BigBlueBOTTLE

Mission accomplished. Our PMC ride in 2007 was perfect. More importantly though, you can see here what your support has done. Thirty-Three MILLION dollars were raised in 2007, an increase of $6M over 2006, and $5M higher than the goal set for this year! That is huge. You are what kept us going over the ride weekend when things got tough. We wanted to give you a quick update on the ride agenda we followed for those four hard days…

Day 1: Hope Hill Climb Challenges

Thursday, August 2nd: 19 Miles of total climbing. The three of us drove to the Great Barrington, NY to get a jump start. We had so many heavy hitter hill-climb challenges, that we had to get started early. For every $500+ donation (or $250 plus company matching gifts), we climbed a 1-mile, 900 vertical foot hill in memory of a person specified by the donor. We expected to have to do it a few times. We had to do it TEN times for 9,000 vertical feet of climbing, and we inked it on our calves to show everyone why we did this.

Day 2: New York Border to Sturbridge, MA

Friday, August 3rd: 90 Miles from Hillsdale, NY to Sturbridge, MA. This was a VERY HOT day (up to 98 degrees). There were 24 of us, doing this “unofficial” leg, as a combination of several teams. We had police escorts through five towns. Combined fund-raising for the 24 riders was around $250 Thousand!

I thought I knew what endurance was, but I was humbled when I saw thousands of riders accept and meet the PMC challenge, and we were overwhelmed with all of the hill-climb challenge funding.
- Tracey

Day 3: Sturbridge to Bourne, MA

Saturday, August 4th: 110 Miles from Sturbridge, MA to Bourne, MA (right at the western border of Cape Cod). It was a slightly cooler day, but still warm (just over 90 degrees). We started at 6AM for this leg, the first “official” leg of the ride. You can’t imagine the feeling of lining up with 5,000 riders, and listening to the National Anthem being sung by a fireman from Holden Massachusetts. The three of us have all had our share of riding with large groups of 30-50 people, but those rides paled in comparison. The support for this event brought us to tears, and not just once, but many times!

Day 4: Bourne to Provincetown, MA

Sunday, August 5th: 77 Miles from Bourne, MA, over the Bourne Bridge, to Provincetown, MA. You couldn’t WRITE about better weather. We started the ride in the dark, passing out of the Mass Maritime Academy (MMA). Over the Bourne Bridge, and onto the Rail-Trail. We immediately hooked up with a group that took us for the next 11 miles at a pace of nearly 27 miles per hour. That is NOT easy after 219 miles from the previous 3 days! That said, this was the absolute best ride we’ve ever done. It’s an odd sensation looking to the west, and barely seeing land, while you are on the East Coast. It’s beautiful on the Cape, and if you’ve never ridden on it, we highly recommend it.

We are changed forever…

Paul has done this ride for 8 years, and for Tracey and Brian, it was their first. Paul said this was going to be his best year ever, but we thought he was just getting us fired up. We created this team to try to pool our combined efforts and generate more in fund-raising dollars than any one of us could do alone, and it worked.

We met cancer survivors, families of cancer victims, and thousands of concerned and supportive people over those four days, and that doesn’t even count the support we received from all of you and people like you who made this event a success. We were able to raise over $24,000 because of your support!

We generated a lot of media publicity, having four separate newspaper articles published in both the New London Day AND the Norwich Bulletin, and that helped us in our efforts.

You all know how much the three of us love to ride bikes, some might say it’s a minor obsession of ours. But this event transcended our love for riding. It’s not just a bike ride, and it’s not just a fund-raiser. It’s both of those, no doubt, but most importantly, it is an opportunity for a massive group of supporters of the fight to find a cure for Cancer, to come out and join together and express that support, through riding, volunteering, and charitable donation. And every year, the event grows larger.

We realize this report comes a bit late. After all, we did the ride LAST YEAR! Yes, there is a method to our madness though. You see, we’ve all just committed to the 2008 PMC, and have raised our fund-raising goal. You’ll see more about this in the coming months, but we wanted you to know that your good will is not lost on us, and we will continue to carry the flag you put in our hands. Paul said it perfectly:

We won’t stop…until they find a cure.

Tracey Boyden, Brian Jalet & Paul Yeomans of
Team BigBlueBottle for the CURE! (B3C)

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