What The Funk?

0:00 Okay, we're back on what the funk with a non-oiling gas edition today. We're going to shift focus a little bit Got a couple of guys who are deeply passionate about ending Alzheimer's It's also

0:13 something I'm passionate about if anybody ever emails with me They'll see that the hyperlink to schedule a call with me goes through the give website And

0:23 you can voluntarily make a donation to the Alzheimer's Association to meet with me so when Steve Mullen a friend of mine for Almost 20 years at this point that I met in Denver at a networking event

0:36 many years back Said hey, I see you got a podcast You know, I know your oil and gas and energy tech centric But any thoughts on having my friend Brian Tatum on and and talking a little bit about The

0:48 ride for Alzheimer's that he and I have been doing for a few years and I'm trying to raise money for a great cause I said, yeah, of course. I mean his last name's Tatum. I was Celtics fan. So

0:58 that was easy. Yeah, there you go So we had that going, but, you know, also that the mission skills, by the way, say, same hoops skills. Yeah, similar, similar athleticism profile,

1:08 financial status. Right.

1:12 Nice. So be a little bit of a different podcast today, but one that that I've been looking forward to passionate about. And we'll start with the same question that I hit everybody up with. That's

1:24 like, who are you guys? Who, who, Steve Mullen? Who are you? And then Brian Tatum, you tell me who you are Sorry, Steve.

1:34 Originally from New Jersey, I described it as I escaped many years ago and moved to Colorado, Jeremy, where you and I met live up in the mountains outside of Denver. Spend as much time outdoors as

1:45 possible, hiking, a little bit of skiing and a lot of bike riding. I've climbed a couple of big mountains overseas. The biggest one was Kilimanjaro a few years ago. Nice. Historically, love to

1:57 travel in. A lot of places all over the world, both personally and professionally. Professionally, I've spent my career effectively in management consulting and doing work for a whole bunch of

2:09 different industries, including oil and gas. Yep.

2:13 Marry live on the side of a mountain and my family is all back East. So I go back to the East Coast on a fairly regular basis. Nice, yeah. And for your oil and gas stuff, it's typically the big

2:28 projects, right? It's where you would need a management consultant. Think vendor selection, SAP implementation, figuring out your strategic kind of wherewithal in the back office, but because of

2:42 that, like you've probably spent a decent amount of time in some of the offices of oil and gas companies, especially here in Denver. Yeah, and Brent and Houston, I worked for a consulting company

2:51 years ago that actually worked for several consulting companies that were based in Houston, down in Greenway Plaza. And I still remember spending the month of July many years ago in Houston

3:04 and wound up being very hot by my standards, living in New York City at that point at that time. But yeah, I've done, and I do the big stuff and I do the small stuff. So I'm currently leading a

3:15 fairly small

3:18 implementation of an inventory system for part of a small oil and gas company. It's my current gig. I'm also on the side, a little bit helping them with increased adoption of AI So as a consultant,

3:30 I look at my world and say, I'm a service provider, which means I've got to serve the people. And if a client wants me to do a big thing, I'll do a big thing. If they want me to do a small thing,

3:39 I'll do a small thing. I'm pretty open to just about everything. Classic consultant, Mr. Tatum, how about you? Who are you, man? Yeah, I got to tell you, when you hear my story of who I am,

3:49 it's not gonna be anywhere near as cool as Steve. I have not climbed Mount Kilimanjaro. I do not live on the side of the mountain I am just a guy who. It organizes bike rides to raise money for a

4:01 good cause. So I'm the senior associate director for the Ride to Endals. I'm a full-time staff member of the Alzheimer's Association, but I spend 100 of my time focusing on the Ride to Endals

4:14 platform. We've actually built it up to be a nationwide initiative. We've got six rides around the country that collectively last year raised a little bit over5 million for Alzheimer's research And

4:25 specifically, I work on our Colorado Ride here, which I think we're going to talk about here in a little bit, and then also our Ride up in Minnesota. So I am back and forth between Denver and

4:35 Minneapolis all the time, but I've got to tell you, it's quite an honor and a privilege to get to do this. I told Steve this before there are times when I kind of sit back and go, Man, this is a

4:47 pretty cool gig, right? I get to organize these awesome events that truly are so much more than a bike ride and and we can talk about that a little bit later too, but. You know, every couple of

