Port to Fort 6K - Believe in Tomorrow!

Sunday was the 15th annual Port to Fort race benefiting the Believe in Tomorrow Foundation. This was my first time running this race. But it was easily my favorite!

As I previously mentioned, after my daughter started her treatment for leukemia, we were approached by the social worker at University of Maryland hospital and were told that we were referred to several foundations that could offer support to us. Believe in Tomorrow was one of them. They provide hospital and respite housing for families with critically ill children. As we've befriended families in our position we've heard wonderful stories about this foundation. In February we became one of the beneficiaries of their services. When we returned my wife and I knew that we needed to find a cause and get behind it - and Believe in Tomorrow was the one for us.

We quickly learned about the Port to Fort 6K and our friend Jen signed up a team for us. Little did she know what she was getting into. Our initial goal was to get a bunch of friends to run\walk with us and maybe raise $500. We hit $500 within a couple of days. Okay, maybe $1,000. I mentioned it on Facebook to see if any of my friends there could help. Then I started asking coworkers if they'd like to get involved. Then they asked their friends. And then our Church got involved. The next thing you know we have 115 team members and we've raised over $14,000 and counting. We raised so much money that they're still counting it! As of right now the matching donations have not been added and I'm pretty sure those are another $1,000.

On Sunday (Race day!) we got up early and were anxious with anticipation. Got to get the race! Can't be late! We got down there about 7:45. Our friend Jen was already there with her van door open and she was handing out bibs and t-shirts. Our friends, coworkers, family, and some strangers started gathering to collect their goods. One friend from the gym arrived and we told him to go get his stuff from the back of the van. He said, "Wouldn't be the first time I got something out of the back of a van!" Hysterical!

Finally we had nearly everyone right there (sorry Charm City Kim & family, Donut, Maggie, K & L), so we took a big team photo. It was awesome. There was a sea of purple (our team color - Payton's favorite color). A friend from Church made team shirts, and nearly everyone was wearing one.

The race finally got started, but it was a good couple of minutes before we got going because of the thousands of people there. Many races are chip races, which means you wear a chip and your time doesn't start until you step over the electronic starting line. This was not a chip race. Your time started when the gun was fired. I know what you're thinking - South Baltimore - lots of guns. I'm referring to the official race gun.

Anyway, it took several more minutes to get through the crowd to the point where we were running comfortably. I was running with my older daughter, 2 of her friends, and one of her friend's sister. So me, three 11 year-olds, and a 15 year old. They did well! We ran a good mile and a half before we had to walk a bit. We made the loop, got down to Fort McHenry, circled around and headed back for the finish line.

At this point the crowd is definitely getting separated. My daughter wanted to run it out. I needed to keep her in sight - after all we are in South Baltimore. The other 2 girls wanted to keep walking. I don't blame them - they are only 11 and it's almost 4 miles. Finally we see the end and we sprint to the finish line. About 45 minutes. Not our best time, but there were some things to consider as mentioned:

1) we probably started 2 minutes after the race began.
2) we had to scramble though the masses of walkers (why are the walkers not separated from the runners?)
3) I had to maintain the pace of our slowest runner.So all in all, not a terrible time.

After the race we're served some awesome hot dogs, potato chips, water and pasta, oh, and bananas. My friend Donut happened to get a donut. I never saw any, so I think she ate them all. You'd never know it though - she's skinny.

After a while the last of the walkers finished and the awards show begins. Let me tell you, Team Payton swept the awards show.

1) Largest Team - 115 members
2) Most money raised by a single team - +$13,000 and counting
3) Most money raised by a individual - me! +$4,500
4) My wife's cousin won 2nd place in his division in the race (24 minutes)

We are so happy of our accomplishment and thank all of our friends and family and friends of friends, and co-workers who I barely know but asked anyway and who were more than happy to help - THANK YOU

Thank you to my friend MD Duckman for being the official team photographer. You're pictures are awesome!

Thank you, thank you, thank you to Captain Jen for keeping this altogether. You did a great job!

So Monday - the day after. I'm tired. Sore. I bet a lot of members of Team Payton feel the same. But you should all be very proud of what you've done. And I think I spent nearly half of my day sharing stories and pictures with everyone. Such a positive experience. Furthermore, I think I gained another 10 friends on Facebook!

So, everyone - are you ready for next year?!!!

I was going to wrap it up, but I have one little criticism. A friend overheard someone (a manager?) at the Falls Road Runnig Store criticizing an employee for allowing strollers in this race. This person said, "N-O! No more!" Seriously? A race to benefit an foundation that helps children? And no strollers are allowed? You really want children with cancer to walk the 6 kilometers? Or do you not want them there at all? You should be ashamed of yourself for saying that and apologize to the community at-large for such a narrow-minded view of the race. Sometimes it's not about the race! (I'm done!)

