ornoth

So someone finally wrote a book about the Pan-Mass Challenge.

If you are one of my friends who care about (or are just curious about) the event, you might be interested in picking it up. It’s short—just 150 pages—with a handful of greyscale photos. It’s inexpensive too—just $9 at Amazon!—and the author is giving 75 percent of the profits back to the PMC.

The writing is first-person and informal. While that makes it readable, the author rambles around each chapter, covering diverse topics with no real focal point, yielding a book that also has no coherent theme other than the experience.

But to be fair, the PMC—the event—is all about that experience. The entire weekend is intensely emotionally charged, and that’s something that is nearly impossible to convey in words. This is astutely summarized in a quote from one teen rider, “When you explain it to a friend they sort of know what it is, but until they’re there, they don’t really know.”

Sure, there’s the obligatory nod to the event’s long history, including how the idea came to the founder during a ride in Boston’s Arnold Arboretum, how he ran the event for fifteen years from his father’s dining room, how everyone reacted to the first rider fatality, finally getting permission to use the campus of the Massachusetts Maritime Academy as an overnight stop, and the event’s phenomenal growth.

And there’s plenty of interesting factoids. On PMC weekend, riders will pedal a collective three-quarters of a million miles. 70 percent of riders return to the event each year, and scores of PMC kids rides serve as a farm club for the main event, iculcating future generations into a culture of philanthropy and caring about others.

Combine all the other single-event athletic fundraisers in the nation, then multiply that by 3.5—that’s what the PMC raises every year. Having passed 100 percent of rider-raised money through to the charity, the PMC constitutes 60 percent of the Jimmy Fund’s revenue and—at 20 percent of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute’s entire budget—is DFCI’s largest single source of funding.

All this enables Dana-Farber to conduct over 700 clinical trials and 350,000 outpatient visits per year. But more importantly, the PMC gives Dana-Farber the power and security to do the impossible. The PMC has directly underwritten research that led to treatments and cures for rare pediatric cancers that threaten the lives of a thousand kids per year, a hundred kids per year, even just 32 kids per year.

The book tells the stories of a number of these kids, including the PMC’s poster boy: Jack O’Riordan, who at one year of age was cured of Wilms Tumor, which only six children had at that time. And how, after cheering on PMC riders for 14 years, he finally was old enough to do the ride himself (despite a broken leg).

The book also includes stories from the more than a hundred Dana-Farber staffmembers who ride, and gives a pointedly realistic assessment of Lance Armstrong’s single visit to the event in 2011, shortly before his confession as a doper and resignation from his own cancer-related charity.

Many of the people in the book provide quotes that further illustrate the attitude and atmosphere the event creates.

“There are widows and there are orphans, but no word exists for a parent who loses a child.” -One 17-year rider’s fundaising email

“At first when I get the call my heart goes out for the family; it’s so hard. But then my heart soars because they’ve found the right place, the right team.” -A pediatric oncologist who rides

“To the world you may be just one person, but to one person you just may be the world.” -One of hundreds of signs lining the route

“You’re never done, you’re never done with the event.” -A 25-year volunteer

For me as a 13-year rider, the book left me with mixed feelings. I so want to be able to share with others what the PMC experience is like. Although the book relates a handful of very emotional narratives, it’s simply impossible to capture all the amazing and heart-wrenching and grace-laden stories in an event that spans hundreds of miles with 5,500 participants, 3,000 volunteers, countless roadside spectators, and a quarter million sponsors over 33 years.

One of the difficult things to capture about the PMC is the emotional impact. All weekend long, you’re primed, because you never know when you’ll see something that instantly moves you to tears, whether it be to the heights of inspiration or the depths of despair. Will it be the kid holding an “I’m alive thanks to you!” sign? Riding next to a Red Sox or Patriots player? Or exchanging greetings with an 80 year-old rider, or an amputee riding with only one leg?

Will it be hearing the story of someone who has raised a quarter million dollars, or a rider with a loved one’s photo or dozens of ribbons with names pinned to their jersey? The tandem bike with an empty seat, representing a lost loved one?

Will it be the sincerity and passion with which hundreds of people lining the route thank you for riding? Or watching the tens of thousands of people—riders, volunteers, sponsors, supporters, patients and their families, doctors, and nurses—who have come together to make a real, meaningful difference in each others’ lives this often impersonal and uncaring world?