4:59 weeks, somebody keeps sending me a paycheck to do this. It's pretty awesome, pretty cool. And I get to meet awesome folks and writers like Steve who are passionate about this thing. So yeah,

5:10 that's me. And by the way, I'm from Houston originally. Oh really? I am, yeah. Here we are on an oil and gas podcast, an oil and gas podcast. To not talk about oil and gas, we gotta do the

5:23 grew up in Houston, another guy that's implementing an inventory system for oil and gas companies So I guess I just can't escape it as much as maybe I was trying to for an hour. Thank you guys. But

5:34 interesting. So have you been in like mission-driven work, volunteer, centric fundraising throughout your career, Brian, is that what led you to the end-alls? You know, that's a great

5:47 organization. Yeah, that's a great question, Jeremy. So the answer is no. I have been in the event creation, specifically the athletic event creation space. for most of my career and about

6:01 eight years ago, I just got to a point where I was ready to kind of transition into something that I felt like was a little bit more in the mind of a vein of a give back, right? I wanted to help

6:12 and kind of leave a mark, if you will. And so just through some people I knew who were volunteering for different organizations at the time, I was able to meet some folks and eventually get an

6:24 opportunity with a different cause, a different nonprofit, to kind of get my foot in the door on this side of things. And then eventually was able to make the move over the Alzheimer's Association

6:35 and kind

6:37 of an interesting yet telling tidbit about where we are with this disease. When I first came the Alzheimer's Association four years ago now, I didn't have like a family connection, right, to the

6:50 disease. Since then I've lost one uncle and another one has just transitioned into memory care facility. in the Tulsa, Oklahoma area. So it has become certainly more personal for Mason's I think.

6:57 Well, I'm sorry to hear that, but also like, what

7:06 the fuck? Right. I mean, this is just sort of one of those diseases where this, you know, my grandmother, my mom's mom, you know, in the Lowell, Massachusetts area, I was pretty young, man.

7:19 I mean, this is late '80s, and then she passed in the early '90s. But, you know, I started hearing about, you know, Nana has Alzheimer's, right? So she's not going to remember who you are,

7:22 and then we had to move her into a home, and it was awful. And that was like

7:34 35-year-plus years ago, and it seems like nothing's changed. Like, what? Like, why? Is it lack of funding, lack of research? Is it just sort of one of those things where, well, it happens,

7:47 so you throw your hands up and you say, too bad? Like, obviously, that's not what you're going for, Brian, but like, dude, what the fuck?

7:56 You know, there actually has been a lot that has changed, and especially over the last, gosh, three years, four years, kind of the time that I've sort of been here at the association, but not

8:09 because of anything I have done. You're gonna take all the credits and the scientific advance. No, I will not take credit for the advancements personally, but that stiff shifts over to people like

8:20 Steve and volunteers like him all across the country, right, who have participated in our events to raise the vital funding.

8:28 On one hand, there are more and more cases of Alzheimer's, right? It's a, you can look at it and kind of call it a growing epidemic. As a matter of fact, just a few weeks ago, we, the

8:38 association released our annual facts and figures report. And what the numbers are saying now is there are 72 million just folks here in the US, right, who are living with Alzheimer's disease

8:50 specifically. Alzheimer's is one type of dementia There are many other. sister types of dementia, right? Caring for those 72 million are now 12 million folks, and that's unpaid care, right?

9:04 That's a lot of time, a lot of hours that people are putting into the care of their loved ones, and they're not being compensated for it. They're doing it because they love these folks, right? So

9:15 that's kind of the scary side of it, but I mentioned the last three to four years, all that research that the association has been funding over the last, you know, Jeremy, like you said, 30, 35

9:27 years, right? It's leading to positive steps. We now have two FDA-approved drugs that actually treat the underlying biology of the disease in early stage patients, right? Now, that's a small

9:41 cohort of that 72 million folks, right? It's only people in the early stages, but that's a positive step. It's something we didn't have just a handful of years ago. Right We are making progress.

9:55 At times, it can be frustratingly slow, it seems like. Ultimately, we want to get to where we do have a cure, or at least we have something that pushes back on the disease so much that people get

10:09 more and more, you know, good years, tacked on after they receive a diagnosis. So we are going in that direction, and I did want to make sure that I highlighted that. There is reason for hope.