Training for the Port to Fort 6K

I've mentioned several times that my daughter and I have been training for the Port to Fort 6K to benefit the Believe in Tomorrow Foundation. We've run 3 times up at Liberty High School. Twice we've run with her friend, and once we ran with my donut-lovin' friend who loves donuts.

A 6K is 15 laps around the track. That's 3 3/4 miles. My first two times were 38 minutes and 40 minutes. Today I ran it in 34:54. I think that's an awesome improvement. What was different this time? I took 4 Advil about an hour before I ran. However, I think I need four more now. My feet are throbbing.


The race is next Sunday, so I think I'll be as ready as I can be. I'd like to keep running through the summer. I've gained way too much weight in the last couple of years.

To date we've raised $11,670!!! If you're still thinking about donating to Team Payton, please do so with this link:

Donate to Team Payton

I see that Martin O'Malley STILL has not made a donation to our team. Governor - I'm reaching out to you. Would you please make a donation to our team? I'd hate to tell my daughter with leukemia that our Democratic Governor didn't donate to her. Does he hate children with cancer???

Who is Supporting Team Payton?

I've been absolutely amazed at the generosity of people since we started Team Payton to benefit The Believe in Tomorrow Foundation. So many people have joined to run or walk while dozens of others have made generous donations.

I decided to do an analysis to breakdown who is giving.

I went to St. Anthony's from 1978 - 1986. The school was located on Frankfort Avenue in East Baltimore, but sadly no longer exists. 6 of my friends from St. Anthony's have donated or are running.

After one of our neighbors was murdered in 1986 when we lived in Rosedale, my parents decided it was time to get out of the ghetto. A week after I graduated from St. Anthony's from the 8th grade we high-tailed it to Bel Air up in Harford County. I attended Bel Air High School from 1986 - 1990. Yes, we were the first class to graduate in the 90's, which obviously made us the coolest class EVER. 4 of my friends from high school are participating in the event.

After high school I did a two-year rotation at Harford Community College where I met my wife. So she counts from this era. After HCC I transferred to Winthrop University in Rock Hill, South Carolina. One of my good friends from Winthrop has made a generous donation.

I worked a couple of jobs after college - first at the Visa Assistance Center in Owings Mills for a few months, but then left when I was offered a lucrative job at the now-defunct Carr Lowrey Glass Company in Westport, one of the many ghettos in Baltimore City (I was making $20,000 per year to start!!!). After I was happily laid off from that job, I got started at American Amalgamated Corrugated Conglomerates of America, where I've successfully moved up the ladder up to the gluing and amalgating department.

9 of my coworkers are running in the race. Another 27 have made donations. I work with some wonderful people.

In 1999 my wife and I moved from Bel Air to Eldersburg. We have rockin' neighbors who are the kindest, most generous people we've met. Maybe that means we haven't met that many people. Or we really are that lucky. 7 of our friends and neighbors are running, walking, or have made donations (and a few are walking AND have donated money!).

And there are the people I don't even know. I suspect they are friends of friends, but to think that you would help take up a cause for people you don't even know, what remarkable people! I didn't count, but I would estimate about 50 people we don't know have either signed up for race day or have made donations. To those of you we don't know or don't know yet - thank you!

Our family is helping, too. My niece is actually the 4th largest individual fund raisers thus far. My sister-in-law, my nephew, my niece, and her boyfriend are all participating. And 2 of my wife's cousins and her aunt and uncle have donated.

We have several families from my children's sports teams that have donated. And one of our best family friends from Church is on board. We were informed that the Sunday School project for this month is Team Payton. So we expect a lot of participation from them.

I still have several friends that keep promising that they will sign up.

Who hasn't signed up? Martin O'Malley hasn't signed up. Martin O'Malley - you are officially invited to sign up to run with us or make a donation to our team. If you do so, I promise to be nice to you for an entire week! Show some love, Gov!

If I've convinced you to sign up or make a donation, the CLICK HERE.

Port to Fort 6K - Believe in Tomorrow

As you read recently, my family received the use of a condo in Ocean City, compliments of the Believe in Tomorrow Foundation.

The Believe in Tomorrow Foundation provides hospital and respite housing to families with critically ill children. It was a great get-away for us as we prepared for Payton's next round of chemo.

Her current treatment is 59 days long. We're on day 9. It's been up and down. This morning she's in a great mood. She spent most of yesterday lying on the couch feeling terrible. So this morning we're appreciating her good mood and positive health.


On April 10th, Believe in Tomorrow is sponsoring the Port to Fort 6K in Baltimore. It runs from Key Highway to Fort McHenry and back (I think). One of our dear friends created Team Payton to help raise money for them. As of this morning we have 42 team members and have raised $4,911. Our goal was $5,000, but since we're so close to it, I'm officially making it $10,000. But if we raise $1 million, I won't be upset.