As a longtime writer myself, I don’t envy anyone who tries to capture and communicate the PMC experience, in whatever medium. So I won’t criticize the author for falling short of 100 percent success. But I’m very glad he did it, and I think it’s well worth the $9 for anyone who has ever felt attachment to this singular and irreproduceable event.

And, of course, if you have yet to sponsor my upcoming 13th PMC ride, now’s the time!

The following is a letter from the President of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute to the PMC organization.

I have chosen to share it with you and my sponsors to give you a better idea exactly how the money we raise is spent, and how vitally important it is to their lifesaving mission. And, of course, so you too can receive the thanks you deserve for your support of my ride.

Dear Fellow PMC Members:

First, thank you from the bottom of my heart. Thank you on behalf of so many who work so hard to conquer cancer, and even more people who count on us to do just that, and on behalf of everyone at Dana-Farber and all of the people who depend on us. You, individually and collectively, have been absolutely phenomenal. The financial support that you have provided has enabled groundbreaking research that has saved lives and will ensure that we will be able to save more lives in the future. Of equal importance, is the extraordinary spirit and positivity that you bring to your effort. This is enormously uplifting, motivating, and sustaining to all of us who work on the frontline of trying to conquer cancer. You are right there with us, and that is enormously heartening. I thought it would be a good time to update you about what is going on in the world of cancer research and what your incredible support is doing to allow cancer research to move forward at Dana-Farber despite one of the worst external environments in the history of medical research.

Among the most important things unrestricted funds supports is our ability to recruit and retain the world's most incredible faculty of cancer care givers and researchers. You have met many of them; Nadler, Demetri, Winer, Partridge and more. Nearly all of them are here because we were able to use the unrestricted support that you provided to invest in their recruitment and to support their early work, work at the cutting edge, before it was a "sure enough bet" to be funded by the National Institutes of Health or other agencies. Indeed, these faculty members have become so important and prominent that they are the target of enormously attractive recruitment packages from many other institutes. Because of the PMC's record breaking support last year, I was able to use these funds to support retention programs that kept them here to continue their work. PMC support helps convince them that we can commit the resources they need to make the maximum impact on cancer outcomes on now and in the future at Dana-Farber.

PMC funds support work for ground-breaking, out of the box projects by our investigators in their own research programs; other funds allowed us to invest in key equipment such as state of the art sequencing and imaging facilities. One of the world's first small imager Cyclotrons, a multimillion dollar piece of equipment needed for the imaging capabilities at the frontiers in research, is being used on more mouse models in cancer. It was partly funded by the PMC. To get the remaining funding, we were able to leverage your support to obtain matching funds from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. We now have the finest animal imaging facility in the country used to study mouse models of cancer, and we will make it available to collaborators within Harvard, and outside to the biotech and pharmaceutical world.

This past Friday, I had the honor of presenting the Osler Young Investigator Award to Dr. Kimberly Stegmaier, one of our rising faculty stars who was supported in her early work by the funds that you raised. She is now a world class developer of novel agents for the treatment of childhood leukemias and neuroblastoma using innovative genomic technologies that we used PMC funds to support. PMC funds allowed us to purchase equipment and collaborative services both at Dana-Farber and the Broad Institute. This has sustained a unique collaboration between two world-class institutions in the conquest of cancer.

This past spring, Drs. Ken Anderson and Paul Richardson and their collaborators from the Medical School and the pharmaceutical industry received the highly prestigious Warren Alpert Award from Harvard for their work in developing novel therapies at record speed. These have been the driving advances resulting in the tripling of survival time for patients with multiple myeloma. A significant amount of the funds that made this work possible came from PMC teams that have ridden in support of Drs. Anderson and Richardson. Perhaps even more importantly, some of the very earliest work of this group, working before its value was apparent, was supported by unrestricted funds that were generated by the PMC.

These are just a few of many examples that provide tangible proof that you are allowing us to forge ahead in very difficult times. In virtually every one of our disease centers and our departments, there are young investigators whose careers were launched by funds raised by the PMC. In every one of our cores and centers, equipment, expert scientists, computational capabilities, expensive supplies and expert personnel are there because we are able to support them with PMC funds. Every one of our clinics and clinical trials are supported by your funds.

