Seattle Brain Cancer Walk 2009!

Me and John's Memorial Car

For friends who may not know, John was a detective in Anchorage. They honored him with a memorial car. Karen gave me one to walk with.

This weekend was the 2nd Annual "Cranium Crusade". It's a fundraiser for the Center for Advanced Brain Tumor Treatment. All the proceeds go directly to patient care. They are focusing in on innovative and cutting edge treatments.

This year's highlights were the fact that the number of participants tripled from last year; so many so that they ran out of bib numbers! We raised over $200,000. THANK YOU to everyone who contributed! According to the doctor who heads CABTT $5,000 can get a patient a clinical trial....so that's a lot of hope for a lot of people right there!!. Far and away the biggest highlight were the number of survivors out on the track.

He summed it up in his remarks. As the survivors stood on the field he stated the obvious -- they are all somebody's loved-one and they all deserve hope and help. He was pretty amazing. He devotes his Fridays to "advocacy" -- meaning he's doing everything he can to educate people. He said he'll meet with anyone who wants to know more should just make a Friday appointment. That's pretty impressive in my book. It's enough to commit me to do it another year. So if you want to join me in 2010 just say the word.

It was a lot of fun and very festive. Here are some photos:

John's Memorial Car

Me and my homemade t-shirt --

it has John's name and badge number on it

The CABTT tent

Wall of Honor --

if I would have known ahead of time I would have brought a picture of John. Instead I filled out a sticker that was meant to be stuck on our shirts or bibs. I put it on the wall and later I noticed others had done the same thing.

Starting Line

This is the start of the walk as the walkers poured on to the track

I'm guessing there were 1,500+ there. By the time the front of the line made it around the track folks were still coming out of the gate!!

Gathering for Closing Ceremonies

Doc honoring his patients

The Busy Month of May

We've been busy here in Seattle.

It was Mother's Day two weeks ago and Aaron's mom visited us from Atlanta. We always look forward to her visit. We went to the Bellevue Botanical garden, which was mostly really good except there were a lot of kids there. Maybe mother's day wasn't the best day to go. We also went the the art museum and on a local art walk. We also ate. Every chance we got!! What's not to love about that?

I've also been trying to master the art of grilling pizza. I purchased a special pizza pan meant for the grill and so far no luck. Here was my attempt last weekend. Dad always said, "When it's brown it's cooking and when it's black it's done". Well -- by that definition we were very successful. Sadly, it wasn't edible.

I plan to try again next week. This could take all summer to master. Stay tuned...