Fight Cancer, Win Windows 7 Ultimate

06.8.2009 | 9:08 am

A Note From Fatty: A huge thanks to everyone who stepped up their LiveStrong / Team Fatty fundraising game last week, and especially monstrously huge kudos to Team Fatty-Seattle. Here are a few interesting factoids from last week:

• The combined Teams Fatty raised $27,582. That is an incredible effort. Of that amount, Team Fatty-Seattle raised $15,247 — more than the other three teams, combined. I guess the incentive of a Revolution Wheelworks Road Wheelset, combined with the impending event deadline, did a good job of motivating Team Fatty-Seattle.
• Team Fatty-Seattle currently has raised $99,939 $101,219. That makes it the TOP team right now — finally passed Team Fatty-Austin, which has 21 more members — and within $61 of being the first team to have raised HAS PASSED $100,000. That’s seriously impressive.
• 13 people in Team Fatty-Seattle raised their first money for Team Fatty-Seattle last week.
• 19 people in Team Fatty-Seattle crossed the $250 fundraising threshold, making them eligible to participate in the event.
• Congratulations to the Revolution Wheelworks Road Wheelset Winner: Shaun Darragh joined Team Fatty-Seattle last week, and has already raised $2,775. That netted him 555 chances at the Revolution Wheelworks Road Wheelset. Of course, he got a bonus 10 chances for starting from $0 and for crossing the $250 mark. So with 565 chances of winning those wheels, it’s no surprise that he did. And I should note that his fundraising page is one of the most powerful tributes to a mother there could ever be. Read it. This is clearly a man doing the right things for the right reasons. I’m very, very glad he won this wheelset.

A Congratulatory Note from Fatty: Many of you will remember that we raised more than $30,000 with the Kona Cadabra contest. A few of you have probably also noticed that I have not mentioned the winner…until now. That’s because until late last night, my congratulatory notes sat unread in an email box while the winner was busy moving. But now I am happy to announce that the winner — MV C — is (sort of moved in) and is very excited about getting this bike. Here’s what he has to say:

I started raising money for Leukemia and Lymphoma Society through Team in Training a few years ago when my girlfriend Jen’s uncle was fighting Lymphoma. Jen decided she wanted to do something to help and got me to do it too. We have done quite a few Century (road) rides with TNT. We ended up getting a tandem road bike so we could stay together on the rides (Jen refuses to go fast unless she is on the back of a tandem.)

We estimate we have raised around $25,000 or so in the past few years. This year, Jen decided we should do the Livestrong ride instead, because her Aunt just finished treatment for colon cancer. (Jen says since this was her idea, she should get the bike. Hmmm….) We gathered a group of friends from Michigan to all go down to Austin together for the ride. I think we have 10 people so far. Can’t wait for the ride!

I love hearing all the stories and reasons people people have for joining in this fight. There are a lot of people to admire in Team Fatty.

Congrats, MV!

A Plug for My Sister Jodi’s Contests

My sister Jodi just started raising money for her LiveStrong challenge, and has got some incredible prizes lined up: tickets to a mega-concert, tickets to see the Colbert Report (theoretically free but impossible to obtain through 2010), tickets to a movie premier, and more. Head on over to her site and see everything you can win — again, all to help raise money to fight cancer with the Lance Armstrong Foundation.

Fight Cancer, Win Windows 7

Nick Abbott and I have been friends ever since I started work at Microsoft. And the fact is, everyone who meets Nick is immediately his friend. He’s that kind of guy.

Here’s us shortly after we met and rode our first big ride together (The 11 Hills of Kirkland) in May of 2005:

Just for your information, I weighed 181 pounds back then (and yeah, that’s about where I am again now). Nick was a few pounds heavier then, too.

Check us out: all muddy and happy after racing the Leadville 100 together last year.

Nick’s also about as hardcore of a cyclist as you can get. Check out his awesome report of the BC Bike Race he posted for me last year.

Of course, I’ve moved back to Utah, but Nick still works at Microsoft and is riding the Seattle LiveStrong ride. And as a ‘Softie — yes, they really call themselves that — Nick has access to the hotly-anticipated Windows 7 coming out sometime this year.

And if you donate to Nick’s LiveStrong Challenge page — http://seattle09.livestrong.org/nickabbott — you can win one of two copies of the top-end version of this new version of Windows. Just go to his page and donate; for every five dollars you donate, you will get a ticket in the raffle.

This is huge – pricing for Windows has not been announced (you can bet it will be more than 5 dollars) – and Nick will give you the full retail product once it is available in stores (of course you can’t resell it – that wouldn’t be right). If for some reason you are a Mac user – Nick can substitute Windows 7 with a copy of Office for the Mac.

Oh, and one other reason to donate at Nick’s page, besides the fact that you’re fighting cancer and besides the fact that he’s a great guy and besides the fact that you might win a copy of the top-end version of some seriously expensive software: If you donate at Nick’s page, you’re donating to a Microsoft employee with the chance of getting a Microsoft product while helping Team Fatty defeat Team Microsoft. Using their own products and employees to defeat them. Ha!

It’s like Judo!