How to Help Defeat Cancer? Pedal. Pray. Repeat.

“[The bicycle] is no longer a beast of steel… no, it is a friend… It is a faithful and powerful ally against one’s worst enemies. It is stronger than anxiety, stronger than sadness. It has all the power of hope.”    --Maurice Leblanc, late French novelist

What’s with all the bikes on the road this summer?! Where’d they suddenly come from?

Those are questions on many minds and hearts in this part of God’s creation, at this time of year. One day the roads are clear and quiet and then one Saturday in the spring, bikes are everywhere, especially on the weekends. It can feel as if cyclists have returned to the streets and byways, like those swallows who return each year to Capistrano.  Bikers galore, flying around in their skin-tight lycra shorts and psychedelic bike shirts, riding in packs of two or four or more. Bikers whose numbers are peaking right now, in mid-July. Bikers like yours’ truly.

First, a confession and a plea.

Most bikers, like me, are trying our best to be the kind of biker that drivers like you, respect and even like. Bikers who wave and say “Thanks!” when you let us through an intersection or wait for us to pass by. Bikers who ride as far over to the right as we can, so we don’t hog up the road. Bikers who follow the rules of the road. Yes, these summer weekends you will experience a minority of bikers who are rude, careless, aggressive, and impolite. But hey—that’s not most of us who absolutely LOVE, to cycle. So: PLEASE watch out for us. We do not want to risk limb or life for this sport that brings us so much joy.

We cycle for lots of reasons.

To get in shape, to shed those winter pounds that can no longer hide beneath a big sweater! We cycle to relieve stress, hop on the bike at the end of a long workday and pedal away our cares. We cycle to see this amazing God made world at the smooth speed of 11 or 12 or 13 miles per hour. Fast enough to make forward progress. Slow enough to catch the beautiful show that is found in the warmer months in New England; hawks soaring in a bright blue sky and the yellow and white lily pads that cover a pond and a setting sun all orange and fiery.

But here’s also why there are so darn many of us cyclists in these parts right about now. Many of us are in training for a one-of-a-kind charity ride, the Pan Mass Challenge (PMC).  Come the first week in August the ride’s goal is to raise more than $66 million dollars, which will all go to support the incredibly important and lifesaving care and research that happens at Boston’s Dana Farber Cancer Institute. That sixty-six-million-dollar figure is not a typo. Every single penny raised by riders like me, every cent, 100 percent, goes to that world class place.

You know of the Dana Farber and have been touched by its work.

It’s the place where your neighbor or a kid on your daughter’s little league team or your loved one went to or go to, for hope and to seek treatment to get better from the scourge that is cancer. It’s the place where the absolute best doctors and nurses and scientists are focused like a laser beam on one dream and one goal: to find a cure for cancer and to live in a cancer free world.

We PMC’ers ride for the same reason, and ride for the special ones we love and loved, touched by cancer. I ride for Sue and Nora and Dottie and Scott and Mark and Lynne and T. Michael and Evelyn and Kathy. I ride for folks with cancer I do not know and yet want to help. That’s why me and 6,000 other people will set off on our bikes and ride a long, long way. Cyclists will be spinning their pedals all the way from the hills of Sturbridge in central Massachusetts, to the tip of the Cape, to P-town.

Begun in 1980, the PMC is the granddaddy of athletic fundraising events. In all those years and rides, the PMC has raised more than $830 million.  And all just one pedal, one ride, one mile, one road at a time. Here’s the ask.

We PMC cyclists need your help and prayers. Go to PMC.ORG. Make a general donation. Find someone you know who is riding. If you need someone to sponsor, my PMC page is right here: profile.pmc.org/JH0352.  

So, all those bikers all over the place right now? Please keep an eye out for us. Give if you can. Pray for a safe and fun PMC, for everyone who has cancer, or who has lost a loved one to cancer. We can beat cancer. All one pedal at a time.

See you on the road.

The Reverend John F. Hudson is Senior Pastor of the Pilgrim Church, United Church of Christ, in Sherborn, Massachusetts (pilgrimsherborn.org) and in his 13^th year of doing the PMC. He blogs at sherbornpastor.blogspot.com and is a resident scholar at the Collegeville Institute at Saint John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota. For twenty-five years he was a columnist whose essays appeared in newspapers throughout Massachusetts and Rhode Island. He has served churches in New England since 1989. For comments, please be in touch: pastorjohn@pilgrimsherborn.org.