You truly are marching with us on the front lines in the war to conquer cancer. It seems almost impossible to do even more than you are doing. However, if ever there was a time for even more effort and generosity, it is now. The federal government allowed "sequestration" to happen, this has resulted in a cataclysmic cut in the NIH budget. Cancer research is disproportionately affected. In addition, Massachusetts and federal healthcare and payment reform are reducing clinical reimbursements. And, in this time of highly constrained resources, competition from many other worthy causes for traditional forms of philanthropy is more intense than ever. It is only through the PMC that we can hope to remain aggressive and optimistic about making a difference in the lives of patients with cancer and saving even more lives in the future. Thank you as always for the incredible work that you do on our behalf.

Sincerely,

Edward J. Benz, Jr., M.D.

Sometimes you’re fortunate enough to know when something historic is about to happen. When I heard that there was going to be a formal dedication of the PMC Plaza at the Dana-Farber Cancer Insitute’s new building, I had to be there.

Think about it: Dana-Farber—the place where chemotherapy was invented—hasn’t opened a new clinical building in 36 years. At that rate, it’s an incredibly rare honor to have the building’s main entrance named for your organization. It is a very concrete, tangible method of recognizing how important the Pan-Mass Challenge is to the Dana-Farber’s mission of curing and eradicating cancer.

DFCI President Benz & PMC President Starr

Full Photoset

Leading up to the dedication, details were difficult to come by. I knew the date, and was tipped off to the time earlier that day. Although I hadn’t planned it out, I left work early so that I could swing by my place and grab my camera.

I wasn’t even sure the event was going to happen. Most of New England was under a thunderstorm and tornado watch. The sky was ashen, with a fierce wind blowing debris around the streets of Boston. As I descended the stairs to catch the subway from Copley to Longwood, a deafening thunderclap rattled the headhouse and the lights flickered. If the ceremony hadn’t been canceled, at least there’d be a dramatic backdrop for it!

Arriving at Longwood, I saw that the celebrants were gathering inside the lobby of the new Yawkey Center for Cancer Care building. Uninvited and underdressed, I pulled my camera out and made like I was supposed to be there. I later learned that due to space constraints, only 20-year-plus PMC riders had been invited, due to space constraints. But no one challenged the guy behind the camera, a mere 10-year rider, and I wasn’t about to let such a historic moment pass me by. My one nod to propriety was that at least I didn’t eat any of the hors d’oeuvres!

So I played photographer, and got a few good pictures out of the deal. I even got a bit of photographer-level access to the bigwigs, which amused me.

The sense of being on observer of history was reinforced during the speechifying. This recognition was arguably the most important moment in the entire history of the Pan-Mass Challenge, and it was a moment of deepest pride for me, standing there in a new building that the PMC’s donation was the lead gift for. In his remarks, Dana-Farber president Dr. Ed Benz articulated for the first time the astounding next milestone in the PMC’s fundraising road: a third of a billion dollars.

I won’t say much about the plaza itself. There are three granite planters/benches with “Pan-Mass Challenge Plaza” engraved that separate it from Brookline Avenue. There are dozens of granite pavers in a long line, each one representing one of the towns that the PMC route passes through. There’s two standing arcs of granite that comprise a sculpture called “Tandem”. And a plaque, which reads:

PMC PLAZA
This plaza is dedicated to the Pan-Massachusetts Challenge (PMC): to its cyclists, volunteers, and donors whose life-affirming efforts through the decades have provided critical support for cancer research and patient care at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Tandem is a tribute to the indelible bond between the PMC and Dana-Farber and reflects the extraordinary impact when two vital organizations work in tandem.

Yeah. Being part of an organization with that kind of power to do good: that’s something to take pride in. And as the inscription says, it’s not just about the riders. It’s the partnership between the riders, the thousands of volunteers, and a quarter million people a year like you who sponsor riders. And that’s just the PMC’s side of its partnership with Dana-Farber, its doctors and researchers, support staff, and cancer patients and their families.

I’m deeply proud to be one part of that extended family.

I also recently plowed through Siddhartha Mukherjee’s “The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer”.

This is an imposing book. The text runs to 470 pages, and there are no less than 60 pages of back-notes. It’s quite a lengthy read.

On the other hand, the reviews I’d read were all effusively positive, calling it touchingly personal, citing its approachability, and even using the phrase “page-turner”.