10:21 We actually call this our error of treatment right now Well, that's really good to hear, and obviously a step in the right direction. I don't know. It's still like with all of the scientific

10:34 advancements in general, whether it's around medicine or technology, like why are we still so far behind with some of these diseases where somebody gets in? I told you guys about my podcast partner,

10:44 Tim, right? I mean, he was diagnosed stage four cancer and he died like a month later. Like there's nothing that could be done, I guess. You know, like, certainly a lot of people get cancer

10:54 and they treat it early and they're able to get through it, but it's sort of like, well, once you get to a certain point, you're done. And it's felt like that with Alzheimer's too. So early

11:01 detection seems like a pretty important deal with Alzheimer's. So like, what are the signs somebody needs to look for if a loved one they think may have Alzheimer's? Yeah, that's a great question

11:13 too. And it's one that I get asked fairly often, right? And like I said before, I'm a guy who organizes bike rides I'm not a scientist, so when I talk about this stuff, it's very much in

11:25 layman's terms, non-technical stuff, right? But to me, if you, there are things that come along with just sort of normal aging, in terms of, you know, general forgetfulness, that kind of

11:39 thing, but Alzheimer's and other dementia is not a normal part of aging. It's, when you start to see things like, you're driving to work along the same route

11:52 for the last 25 years, you get to a stoplight and you stop and you look around and you realize, I don't know where the hell I am. How are you? Right? That's more of a sign that something could be

12:05 wrong from a dementia standpoint. Or it's, you know, your wife of 35 years walks in the room and there's a good 10 seconds there where you don't know who she is, right? That's a sign that

12:21 something may be there that's more than just the typical, all of us getting older and getting a little foggy from time to time, right? So that's the kind of thing that I think folks really need to

12:34 kind of be aware of and keep an eye on.

12:38 Got it, got it. We'll pivot to Steve 'cause I know Steve loves to talk but he hasn't been able to talk for the last seven minutes. It's gotta be killing. But Steve, I wanna go to you Why, you

12:47 know, for all of the things that you could do with your time for all of the. Um, the, the athletic activities that you could take part in for all the fundraising that you could do, why

12:56 Alzheimer's, why is this something that you're passionate about? And obviously you've gotten to know Brian, not just through the rides, but it seems like, you know, kind of more of a, as a

13:03 friendship, um, why Alzheimer's, like, why is this meaningful to you and why do you want to raise awareness for it? Yeah, this simple reality is my mom was diagnosed about three years ago. And

13:15 frankly, we saw signs of memory loss prior to her being diagnosed OK, so it's become very personal to me, right? I'm the oldest child of four and I'm the only boy in the family. So the younger

13:27 three are sisters and there's usually a special bond between mothers and sons and we definitely have it. So here's this woman who I've adored my whole life, literally my whole life, watching her

13:37 suffer with this. She's at the stage where she's aware of what's going on, which, frankly, I think is, is upsetting her or making her sad and, and, and it's making me sad Alzheimer's is sort of

13:49 known as. You grieve almost every day until the person actually dies because every day you lose a tiny bit more of them. And so I'm living with that at this point, right? I live about 2, 000

14:01 miles from my parents and I call them just about every day. And I talk to her just about every day. And those conversations can be very difficult. They're not always very difficult, but they can

14:11 be very difficult, right? And so I'm looking at this and I'm saying, no family should have to go through something like this No family should have to suffer the way, you know, to Brian's point,

14:23 millions of families are suffering, right? So that's why I've gotten so passionate about this.

