a piece of awesomeness :D
lol
This piece of scientific nerdery just made my day!
Blog is moving!
Hey all!
So the 4K is now using this awesome integrated website for our blogging!
My new profile is at: http://4kforcancer.org/profiles/rosemary-mallonee/
Check it out!
$420,000 raised!
That’s right. The 4K for Cancer raised over $420,000 this year. This is essentially tripling how much previous years have raised. 90 people raised that much, above and beyond our fundraising goal. Better yet, they were 90 college-age students.
It’s amazing to think the mountains even people like us can climb.
We just donated $15,000 to the Baltimore Hope Lodge tonight! 
So yes, evening dinner with the patients at the Hope Lodge and then the amazing check donation ceremony? Really moving. Really, truly moving.
We will be making many more donations to the communities, Hope Lodges, and cancer centers we pass by! We are still definitely accepting donations, my donor link is still: https://4kforcancer.donortools.com/my/funds/14842-Rider-Fund-Rosemary-Mallonee
Thank you all for your help! This will be an amazing summer!
T-3 days!
Yes the ride is going forward! It will be amazing! I will be blogging frequently here, you’ll be able to follow an integrated twitter+blog feed on the 4K website when it’s up! Link to come…
4000 miles. Baltimore to Seattle. A 20-lb hunk of metal. Me. Against cancer.
I’m not sure how we’ll all survive, but this will be incredible. Because THIS. IS. THE 4K!!! (Sorry, pop-movie reference.)
Since I don’t have a smart phone and am *gasp* leaving my laptop behind, posts may not be as often as I would like, but I will be a voluminous SMS tweeter in the days to come. My tweets will include everything from my first flat tire to cancer patients we meet along the way. Follow me at: http://twitter.com/#!/Rosy4k4Cancer
Blog posts should be at least weekly, probably more often. I’ll include cancer stories, photos from the ride, and, most notably, information about the centers we’re donating to.
I’m all packed and ready to go! As said, I’m leaving my laptop behind. No TV, no more watching Doctor Who, no more video games. (I am still taking more than 50 gigs of music, because I would spontaneously combust if I didn’t.) I think that’s what’s making me the most nervous right now, just being so much more connected to the real world and to real people and their struggle with cancer. I may miss the internet, I may not, but I want to see what the experience will be like without it.
I’m dedicating this ride to my grandmother, who I never got to know, and to my uncle, who is a leukemia survivor. More recently, I am also dedicating this ride to my close friend Nathan Krasnopoler who was killed in a cycling accident on February 26. He loved that I was doing this ride and was taken from us with no warning at all. Nathan, this one’s for you.
I always love hearing about really promising research like this. People say that our society has spent too much on cancer research that isn’t giving rewarding outcomes, but that doesn’t seem right. A lot of the most promising research is still in the pipe-lines and may be out by the time my generation gets cancer? I can hope?
Researchers, keep on pipetting. It may seem tedious, but it will save lives.
Update!
Hello all! For the reasons described in the last update I’ve been slacking off again on my update! Here goes:
Training
I got my bike! I’m so excited, she’s a beauty! Unlike my little-bit-too-large old bike, this one hasn’t given me any where near as much knee pain. When I swapped out saddles and pedals on this new bike I got a bit more knee pain, so I may have to finesse that a bit.
What should I name it? I’ve been calling it “her” as, I don’t know, she just seems like a she. My last bike was The Noble Steed, so this one has a hell of a reputation to live up to!
I still need to add a computer, a pump, and probably a new post. This whole toothed-screw-that-comes-dislodged thing has got to go. With my funky measurements I end up tweaking the saddle a lot…
Fundraising
I have been SO busy, so I’m at 1620-or-so. I’m not too worried, while I am supposed to aim for $2500 I think I may get a big donation or two coming in over spring break. Not the best amount fund-raised, but I’m still in good shape. Come rain, sleet, snow, or flying spaghetti monsters I am rolling out of Baltimore on the 28th.
Since I got my bike I have felt so much more excited for the ride. It’s happening. I’m doing it. We’re going! And it’s going to be the best experience ever.
Volunteering
I love volunteering at the Hope Lodge. I wish I could go today, but I’ve got a gazillion test next week so am re-prioritizing a bit. Next week though, next week….
That’s about all that’s fit to print! I’M SO EXCITED!
Week 7- Keep my friend in your thoughts please.
I didn’t do an update last week as I didn’t have much to say, and I’ve been putting off doing this week’s update because I really just want to eat chocolate and cry instead. A close friend of mine was run over by a car on Saturday and is now in a coma and will need facial reconstruction when he wakes up.
He was in a legal bike lane, riding through an intersection, when an 83-year old woman made a right turn into him. The EMTs found him trapped under the car. His heart stopped in the ambulance on the way to the Johns Hopkins Hospital. He is now unresponsive.
We’re both part of a really tight-knit group of friends, so everyone from this group have been spending a lot of time together, trying to keep each other hopeful and optimistic.
