Bike Against the Odds

Alison Chaiken, a friend of mine, is riding a marathon bike race to raise funds for breast cancer research. She has already made a substantial donation in my honor. I am just overwhelmed...

If you are interested in helping Alison raise funds for this important goal, please visit this link: Bike Against the Odds 2008 - General Donation. You will find out more about this event to be held in Oakland on August 23, 2008.

Alison's mother is also donating, in honor of her own mother who died of breast cancer.

I met Alison online - she and I both hung out on the old usenet chatting about food; she invited me to her home for a meal, and we have been friends ever since. Alison is one of my hard-nose realist optimist readers - if I veer into cynicism, despair, or conversely into giddy silliness over some shoddy scientific research, Alison will pull me up short. She issues stern correctives over goofy data, but she also reminds me to keep looking at progress and positive outcomes. Don't succumb to despair and negativity.

On Alison's personal web site you will find, amongst the heavy duty physics articles, a page called The Technical Tourist's Guide to The San Francisco Bay Area. She used to call it Tours for Engineers or something like that. I am *very* proud to have contributed one must-see museum to this compendium. Whenever brainiacs notice me I am always so pleased.

Thank you, Alison for your bicycling effort. And thank you to all of you who have gone on walkathons or done other things to raise funds for research on this and other diseases.

Comments

[Alison Chaiken]

Thanks for the plug Leila.

Note that I have already paid my registration fee for this event; I am not asking others to support my recreation, but to support breast cancer research. 100% of any donations will go to research. According to Charity Navigator, Breast Cancer Fund spends 83% of donations on its mission, which is better than a lot of other well-known charities:

http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summary&orgid=7453

By the way, Charity Navigator is a very useful site. I urge everyone to check up on whether their favorities are expending funds wisely.

[Alison Chaiken]

I rode in the Bike Against the Odds Century yesterday, which was wonderfully managed by the Oakland Yellowjackets, Specialized Bicycles and LunaChix. Oakland deserves to be one of _Outside_ magazines best outdoor cities, as it is beautiful!