Hingham Resident to Ride in This Weekend's Pan-Mass Challenge

Hingham resident Edwin “Trip” Carey is hooked. 

Hooked on the Pan Mass Challenge – this weekend marks his fifth year riding and raising money for the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.  To date, he has raised more than $42,000 over the last five years.

Carey, 50, made his first PMC ride five years ago when his good friend and now riding partner, Matt Enos’, father died of cancer. 

“I thought I had to do something,” said Carey.

Now he is riding for his wife, who has been battling breast cancer for the last 5 months.

“There’s not anybody that I’ve ever met that cancer hasn’t been touched their lives in one form or another,” said Carey.  “I saw what my wife went through, and if I can ride my bike 200 miles and fight through those hills, that pales in comparison.”  

On his PMC profile, http://www.pmc.org/profile/EC0060 Carey said he is riding this year “for Sydney, because no child should have to watch their Mom suffer like that, I ride for my friend Peter’s Mom and her current struggle, I ride for my friend Brian’s wife and her battle with breast cancer. I ride for new friends who have won their battle, yet continue to fight, and for the children I see along the ride route that honestly and sincerely, wise beyond their years, thanking me as I ride by.”

Training for the event can be a grueling experience (consisting of 800 to 1,000 miles before the PMC ride even starts), and the hills for the first 20 miles out of Sturbridge are brutal, said Carey, but it’s a beautiful ride from Sturbridge to Provincetown, and the volunteers and supporters and fans along the way make it all worthwhile.

“One year, I said ‘I can’t do this again’ then I walked by a kid holding a sign that said ‘I’m 12 and here because of you,’” he recalls.  “At the time, I had an 11-year-old daughter and a 13-year-old son and it hit me.  Then the next year I said ‘This is the last year’ but then a buddy’s mom and another buddy’s wife died of cancer…I’ll definitely be back next year.”

Carey will be one of thousands of bicycle riders – at least – who will make the ride from either Sturbridge or Wellesley to either Wellesley, Bourne or Provincetown in a massive effort to raise awareness and funds for cancer research.

According to http://www.pmc.org, the PMC has contributed $303 million to lifesaving cancer research and treatment at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute since its inception in 1980.  It is presented by the Boston Red Sox Foundation and New Balance and is the nation’s original fundraising bike-a-thon and today raises more money than any other athletic fundraising event in the country.  It donates 100 percent of every rider-raised dollar directly to cancer research and treatment at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute through its Jimmy Fund.

According to the site, the PMC is so well-known in cycling and fundraising circles that each year people travel from around the world to participate. The camaraderie shared by riders, volunteers, and supporters is among the PMC's greatest attributes. Doctors at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute join their patients as teammates, riding for a unified goal. Over 200 PMC riders are cancer survivors. Thousands of riders and volunteers have lost loved ones to the disease. Still more ride in honor of those in treatment.