If you are planning to run the event or would like to run the event, you can join by clicking on Team Payton. You can also walk. If you just want to donate money to the cause, select any one of our team members and make a donation. We invite friends, family, neighbors, and strangers to join us. As I scroll through the list of donors and team members, there are many names that I do not know. There are many people in our lives that have hearts of gold.

http://www.firstgiving.com/process/teamarea/default.asp?did=2548&TeamId=133439&EventId=104875

Read some of the testimonials from some of the other families. Many are very sad. Some families have lost children and despite the loss, they are still giving back to this wonderful organization. Others are celebrating medical achievements.

People always ask what they can do for us. Well, here's your chance! Thank you.

Who Cares? Believe in Tomorrow Does

When my 3 year old daughter was diagnosed with leukemia and my wife quit working so that she could care for her, I pretty much wrote off any possibility of having a vacation for the next few years. It's sadly ironic that when you need money the most (for medical bills, parking, traveling, etc...) you end up having the least.

After her chemotherapy began and we started to get into the pattern of treatment, things settled down a little bit (it's all relative, of course). We were given information about some foundations and charities that provide services and assistance to families in our situation. You may have heard of some of then, such as Casey Cares. Casey Cares has already given us tickets to some local events in the Baltimore area. For that we are very grateful.

We then learned about Believe in Tomorrow. This foundation provides hospital and respite housing to families with critically ill children. They have a couple beach houses in Ocean City, another in North Carolina, and a house in Western Maryland. They allow families to stay there free of charge.


We made arrangements to stay there over the President's Day weekend. My kids originally had both Monday and Tuesday off from school, however because Carroll County Public Schools are liberal in there closings (they closed schools several times because of a dusting of snow and once because it might rain), the schools had used up all of their snow days and were actually in the minus. Therefore, the decision was made to open schools on Tuesday. But we already had plans, so they were coming. The net of this was we were taking them out of school for Friday and Tuesday.


We arrived at the house on the beach around 11:30. I checked in and was told that they were getting a package together for us that included meals and activities. I wasn't really expecting this. We had packed several meals in the cooler to prepare ourselves.


We got to our room and it was fantastic. It was extremely clean. You know my disdain for the overuse of the word "extreme", but this place was spotless. It had 3 bedrooms, 2 of the bedrooms had 2 beds. One was a parents' room, one was specifically for younger children and included both a boy's bed and a girl's bed. The other room was more neutral.

Fortunately our place was just up the block from Freedom ABBA's Bail Bonds. You know. Just in case.


Being February in Maryland, we didn't expect it to be too warm, but it was very warm on Friday. The temperature got up to 72. After some subs and pizza from Fat Daddy's, we spent most of the day playing on the beach in our shorts - something we don't do in Maryland in February. We put our toes in the water to feel how cold it was. It was almost instant pain. PAIN! It was so cold it hurt. The beach was nearly abandoned. As far as I could see there were probably 10-15 people total in both directions. This on a beach that would have thousands of people in the summer.


Every little kid has to throw sand into the ocean. If you have kids you know exactly what I mean. This one is 9 years old and he still does it!


When dinner time arrived we decided that we would use the gift card that was provided to us for The Outback Steakhouse in West Ocean City. We presented the gift card prior to ordering and the waiter said he would take care of us. I got a steak ciabatta. My wife got steak, my 2 older kids got ribs, and my daughter Payton, my 3 year old, got chicken strips. It was a good meal.

At the end of the meal the manager came over and asked how everything was. We told him it was great and explained that we were staying at the Believe in Tomorrow place and that Outback had donated the gift card to us and we were truly thankful. He said he knew the head of the foundation and was glad we got to come to his restaurant. He wished us luck with everything, left, and then returned with a bag full of commemorative Outback Steakhouse pins from each of the different holidays.


That evening we went out on the beach and took some photos playing with the shutter speed. I took this photo of the moon capturing the reflection off of the water and the beach. It really looks like it could be the sun and in the daytime, doesn't it?


My daughter and I then started messing with some time-lapsed photography of cars driving by. I think these are pretty cool.



The next day we used our passes to the Indoor Old Pro golf facility. Payton had a great time and I think she shot a 3 under par. Somehow my 9 year old son beat me. Legitimately. Am I really at that point in my life already???



Next we used a pass to Fun City Arcade. They gave us $40 in quarters to spend. My kids had a blast. They did everything from play video games, skee-ball, the quarter-pushing machine, and the crane that never picks up anything.

