News
Cycle Martha’s Vineyard
Cycle Martha’s Vineyard is a scenic recreational Island ride on Saturday, Oct. 17. Both the 100-kilometer and the makes a circuit of the Island, traveling along the Atlantic Ocean, Nantucket Sound, rolling farmland and the State Forest. The 50-kilometer route also offers breathtaking views. The event benefits Big Brothers Big Sisters of Martha’s Vineyard and other charities.
Vineyard Pedicab entrepreneurs Will and John Pasquina will host the first Pan-Martha Challenge, a 40-mile bikeathon across the Vineyard to raise money for cancer research and treatment at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute, on Oct. 4 at 9:30 a.m.
Participants are asked to gather donations before pedaling from the Flying Horses Carousel in Oak Bluffs to the cliffs of Aquinnah, a route one-fifth the length of the statewide charity event it mimics, the Pan-Mass Challenge.
Three American soldiers were killed in combat in the Middle East during the week that President Obama spent vacationing on the Vineyard. Three more mothers lost their children, a sacrifice with which Cindy Sheehan is all too familiar. In 2004, her elder son Casey, then 24 years old, became one more casualty in a war she considers “a hopeless cause,” and “destined for ruin or disaster.”
At 4:23 p.m. on Sunday, the helicopters took off from the Martha’s Vineyard Airport, bringing to an end President Obama’s week-long first vacation since winning office, spent on the Island.
As Mr. Obama, his family and entourage took off, the clouds which had dumped some four inches of rain over the previous two days finally broke, and they left in watery sunshine.
There is a burst of activity inside the White House press bus on Lobsterville Road in Aquinnah, a little before noon last Thursday, at the prospect of capturing footage of members of the First Family on bicycles. From a tiny vantage point halfway up the bus, Associated Press and Reuters photographers and a camera operator from Fox News crouch low and point their lenses at the corner of Lighthouse Road, some 100 yards off in the distance.
Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick led a strong cast of dignitaries that appeared in Oak Bluffs on Friday at the groundbreaking ceremony for the Bradley Square affordable housing project.
The governor arrived shortly after 4 p.m. to speak on behalf of the Island Affordable Housing Fund and the Island Housing Trust, the two organizations that are responsible for the Bradley Square plan.