14:29 Well, good for you, and thank you for sharing, obviously, very personal story, and I hope, you know, when you talk to your mom today or this weekend, it's one of those good days, right? Yeah,

14:39 it's just, you know, I think back now to my, to my nanopassing away, and it was very different from other grandparents dying It was yes, they're old and And it was very, very sad. And it was

14:53 actually when she passed, it was a relief. That's how I felt. It didn't actually really change my mood that day, 'cause in some ways in my mind, she'd been dead for a long time. I mean, as

15:04 terrible as that is to say, right? So the grieving process, like you said, took place many, many years before. It was a consistent burden for the family as opposed to just in late May of

15:17 1993, when she died, like straight up. And that sucks. And that's something that hopefully with what you guys are doing and the awareness that we're trying to create, people don't have to deal

15:29 with that, right? 'Cause I think this was a pretty severe case that my Nana had to, I mean, she was basically in capacity, you know, for the last maybe four or five years. And I vaguely

15:42 remember her prior to diagnosis And yeah, you could see that it was bad. But in the 80s and 90s, there wasn't the same level of care, treatment, or even medication that I think that there is

15:54 right now. I want to shift a little bit to the ride itself. So when did the end ALC ride start and how many of these are there? And is this sort of the main mechanism for raising money for the

16:07 Alzheimer's program? Where can people go and contribute money or even if they like to bike, participate in the race? Tell me all about the end ALC ride. Yeah, absolutely, I'll give you the

16:20 history. And then eventually I'll be quiet. Let Steve talk about kind of where the ride is now and describe his thoughts as being a rider and a participant, right? So we started the ride

16:32 initiative with the Alzheimer's Association. Actually, the idea first started floating in 2018. And then

16:41 it started then officially in 2019. scheduled our first ride to be in Fort Collins in June of 2020. Big ass whoops on that one,

16:54 that didn't work out. We had to obviously pit it, so we weren't able to have that first in-person ride until the next June. So June of '21, we started here in Fort Collins, and as I mentioned

17:07 before, this thing has grown now to a nationwide, we've got rides in Minnesota and Austin, Texas, Washington, DC, which was just last weekend, by the way, South Carolina, which goes across

17:21 the entire state of South Carolina in three days, no thanks. Personally, I won't do that in the deep South, three days, but they do raise a whole lot of money with that one. And then we're about

17:33 50 miles north of Boston as well. So it's grown into a real true nationwide thing. This'll be the fifth year for us in Fort Collins for the Colorado ride,

17:44 specifically. Last year, we set high watermarks for riders. We had 376 folks who signed up to ride, and that group raised a little bit over482, 000. We

17:57 smashed our goal of450, 000, which was really awesome.

18:03 Another thing I want to touch on, Jeremy, you asked, Is this the primary mechanism for the Alzheimer's Association to raise money? The answer is a resounding no. We are actually at the right is a

18:13 very small slice of the fundraising that goes on for the association. We have several different ways to generate funds, to go to that research, and to go to that so important care and support for

18:27 folks. One of them is the Walk to End Alzheimer's. You may have seen some of these around the country. We have, gosh, somewhere in the area of like 630 walks around the country that annually

18:39 raise in excess of100 million.

18:41 So that actually gives you an idea of where the ride stands. We are very much still in our infancy in terms of the overall Alzheimer's Association fundraising umbrella. There is also a series of

18:52 kind of black-tied gals, right? Called the purple gala around the country where folks can come in, dance the night away, wear their fancy stuff, right? Bit on all these cool items in an auction

19:05 format. So there are so many different ways to get engaged And that's intentional, right? We wanna offer a whole array, a whole variety of things for folks to attach to, like Steve, right? He's

19:20 a cyclist, he loves to ride. This really sort of resonated with him. Obviously he's got the connection to the disease with his mom, but he's also a passionate cyclist. So it was a perfect

19:30 marriage for us to get involved with this ride. So yeah, the association has a ton of different things to check out, and I would just refer folks.

19:44 to alzorg, alzorg. That's the overall site. You can see all the different fundraising initiatives going on, but you can also spend literally hours on that website researching the various things

19:54 going on in the world of science and research. You can get directed to different avenues for care and support resources that are available to you for free. So please check that out, alzorg.

20:07 There's all kinds of good stuff on Nice. Steve, tell us about the ride itself. So this will be my second year.