I generally agree with that assessment. It’s very engaging and readable, deftly melding the author’s first-person experiences in his oncology residency with interesting stories of man’s early history with this disease. It goes on to add more depth to cancer’s more familiar recent narrative and solid insight into the current state of the art. Although the later chapters tend to rely a bit more on technical jargon, Mukherjee keeps things moving so that the reader doesn’t lose interest.

Part of the reason why he undertook this work was because as a neophyte oncologist, he was so buried in the tactical concerns of fighting the disease that he was unable to answer his patients’ more strategic-level questions about where we are in the overall battle and whether the increased attention of recent years has translated to improvements in prevention, treatment, and outcomes.

Throughout its long course, the book hits on most major forms of cancer—lung, breast, leukemia, Hodgkin’s Disease—and several obscure ones. For a time it follows the search for a single root cause, touching on carcinogenic chemicals like Asbestos and cigarette smoke as well as the cancers precipitated by viral infections like HPV.

But if I had to single out the primary theme of the book, however, it would have to be the hubris of physicians throughout the ages in misunderstanding and underestimating cancer, as well as overestimating their ability to cure it with a single, massive intervention.

In Rome, Claudius Galen attributed the disease to an overabundance of an unknown and unobserved liquid called “black bile”, setting our understanding of cancer on a wrong track for the following 1500 years.

Next up were the surgeons, whose simplistic answer to recurrent breast cancer was to cut deeper and deeper, until the standard preventative practice was to remove the entire breast, the lymph nodes, the muscles of the chest, the clavicle, several ribs, and part of the lung. Better to cut too much than too little, right?

As surgery began to give way to chemotherapy in the 1950s, the next group of oncologists fell for the same old “more is better” fallacy, prescribing massive doses of multiple drugs, eventually concluding that the best policy was to completely destroy the patient’s ability to generate new blood cells, then rebuild it by transplanting new stem cells (either one’s own, harvested before treatment, or transfused from a donor).

Even today, with the mapping of the human genome and gene therapy providing an historical breakthrough in cancer treatment, geneticists have once again fallen into the same mental trap as Galen did 2000 years ago, of thinking that this new technology would spell the end of cancer. Cancer is an incredibly deft, diverse, adaptive, and opportunistic disease, and its defeat is just not going to be that simple.

Despite all these unfortunate missteps, each generation of treatment has produced significant improvements in outcomes. Surgery, chemotherapy, radiation, gene therapy, targeted drugs, and combinations of these can each be the right treatment for the right patient.

And Mukherjee’s book does do a wonderful job depicting some of the fortuitous coincidences that led to the discovery of these new treatments. For example, who knew that a humble jar of Marmite was the key that unlocked the broad spectrum of chemotherapy drugs that have saved so many lives?

Aside from the knowledge that cancer was the result of uncontrolled growth, it wasn’t until the past twenty years that we actually began to understand exactly how and why cancer works at a cellular and genetic level. Before 1970, oncologists could only develop treatments by trial and error. But armed with our new understanding of what cancer is, researchers can now identify cancer’s specific biochemical vulnerabilities and start developing therapies such as Herceptin that precisely target those weaknesses.

In the end, the reader comes away from the book with a much better understanding of why cancer is so difficult to combat, and that each person’s instance of cancer is so unique that it requires an entirely individual treatment.

As a Pan-Mass Challenge rider, I was proud to discover how central Sidney Farber, the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and the Jimmy Fund have been. They take center stage in much of Mukherjee’s narrative, as does Mass General, MIT, and the American Cancer Society.

Before I picked up the book, I saw Dr. Mukherjee at an author talk he gave at the BPL. I took the opportunity to ask him whether the recent discovery that the human genome is not identical in every cell had any implications for gene therapy.

Between his response and my readings, it was clear that it isn’t the human genome that matters so much as the characteristic modifications cancer makes to it. By designing drugs that recognize and respond to the unique cancerous fingerprint of a particular genetic alteration, it is possible to starve tumors or at least deactivate their growth. The challenge right now is to catalog those fingerprints and discover drugs that match them.

It’s probably true that you need some curiosity about cancer or medicine to get through this book. But those with sufficient interest will find it informative, entertaining, and very readable.

Time for a quick general update. Things have been pretty good of late.

On the work front, I’m not at the client site anymore, which is really nice. Still working for that big lingerie retailer, which is mostly okay. The other day I learned what a tanga is. Sadly, not through a hands-on demonstration.

