This Weekend - The Pan-Mass Challenge

The Pan-Massachusetts Challenge is this country’s original fundraising bike-a-thon and it's most successful. Today, the PMC raises and contributes to charity more money than any other athletic fundraising event in the nation. On August 1st and 2nd, 5,200 cyclists will ride to bring the PMC’s 29-year Jimmy Fund contribution towards the unbelievable $275 million mark. This will be the 30th PMC. The 2008 Jimmy Fund contribution was $35 million.

This Sunday, August 2nd, a large number of these cyclists will pedal their way through the Outer Cape on their way to Provincetown, the terminus.

The Route: They will come into Orleans on via the Bike Path to West Rd, through Rock Harbor, and onto Bridge Rd into Eastham. Once in Eastham they will follow Bridge to Herring Brook Rd to Oak Rd. From there they will follow Route 6 to the Bike Path which they will follow to Wellfleet where they will transition to the back roads along the ocean, eventually takeing Route 6 into P-Town. There are water stops in Brewster (Nickerson State Park) and Wellfleet (Wellfleet Elementary School).

The cyclists who started in Sturbridge will have ridden 192 miles by the time they get to P-Town. The Wellesley starters will have ridden 163 miles. It will be colorful 'parade'.

Truro Native To Bike Across Europe & Russia - 10,000 Miles

If you think the PanMass Challenge is a long bike ride, Truro native Ellery Althaus’s upcoming pan-Eurasian bike trip will strike you as a challenge indeed: 1,000 miles a month for 10 months. And, Althaus is looking for sponsors to help make the trip possible.

Ellery Althaus and his friend, Levi Bridges, who is from Maine, will be flying from Boston to Moscow in late February. The two will travel the Trans-Siberian railroad across Russia to Vladivostok, on the Pacific side. There they will train and take a half-semester of intensive Russian at a local university, then head out on their bikes when the snow clears, westward into the wind across Russia. They will enter Europe through the Ukraine, then head down to Porto, Portugal. The 10,000-mile trip will take 10 months. Check out the Cape Codder story for more information. The trip will be chronicled on the bikers' website.