Biking

We can now see maybe 85% of the grass in our yard -- just a few more patches of snow and ice to go. Played some ball with Strudel today until she got too muddy. Looking forward to the crocuses popping up pretty soon.


Peter and I are looking forward to warmer weather so we can get back to riding our bikes on Saturday mornings. The Farminton Canal Trail, a rails-to-trails project in our town and others nearby, has done some extending in the last year. We've been able to go north for quite a ways, maybe 15 miles, up into Cheshire. Now the trail is being extended south, so it will go through New Haven down to the waterfront. It's been slow to expand through New Haven, because of property rights and other issues (for example, the trail had been slated to go under the FBI branch office building -- not a good idea).


Peter is excited about being able to ride in the opposite direction on the trail, but my guess is that he'll be less enthused when he realizes there's no Dunkin Donuts to the south like there is when we go north.


Peter really enjoys biking, which makes sense, because it's in his blood. We've long known about Peter's great-grandfather, Giuseppe Philipe Tedeschi, the famous Italian bike racer from the early 1900's. But we found out recently, thanks to diligent research from my brother, that we may very well be related to the famous turn-of-the-century Canadian bicycling champion Archie McEachern. Archie was a champion at Six Day Bicycle Racing (which involved racing a bicycle for six straight days on a wooden track).

You can read the story yourself if you click the link above, but we warned it has a gruesome and tragic end. Archie dies died in a bad crash, and sustained some horrific injuries. His last words were , "Oh, Bob," which is kind of creepy.


Peter wears a helmet.


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And speaking of my brother and bike racing, Mike will again be participating in the Pan Mass Challenge, a two-day bike ride to raise money for cancer research at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Last year he rode the Wellesly-to-Bourne-toProvincetown route; this year, he'll do Wellesley-Bourne-Wellesley. Word is that he switched routes so he can be closer to his home beer cooler when he's done. Understandable.


I made a push last year for people to sponsor him, and I'll do it again:

Dana-Farber is a leader in cancer research, and they do some exciting stuff with Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma . Right now, they're in the middle of 47 clinical trials involving NHL treatments, including a bunch that are specifially for Follicular NHL. Support Mike and you'll ultimately support me.

(How's that for emotional blackmail?)

So consider making an online donation. It's easiest to cut and paste the URL for Mike's donation page (sometimes bookmarking it brings you to the default fundraising page instead):

http://www.pmc.org/egifts/MMo386

Good luck, Mike. Thanks for riding.