20:17 I was blown away when I wrote it last year for the first time. I was absolutely blown away with a whole bunch of things. First of all, the way the ride is organized and logistics. So I've done

20:29 living in Colorado, being a passionate cyclist. I've done countless organized rides for a long time. And rarely have I seen one as well organized as this what I mean by that or. Rest offs with

20:41 food, water stations, signage, guidance, maps. All of that was just top notch. The beginning part where there was breakfast early in the morning, 'cause the ride starts very early. The sort of

20:57 the environment was all positive. And then at the end, coming back, there was a party afterwards as well. It was great. The whole thing was really well done. So that's one aspect of it for me

21:08 Another aspect for me is the community. So the people I talked to before the ride, during the ride and after the ride, friendly, helpful, supportive, encouraging, pick whatever sort of positive

21:22 adjective you want. Just great people. Could ride up next to anybody or have them ride up next to me. And even if it was only a 30-second conversation, it was a very pleasant 30-second

21:32 conversation. So that sense of community was really nice Actually, a group of us got together this past weekend So we went out, we wrote about 30 miles, had lunch together afterwards. We know

21:47 we're there for a common cause, we know we're there for a good reason, but it's also a nice community, if you will, to just plug into it. Right, so it's just, so I, coming out of it last year,

21:58 frankly, before the ride last year, I had thought I would never do another organized ride, as I've gotten older, and the rides have gotten bigger, they've gotten less comfortable for me And in

22:09 fact, when I decided to register for this ride to his credit, Brian called me. I've since learned that he calls every rider the first time they register, and one of the things I asked him about

22:18 was the size of the ride. And it wasn't, you know, a monstrosity, it wasn't a huge number of riders, it was a good number of riders, but I didn't have to worry as much about, you know, what I

22:28 described as bad bike behavior. I've done rides with other riders where I've seen them do things that were just, shall we say, unhealthy or risky. And with this group of riders, with this group

22:40 of riders that there was none of that. And the other thing that I'll say about last year's ride, which was great, was the weather was perfect. And so going into this year, I'm assuming Brian's

22:48 got it managed so the weather will be perfect again this year. Yeah, let's try to cue that up. I was actually gonna ask about that. Like, you know, I was thinking about this this last weekend

22:57 where we had like a crazy rainy day. And I'm thinking, wow, this probably affected a lot of things. Yeah, not a big deal for my son's soccer game to get pushed a day He's seven years old to him.

23:08 It's like, oh, I guess we'll just watch a movie. But like for big things like this, it sucks. Like, what do you do? Do you still just, you just do it, you power through, and you do the ride?

23:17 Is that the mindset? 'Cause it's, I'm sure logistically it's hard to reschedule something like this. Yeah, it's virtually impossible to try and reschedule an event of this size with all of the

23:30 pieces that go into it and all the moving parts In general, we are able to power through most weather situations. Obviously, if we deem that the weather has reached a point of being unsafe and we

23:44 don't want, we don't feel comfortable putting these folks out there on their bikes, then we're not gonna send them out, right? But that's a pretty extreme case. We've ridden in rain before, and

23:56 as a matter of fact, Steve will tell you this, part of being a rider here in Colorado, really anywhere, but especially here in Colorado, you have to be ready to deal with the elements, right,

24:07 and you've got to be ready to deal with some potentially inclement weather type of situation. So yeah, and you know, it's interesting too, some of our rides where we've had little rain showers

24:19 come through or things like that, riders have told us afterwards that it actually

24:25 helped their mindset, because as it started to feel maybe a little pain in the legs or they started feeling unsteady on whatever it was, right? It made them think about their loved one, who's

24:36 going through Alzheimer's or dementia. and they're thinking, you know what, if they can deal with that and live with it, I can do this, right? This is nothing compared to what they've done.

24:48 Yeah, I'll tell you that as a rider, my attitude is, I mean, first of all, I'll say, you know, since moving to Colorado almost 20 years ago, I've accumulated a pretty good selection of cold

24:60 weather gear, even for biking, right? And the reality of it is I'll have most of it in my car And the morning of the ride, I'll know what the weather forecast for the day is, I'll have a sense,

25:10 obviously, what the temperature is. And I'll decide what to wear, and I'll also decide what to carry with me, right? And so that's one thing. Another thing is, you know, I've learned that you

25:22 can ride in rain, like Brian mentioned. It's not the end of the world. You get wet, get a little uncomfortable. I've also learned that sometimes when you get back to your car after a ride like

25:32 that, the heated seats feel really good, right? So that's helpful. So yeah, you just deal. you just deal, right? And it is worth it, you know, it's a small period of time, or at least when

25:47 I write it's a, not exactly a small period of time, but it's a period of time where you're uncomfortable. And then you warm back up and you dry off and you're okay. Right? It's, you know, it's

25:57 not like, you know, multiple years of having the disease. So it's not as bad. No, man, 100 I wanna ask a question that I'm curious how you answer this, Brian, and how you approach this is.