I really like this picture I took:



Later we went down the boardwalk and used our passes to the Ocean City Life Saving Museum. I had always wanted to go through it, but normally when you're on vacation you have a million other things you'd rather do (or more accurately a million other things your family would rather do). I found the museum very interesting. It's mostly one of those pictures and read as you go museums. It discussed the history of Ocean City and the changes that the town has experienced over 150 or so years. Upstairs were artifacts, such as the bathing suits over the years (apparently there were no thongs back in the 1920's), items that have washed up on shore or were recovered from shipwrecks, and other attractions that were once displayed in the various arcades and amusement parks on the boardwalk.


That evening we went to Mancini's in Fenwick Island, Delaware. During the summer it would probably take you an hour to get there. In February - 10 minutes. We presented the waiter with our certificate for a meal and asked him what that permitted us to get. He said we could get anything we wanted. Anything. Anything!!!

I didn't want to be a total gluten, but I got Clams Casino, a Gorgonzola salad, seafood primavera, and an iced tea. It was fantastic. And I ate it all! My oldest daughter got cream of crab soup, a Caesar salad, and crab raviolis. She said the food was awesome, but after the salad, bread, and soup, wasn't able to eat too much of the raviolis, but she did eat more the next day. My wife got soup, Caesar salad, and a seafood pasta without the marinara sauce. My son got the salad and crab and spinich pizza, He only ate one slice of the pizza and was stuffed. He's not much into leftovers, so I was the beneficiary of those. Yumm!!! Payton, on the other hand, only wanted plain spaghetti. But that's okay.

The waiter didn't give us a bill, but we still wanted to tip him as he did a fantastic job serving us. I mentally calculated the bill and estimated it to be between $125 and $140. Wow!!! We don't normally eat at places like this. We gave him a $25 tip. I hope that was enough. Again, we asked for the manager and told him that Mancini's had donated the meal to Believe in Tomorrow and we were the recipients of that meal. We told him the meal was one of the best we had ever had and thanked him profusely. He appreciated that praise and also wished us well.


The next morning we used our certificate for a box of donuts from The Fractured Prune. Let me tell you these donuts were good! They made them right there in front of us. The box was hot as I was taking it to the car. I saw their Believe in Tomorrow plaque on the wall and told them we were staying there and thanked them for donating the donuts to us. I asked them how they came up with the name "The Fractured Prune". She told me to turn around as the story was written on the wall. If you're interested, here is the story.


My mother in-law and sister-in-law also came to the beach (they have their own condominium) and they took my wife and daughters shopping at the outlets up in Rehoboth. I used this opportunity to take my son and nephew to Planet Maze, who gave us a day pass to their place. They are located around 30th street on Ocean Highway. They offer laser tag, video games, food, ball pits, and miniature golf. You can hold birthday parties there, too. We decided that we were only interested in the laser tag. We played for over 2 hours with various other guests. One game was as small at 4 people, another must have had 25. I don't know how he did it, but my nephew crushed everyone nearly every time. He'd have twice as many points as the next closest person. I use the old go-cart analogy. You know how there's always at least one go-cart that someone messed with that's just a bit faster than all the other go-carts. That must have been my nephews laser gun. Anyway, by the time we finished my shirt was soaking wet. I don't sweat that much in step aerobics, but boy was I a sloppy mess.

After laser tag, we traveled the boardwalk for a while (it was very windy - in fact a girl in a blue dress with a little dog blew right past us!). We stopped for lunch as Caruso's (no gift certificate), but the food is always good there, though expensive. 2 subs and a slice of pizza was $30.


We made a stop in Candy Kitchen. Can't go to Ocean City without stopping in Candy Kitchen 10 times. Am I the only person under 75 that likes fruit slices???


Finally, we wrapped it up with some french fries from Thrashers. Gotta love Thrasher's french fries. We started heading back because my nephew had to go home because they were supposed to have school on Tuesday. However, they were calling for snow.

The next day we woke to snow in Ocean City. We watched the local news and wouldn't you know it? Schools were closed!!! I gathered my oldest daughter and the camera and we headed to the beach. The sidewalks and road were very slippery. There wasn't much snow, just enough to make most things white. I snapped a few pictures of the snow on the dunes and some on the beach just to prove that we saw it.





We headed home on Tuesday afternoon making a couple of stops (3 kids, one who is 3 years old and hates to travel). We got lunch at Arby's in Salisbury and stopped at the outlets in Queenstown. My son entertained us with requesting that they play tag and hide-and-seek in the car.

So that was our trip. Thank you so much Believe in Tomorrow for making this trip possible for us. It rejuvenated us, allowed us to spend time away from everything that is reminding us that my daughter has cancer, and allowed us to be a happy family together for few days. This is not a feeling that we have had much in the last few months. Hopefully my daughter's treatment can continue to go well and we can make another trip soon.

Please support the businesses that made contributions to Believe in Tomorrow. They are wonderful companies for caring!