.conquercancer.ca Follow the registration process, “join an existing team” and the password is: removed
Thanks for reading this. Oh, and if you’re reading this and thinking, is he talking about me? … yes I am!
paul