26:14 It's got me thinking like there's a lot of causes that people can support, right? Alzheimer's is one of them. And I would think like, do you have to try to compete for the same donation dollar as

26:28 somebody raising money for the Susan G. Coleman Foundation or somebody that's donating to the CU Boulder Hill L, shout out to my wife where she works. or, you know, the I have a dream foundation

26:41 or wherever or is the goal, like, we want to find incremental new money to flow into the organization from people that care about causes. How do you think about that? Great question. And by the

26:54 way, great dropping for your wife there. That's going to score you some really good. She'll appreciate it. Great job

27:03 So, you know, I want to start my response by saying there are so many worthy causes out there, right? And I worked for a different one previously before I came to the Alzheimer's Association. And

27:16 they all do phenomenal, fantastic work. They do things in the care and support world, in the science and research world, for a lot of people, right? And they bring about a lot of good And I've

27:31 gotten to know a lot of my counterparts at other organizations, and they're amazing, super cool salt-to-the-earth people. right? So if you want to look at it from a technical sort of business

27:43 standpoint, I guess you could say, yeah, we are all competing for the same dollars. But what I've seen is that

27:52 it things sort of form into a niche sort of, and it you tend to support the causes that are important to you. And like with Steve, like I said before, it's important to him for two reasons. One,

28:07 this, this event is important to him for two reasons, three reasons when you count the community. One is mom, right? But he's also a writer. So we sort of offer that writing niche as an all I

28:21 later bring in new participants and new dollars into into our association. Right. So while it's certainly I want, I would love everybody to donate to our ride into the Alzheimer's Association,

28:36 what I would encourage people to do. is participate and give to participate with and give to the organizations and events that resonate to you personally. There's a lot of us out there, but myself

28:49 and my colleagues at all the other associations, we provide a lot of options for you to participate in those things and raise money, right? But

28:58 if someone's listening to this and they're more passionate about, let's say, cancer research, right? Go find something that's going for you to support that's going to fulfill that side of you. So

29:13 there's space for all of us. I'll kind of wrap up by saying that. There's space for all of us in this fundraising world. Yeah, I appreciate that. Yeah, and I think the idea too is you get people

29:29 who haven't donated before and then you get people who have been donating consistently. And I would think because People are now seeing progress with the FDA approved drugs for early stage

29:41 Alzheimer's that just reinforces that your money is going to the right things, right? Like you do need to eventually see some sort of output and change for the support of the diseases. So super

29:53 awesome to hear that and announce that question. So I wanna donate, I wanna donate to support you guys. I'll say I'll support Steve Mullen, right? Doing this bike ride. How do I donate? How do

30:07 I do that?

30:09 Steve, you wanna take that one and tell everyone how to donate? Yeah, so there's a very powerful app that the Alzheimer's Association provides us with to help us with our fundraising. That app

30:25 has a really nice automatic connection to Facebook. And so I've been posting via that app on my Facebook page for a while. So there's a link.

30:37 I've probably had

30:40 probably 20 or 30 people who have donated actually more than that for me for this year. And nobody's called me and said, Hey, I want to donate and I can't. So I think that the easiest way to do it

30:53 that I know of, and Brian might have another approach, but the easiest way I know to do it is go to the writer's Facebook page that you want to donate to and find the, assuming they've used the app,

31:03 find the link to donate on their page Well, what if we're not on Facebook?

31:10 Yeah, so I'll add a couple of things here. Yeah, I'll add a couple of things. First of all, Jeremy, maybe if there's an opportunity to post the link to Steve's - Yeah, yeah, of course, of

31:20 course. And the show notes or anything like that, we can certainly do that. That way folks can donate directly to Steve. But what I would say is for folks to visit alzorgridecope.

