Today, Saturday 8-4-12 is the day of the Pan-Mass Challenge and the riders will be stopping in town at the high school for lunch. So at 6:30 AM the road to the school gets decorated with flags and signs.
This sign says it all!
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| The food and beverages must be unloaded from the trailer so the tables can be set up. |
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| Everyone is working hard because the first riders are due by 8:30 / 9:00 AM |
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The pickles are moved to smaller bowls. There was a request from a lot of the riders for pickle juice. Seems that the juice boost their electro-lytes.
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That's me helping with the set up of the bike racks. The riders hook their handle bars over the pipe and the bikes stay upright.
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It's 8:45 and the first riders arrive. The last rider, an 80 year old man came in at approx. 1:15.
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| All the volunteers are in place and ready. |
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For those of you not from Massachusetts, this is Mass. Senator John Kerry. Yes he was pedaling in the challenge.
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| The crowd began to grow |
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| And grow |
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| And grow some more for a total of over 5000 riders |
And boy were they hungry.
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| The lines traveled the length of the tent and there were riders everywhere you looked. |
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| Some were sporting neat helmet decorations. |
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| A couple more |
And there was my son in law Peter. A cancer survivor himself, he came in at approx. 11:00 AM. This is Peter's third year of doing the PMC. His two daughters take a break from their volunteer work to join dad for lunch.
Joyce and I took our break to join the family....I was so tired I had to force a smile, can you tell? Seriously, we are so proud to have had a chance to help out such a great cause. One of my jobs was to hand out a paper towel to each of the riders as they entered the tent for lunch. Each and every rider took the time to thank me for that paper towel, think of it...a lousy paper towel. It was them that deserved the thanks, and I made sure that I thanked each of them for what they were doing. These people are all heros to us.
After lunch, the riders will continue for another 69 miles to the half way point at the Coast Guard academy on Cape Cod. After a night of rest, the riders will continue on to Provincetown and the end of the 33rd challenge and possibly collect over 30 million dollars in donations for cancer research.