And I’ve changed roles on the project from business analyst to UI engineer, which is great; I like to balance my work experience between business, creative, and technical roles/tasks.

Got my first performance review last week. It was pretty glowing, which is gratifying, considering I was instrumental in pulling this project out of the hole it had dug itself. The few criticisms I received were mostly about how we as a team could have better handled a couple issues, rather than any individual shortcomings, which was also encouraging.

Being at the home office also means I can go down to the Haymarket to buy produce on Fridays, which has really surprised me. Last week was typical: I got 10 limes, 6 bananas, and a quart of strawbs for $4; the limes alone would have cost me $10 at the grocery store in my neighborhood! The savings at Haymarket is just ludicrulous, and I’ve been eating a whole lot more produce lately as a result.

The other thing I’ve done for work is recreate an improved version of the foosball ranking application that we used to run at my last job. It runs off the Elo ratings system that’s used in ranking chess players, so it has a bit of advanced maths to it, but it also lends a bit more credibility. I’m pretty happy with it, and so far it’s been pretty popular with the boys at work.

A week or two ago I got an email out of the blue from a nonprofit that wants to use one of my photos for a member mailing, and potentially have me do a multi-location photo shoot for their website. Paid! Granted, I’m not gonna charge much at all, both because they’re a nonprofit and I can use it to build up my portfolio. And it’s got me learning about how to price photos and effectively negotiate copyright rights. So that’s very cool, but it doesn’t deserve more press than that until it’s a done deal. It’d be sweet to be able to say I’m a paid photographer, in addition to being a paid writer and award-winning poet!

Bought new luggage, too. I liked my old red wheeled Kenneth Cole duffel, but the fabric had torn, so it needed to be replaced. It only survived the trip to Las Vegas thanks to copious last-minute application of Gorilla Tape. I couldn’t decide between the larger or the smaller Samsonite wheeled duffels, so dang, I bought ’em both, and still paid half of what one Tumi bag would have cost. And they’re a very pretty royal blue, which makes me happy.

Went to the dentist for… uh… the first time since I was laid off by Sapient. I have to go back in a couple weeks for xray results and a real exam, but the hygienist seemed to think things were actually very good. I’d been fearing much worse.

My assistant editor is preparing and sending out the next issue of DargonZine. It’s wonderful that I don’t have to, although he’s taking his time at it for someone who set a goal of getting nine issues out this year. Still, I don’t envy him; it’s not bad when you know the process, but it’d be quite involved for someone not familiar with how it’s done and the dozen or so technologies behind it.

There’s a mess of health and bike stuff to talk about, but it’s all going to go into ornoth_cycling, where it belongs.

Except for this one comment. By the end of this year’s PMC ride, I’ll have raised around $26-$29k for the Jimmy Fund. Thinking about that, it’s kind of staggering. That’s enough money to buy a pretty decent car, or pay $1200 per month in rent for two years. It just staggers me that my friends have been so incredibly generous. Then you think about the 5,000 other people who ride each year, who have similar fundraising stories, and you get an idea of how massive an impact the PMC has on the Dana-Farber’s ability to advance the state of cancer treatment and prevention.

That’s a great thing to be a part of, and a nice note to end on.

Hey, folks. It’s once again time for me to check in with you and ask you to sponsor my sixth Pan-Mass Challenge ride in support of cancer research, treatment, and prevention at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

Most of you know that I train year-round for the PMC, which is the most important event of my year. The PMC is by far the biggest athletic fundraiser in the nation, and generates half of the Jimmy Fund’s annual revenue. On top of that, there are a couple things that are different this year, and I’d like to share them with you.

1. Last year, the PMC donated 99% of the money raised by riders.

Athletic fundraisers usually donate as little as 60-70% of their contributions to the charity they’re supposed to support. The PMC is required by its charter to donate at least 91%. Two years ago, the PMC astounded everyone with a 97% pass-through rate, and last year increased that to an unsurpassed 99%, which we are justifiably proud of. So you can rest assured that your donations are going straight to the charity, not to the people who run the ride.

2. This year, I hope to exceed $20,000 lifetime fundraising.

I’ve never raised $4,000 in one year, but that’s my current goal, so I can reach the $20,000 plateau in this, my sixth year as a rider. I really need your help to get there. And if your employer has a matching gift program, please take advantage of it. You can double your contribution at no cost to you other than filling out a simple form!