But y’know, I’m really scared. I’ve gotten in three car-involved accidents in Baltimore in the past year-and-a-half, in one of them I flew over my bike into the back of a pickup that had slammed on its brakes in front of me. I can’t help but be worried about starting to do a lot more training in Baltimore.
My bike for the ride is ready, I can go pick it up at any time. But right now I just can’t ride a bike anywhere. I see people around campus with bikes, and wonder if a car will take them out at some time. I really miss my friend and really want to see him again and argue with him again.
So I feel much more scared about the 4K right now. I’m usually more scare about the fundraising than the ride, (and I am a little behind in fundraising,) but right now I’m terrified for the training in Baltimore.
Please keep my friend in your thoughts. His name is Nathan.
Week 5
Hello everyone! I hope you’re all having a great day, and if not, I hope I can share some of this week’s cycling photos with you and perhaps cheer you up?
I don’t want to blather on about myself too much today- you all know that I’m an undergrad biology student participating in the 4K for Cancer, a cross-country bike ride that raises funds for cancer victims. We each have to raise $4500, right now I’m pegged at $1159!
Training is going very well, I went for a 12-miler on Monday and a 15-miler today. My ever-present knee issues flared up again, but I finally rode out and got new shoes (my old ones are four years old. I think they were the problem. Still going to the doctor on the morrow.)
All right, necessary update stuff out of the way. Let me now tell you about Druid Hill Park. In a word, it’s AWESOME. You can get there very quickly and safely from the Johns Hopkins campus, directions will be at the end.
You ride up from Jones Falls (I talked a bit about it in my first post, it’s gorgeous and the road is in good shape,) cross over the freeway, and see this:
At this point, you’re pretty interested in what this park has to offer. You look around and see quite a sizable reservoir off to your right with a road around it. So, sure that there must be more cool things lying around, you start heading down then see: 
That’s right, this park has public exercise equipment. Just kinda chilling by some snow. You then do a lap around the reservoir:
A dude with a sword. More about him beeeloooww:
No idea. A real-life Mario pipe?
Those would be birds. On ice. Coming from Seattle, I think this is pretty darn cool.
No public reservoir/track is complete without a castle turret, duh!
This ice. I have not really seen something like it before. And the birds! Do you think their feet are cold?
Quite a patriotic little photo I think.
Wallace, Scottish Liberty. This is pretty much the coolest thing ever. We don’t have statues of dudes with swords on the West Coast really.
Statue of COlumbus. Here’s the inscription, from the Italians of Baltimore:
And all this in one loop of the reservoir! One loop! Sorry to post so many photos, but this is a very cool place in Baltimore that I strongly recommend. It’s a bigger park than just this as well, if you follow the roads back you’ll even get to look into some zoo enclosures! That’s right, there’s a zoo there too.
Directions from Hopkins, the Beach:
Go south on North Charles.
Right turn onto Art Museum Drive, you’ll go right past the Baltimore Museum of Art
At the next opportunity, right onto Wyman Park Dr
You’ll come up to a stop sign, Wyman Park Drive veers off to the left. Take a left!
Go straight, through the next lighted intersection. (When you see Stieff Silver on your right, there will be a turn off to the left for the Jones Falls bike trail. If you need, follow the trail to the road then take a left, there will be a bike shop in I think half a mile?) If you don’t need a bike shop, go straight over the freeway and up a teeny little incline.
The reservoir will be on your right! Happy cycling!
WEEK FOUR- I’m trying out embedding a video along with my weekly update. We’ll see how it looks… It’s my goal to share a cool photo related to my journey each week, but this week I’ve been mostly gym-bound with the ice and all. However, this is a great cool-down song and I’ve been listening to it at the end of this week’s workouts again and again. It’s a gorgeous song and I recommend using it for cool-downs/unwinding/meditation. The video is amazing too.
This has been a wonderful week! I got all initiated at my new job at the Hopkins gym. I was offered other jobs with higher pay, but liked the attitude at the gym more and figured it would get me working out more. And it has. Making sure I’m at the gym five times a week? A very good idea considering this possibly-insane 4,000 mile trip I’m taking in… 111 days.
Ohgod ohgod ohgod 111 days. Three months. That’s plenty enough time to train up, but still.
I braved the snow for the first time today and had an incredible ride! There was still snow on the bike trails but the roads were fine. It was so much fun— you forget how much you love flying at ~30 down a hill on a bike until you get back on the bike. Then you shake your head at what you’ve been missing. It was just a 10-mile sprint, but it was getting dark and that’s a fine start for now.
Fundraising-wise, I’m at $1160 or-so, so ahead of all my coming deadlines. I still feel a little dubious at this enormity of this undertaking, but logically knowing that I’m 26% of the way there helps a lot!
Right now, I feel very confident in the ride. Not so much for the fundraising, but I’m loving life, class, and my new job. Hopefully I can transmit some of that zen-energy (zen-ergy? sorry, terrible pun) your way!
