So the Tour this year is on July 19th and 20th, which puts it just one short month away. And this is the first post to mention the Tour Alberta for Cancer or my associated fundraising campaign. I am remiss.

There are certainly reasons for that–my life has seen some fairly profound changes as I ended my career break and re-entered the workforce–but it’s about time I wrote something given this is a particularly special Tour for me as my wife Lenore rides with me for the very first time!

But I also need your money!

Each year we riders raise a minimum of $2,500 for the Alberta Cancer Foundation, an organization to which I have a person connection given how cancer has impacted my family and friends. While my campaign this year is going surprisingly well despite a lack of effort on my part–as of this writing I’m at over $1,800, which ain’t bad!–I still have some work to do.

I know it’s a cliche, but it’s genuinely hard to believe how fast time flies. Not only am I over a year into this career break–a fact that I continue to have trouble processing–but now the 2024 Tour Alberta for Cancer is done and dusted. To my surprise, despite the trepidation I felt this time last year, in a lot of ways 2024 was the easiest Tour yet.

Why?

Well, I’ve said it so many times already, but the greatest credit goes to the many people who donated to my campaign this year. Its through your incredible generosity that we were able to raise $2,783 this year, well past my $2,500 goal. As for the Tour overall, we were able to blow past the $6M goal, raising an incredible $7,576,204!

Even more heartening for me is the rise in participation. While last year saw over 1,200 riders on the Tour (which is a fantastic number!), this year saw that number grow 17% to over 1,400 participants. While I’m far from an old timer (this was my third in person ride following the COVID shutdown of 2020), I was thrilled to encounter so many first-time folks, and did what little I could to make them feel supported and welcome. Let’s all hope that, like me, they find themselves compelled to join future Tours.

And yes, if you’re reading between the lines a bit, you can guess that I did indeed sign to participate in the 2025 Tour Alberta for Cancer! But I promise to give everyone a break from the fundraising emails… for a little while anyway (it turns out last year there was an early match in the fall of 2023 so you might see some canvassing a little earlier this time around, assuming I stay on top of things).

With all that said, let’s get to the fun stuff, and that begins with an announcement of the third and final sock draw winner!