3. This year, it’s personal.

For the past five years, I’ve been lucky: no one I knew was undergoing treatment for cancer. This year is different. This year I’m riding for my good friend and former co-worker rubyred660, who has had to face this disease again and again over the past five years.

Her mother fought a brain tumor for seven years before succumbing just a week before rubyred660’s wedding day. A year or two later, she and her father both received precancerous diagnoses that required removal of their colons. After another couple years, she lost one ovary during the removal of a football-sized benign cyst. Unfortunately, it recurred a month later, and her remaining ovary was removed. As another kick in the teeth, the doctors discovered some ovarian cancer cells, which meant five months of preventative chemotherapy, which she has just completed. After subjecting her body to all that chemo, rubyred660’s prognosis is good and she’s doing well, but after all that trauma, she’s also learned to be cautious when thinking about the future.

Imagine if you had gone through all that in the past five years. No one -- certainly no 28 year-old—should have to endure such an unbelievable amount of pain, fear, and loss. So this year, I’m riding to honor her, and the tremendous spirit she’s shown in fighting such a terrible disease.

I’m once again asking you to help me do that. I hope you are in a position where you’re able to financially support this incredibly important cause this year. It means a huge amount to me, and to the researchers and doctors at the Dana-Farber.

My page on the PMC site is at:
http://www.pmc.org/mypmc/profiles.asp?Section=story&eGiftID=OL0003

and you can go directly to the online donation form here:
https://www.pmc.org/egifts/MakeADonation.asp?eGiftID=OL0003

and you can always check out my cycling journal, ornoth_cycling, here:
http://ornoth_cycling.livejournal.com/

As most of you know, each year I participate in the Pan-Massachusetts Challenge, a 192-mile bike ride to raise money for cancer research, treatment, and prevention via the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute’s Jimmy Fund.

I’d really appreciate if you would consider sponsoring my ride this year. I can’t think of a more important cause than cancer research, treatment, and prevention, and the support I’ve gotten from several of you guys over the years has meant a lot to me.

I’m proud to say that the PMC is the largest athletic fundraiser in the nation. Last year, we raised a record $20 million for the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute’s Jimmy Fund, and an amazing 97 cents out of every dollar raised went directly to the charity. New research and treatment methodologies developed at Dana-Farber are constantly in the news, and the Pan-Mass Challenge ride constitutes half of the Jimmy Fund’s annual income.

I’m very proud to help make their work possible, and I want to thank you so much for the support several of you have given me as a rider. In the past four years, I’ve raised over $12,000 for cancer research, and with your help that number will increase to over $15,000 this year.

Whether you’ve sponsored me before or not, I hope to count you among my team this year. If you’d like to contribute, or simply read about past rides or my training, here are the important links:

Make a contribution by credit card:
https://www.pmc.org/egifts/giftinfo.asp?eGiftID=OL0003

My cycling home page, with writeups of my previous Pan-Mass rides, etc:
http://users.rcn.com/ornoth/bicycling/

My PMC profile page and this year’s fundraising to date:
http://www.pmc.org/mypmc/profiles.asp?Section=story&eGiftID=OL0003

Thanks so much. Be well, all!

Just got back from the Scooper Bowl, a seven dollar all-you-can-eat ice cream fundraiser for charity.

I was there approximately an hour and a quarter, and ingested no less than 20 cups of ice cream, an average of one cup every three minutes and forty-five seconds.

Those break down into four HP Hood Comeback Caramel, three each of Häagen-Dazs Cookies ’N Cream and Raspberry Sorbet, two Häagen-Dazs Light Dulce de Leche, and one each of Häagen-Dazs Mint Chip, Brighams/Élan Black Raspberry and Bordeux Cherry Chip, Edy’s Grand Orange Sherbet, HP Hood Green Monster Mint, Kemps Lovin’ Caramel Swirl, Garelick Farms Dinosaur Crunch and Vanilla…

…and one immense case of Bloaty-Ohs!

The charity which puts on the Scooper Bowl is the Jimmy Fund (the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute), which incidentally is also the beneficiary of the Pan-Mass Challenge, my annual charity bicycle ride from Sturbridge to Provincetown. I am late in starting my fundraising, but a notice will be posted here shortly. However, if you want to get a jump on the competition, aim your browser at my PMC Profile page.

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