To The Very End

After 20,000 cycling miles peddling your support for HIV/AIDS research and services, why would I switch gears to ask for your donation to cancer research? Again?

Greg – A brother from another mother, compadre in my youth, never missed calling on my birthday and every Mother’s Day, refused to allow HIV to defeat him and, when diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, was profoundly comforted that his HIV doc and cancer doc worked so closely together on his care plan. Greg had fought years to move his HIV viral load to undetectable levels but lost his life to cancer.

Nick – So hard to watch a kid spend time in hospitals and treatments instead of ball parks and talk about tumors as easily as video games, but Nick is a fighter and soundly put cancer in its place and grew into a young man I admire. Nick volunteered on last year’s Obliteride and cheered on his cycling dad from the sidelines, then decided he needed a bike too. I should not have been surprised when Dad asked me to join the two of them on a New Year’s Day ride this year and Nick kept right up with us over 45 chilly miles. Last month, Nick rode 200 miles in the Seattle to Portland (STP) bicycle classic and will certainly take his turn on Obliteride, but this year’s timing was bad. They’ll be back - Nick and his Dad.


Dr. Yuntao Wu, Ph.D – Professor of Microbiology & Infectious Diseases at George Mason University, whose HIV lab was 4x beneficiary of the NYCDC AIDS Vaccine Rides and the 2012 Stealth Ride, funding used in part to test the effect of various cancer-fighting drugs on shutting down the protein Wu’s lab discovered is responsible for allowing HIV to enter the T-cell and destroy it, leading to AIDS. Dr. Wu and his lab team, who traveled all those many miles right by our side, introduced me to the connection between cancer and HIV/AIDS research.

Dr. Mark Mulligan – Director of the Hope Clinic of the Emory Vaccine Center and international leader in clinical trials of HIV vaccines in direct partnership with the HIV Vaccine Trials Network, based at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. Dr. Mark Mulligan was the first person on Atlanta’s AIDS Vaccine 200 to ask why the Puget Sound Riders hadn’t created a cycling event for Fred Hutch back home in Seattle. Perhaps by sheer coincidence, or the raves of a few Hope Clinic devotees to Fred Hutch colleagues about their grassroots funding arm, the Obliteride was born…and Puget Sound Riders joined the cause close to home.

Jon Fehrenbach – Co-founder of the Puget Sound Riders, stalwart training ride leader since 2000, lost a brother to HIV/AIDS who was himself a many year veteran of the California AIDS Ride, convinced me to join him on the 10 year anniversary of that event in its reincarnated form – AIDS LifeCycle 2011. On the 5th night of that 7 day San Francisco to LA ride, Jon’s phone rang. His sister Jeanne’s cancer had returned with a vengeance. Jon finished that ride knowing Jeanne was unlikely to live through the year. Jon registered for the first Obliteride faster than he descends a mountain, re-registered promptly again this year and invited me to do the same.

Initially I turned Jon down. I could easily draw up a very long list of reasons not to ask my donors to dig back into their pocketbooks one more time this year, not to spend another weekend training or (in the absence of said training) powering painfully over a 150 mile hilly weekend ride but the more I thought about Greg, Nick and his dad, Dr. Wu and Dr. Mulligan, and countless friends, relatives colleagues and classmates who have paid the ultimate price or have so much to gain from the outcome of this event….well, wouldn’t you?

This weekend I’ll join Jon and a few hundred other brave cyclists and volunteers on the 2nd annual Obliteride for the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. If you’ve already given, thank you. If you want to make a donation, please do, again with my gratitude which you’ll have regardless for having read to the very end.

Hope for the journey, to the very end.
Tracy

Happy Birthday to Me

Today is my birthday. I’ve quit trying to avoid this milestone of aging that explains the more obvious wrinkles, thicker middle and rotten eyesight. Instead, I embrace the celebration of having not only survived another year but lived it to the fullest. In doing so, this day is spent less on thoughts of gifts received throughout the year and so many of those have been from you.

I had numerous reasons to dread hauling my bike to Atlanta this spring. A hectic travel schedule left little time to train and even less attention paid to fundraising but you came through just the same and your gifts made to further HIV/AIDS research at Emory University, more than $163,000, made every mile of the AIDS Vaccine 200 well worth the effort and sore muscles!

Puget Sound Riders AV200 Team

Before leaving Atlanta, our team of Puget Sound Riders, 3 cyclists and 2 veteran volunteers, was gifted by a personal tour of Yerkes Primate Research Center at Emory, where several of the scientists and researchers funded by your generous donations enthusiastically shared their work. I wish you could experience their gratitude for this annual cycling event. $163,000 is absolutely a drop in the bucket considering the amount of funding required to fight a pandemic but the bucket cannot be filled without that first drop and the seed money supplied by your donations is vital for getting new ideas off the ground and qualified for larger grant funding.

Grad students in Dr. Rama Amara’s lab are finding the pro-biotic benefits of yogurt may make that widely available dairy product a more effective delivery mechanism for HIV drug treatments.

Dr. Rama Amara gives a thumbs up to the AV200!

 

Dr. Steven Bosinger, gifted HIV scientist and budding cyclist

Dr. Steven Bosinger (who cycled the 2013 AV200) eagerly demonstrated new equipment capable of processing tests and data thousands of times faster than outdated models. Dr. John Altman also thinks so highly of this event that he joined us on the road last year and regretted not having the training time to ride again this May. Alas, we each have gifts to bring to this journey and we assured him that ours were of little use without his time well spent on strengthening T cells.

The Emory Vaccine Center reminds me each May of the interdependent nature of medical research when I hear HIV/AIDS scientists celebrate the defeat of Hepatitis C and share studies of crossover testing of cancer drugs on HIV. This birthday I especially miss the annual call from a dear friend who recently lost his battle to pancreatic cancer and remember what comfort it brought that his cancer doc and HIV doc worked so closely together on his care. It inspires me to stretch my gifts a little wider and find more ways to give. Thank you for joining me on this ride and bringing hope to the journey.

“Do all the good you can. By all the means you can. In all the ways you can. In all the places you can. At all the times you can. To all the people you can. As long as ever you can.”
― John Wesley