31:35 R-I-D-E-C-O. So that is the Colorado Ride and All's page directly. When you

31:43 go there, you can do a couple different things in terms of donating. You'll see a big green donate button right on the top of the page. We make

31:56 that super obvious for everyone to see when they visit the page. You can click there and make a general event to the, or general donation to the event overall if you wanna do that. Or if you scroll

32:00 down just a little bit, you'll start to see the list of the individual riders You can click on those pages. Each rider's, you know, their name will be underlined, hyperlinked, you can click

32:11 there. It's gonna take them to their ride to Endull's page, right? Once you click

32:19 that page, what you can see is a photo that the rider is uploaded of their person, why they're writing. You can also see their story that they can go in and write on their page as well. I would

32:29 encourage people just to peruse through some of those rider pages Mine one that resonates with you. Right, find one that moves you a little bit emotionally and say, you know what, I'm gonna give

32:41 to this guy Steve here because his story really resonates with me and touches my heart. So that's what I would suggest. If anybody's interested in making a donation to the ride, either as a general

32:53 event gift or to a rider like Steve, head on over to that website. And again, it's alzorgrideco, R-I-D-E-C-O

33:04 And also, thank you for doing that. And this is kind of a fun one for me. I mean, obviously, this is a little bit of a heavier podcast than others, but I'll say two questions I wanna end with.

33:18 One is like, when is the ride? First of all, out here in Colorado. So let me just stop there. When is this? That, yeah, we should have probably said that off the top. That'd be helpful.

33:29 It's going to be Sunday, June 8th, up in Fort Collins. We start and finish at the football stadium on CSU's campus, right there in the stadium, which makes it a super unique venue for something

33:41 like this. So many cool little and unique things we get for holding the event there. One of them is we get to use the jumbotron. So when lighters come down the finishing stretch, right? They're

33:51 looking up at the jumbotron and they're seeing pictures of all of these, you know, why folks up there, all the people that they're writing for. And it just makes it such a cool, such a cool thing

34:02 So yeah, Sunday, June 8th in 4th.

34:06 Yeah, well, I'll tell you, my seven-year-old son would really love that because he was on the jumbotron at the nuggets game maybe like a month ago. And we had good seats and he was like, the

34:17 camera guy gave him like the solo jumbotron picture thing for like five seconds and probably like the highlight of his life to this point, I'm just gonna say. So not to take anything away from what

34:29 happens on the jumbotron here, but you know, My son, Shumba, Tron's story was. basically the best thing that's ever happened to him in his seven and a half years on Earth. Jumbo Tron is magic.

34:38 I'll tell you what, it's a great thing. Telling you, man. More so than having you as his dad? That

34:45 was the greatest thing that's happened to him in his life. The Jumbo Tron, for sure, trumps me as his dad. Did I even get any credit for paying for his ticket to go to the game? No, the story

34:55 was the fact that he was on the Jumbo Tron. And I guess my wife had some friends there too. They're like, We just saw your child on the Jumbo Tron, right? Because they're sitting somewhere in the

35:02 stadium. It's a big deal. So I love that you're incorporating that. And then the final question, and this is typically how I end things

35:12 with like, What do you see your company being in five, 10 years? Where do you see yourself personally or professionally? But I want to put it on you guys. Where's Alzheimer's going to be in 10

35:20 years? Like with some of the advancements that we're seeing from a technological scientific perspective, with the money you guys are raising and doing awesome things,

35:29 Like what does it look like in 2035 versus 2025, this terrible disease? Yeah, I can start with that and share some of the, you know, a couple of the things that we hear about, right? That are

35:42 potentially coming down the pipe. And then maybe Steve can just share from a writer, volunteer standpoint, right? Where he sees kind of things going. But from a research standpoint, I can tell

35:53 you that there are so many incredibly exciting things, exciting things in the pipeline that could be potential game changers. So as an association, we are the leading nonprofit funder of research.

36:07 We actually rank only behind the governments of the United States and China, incidentally, for money invested for Alzheimer's research. We have430 something million invested in

36:19 like 56 countries around the world and about 1, 100 or so really high level cutting edge projects One of the things that we hear a lot about that I think will be. a game changer is the ability to

36:31 diagnose via a very simple blood test. Right now, right now, a diagnosis, while important, right? We wanna get it as early as we can. It can be a little bit of a convoluted process. You have

36:44 to go through some cognitive testing. You have to do several different things to get it done. If we could get this blood test, which it sounds more and more like it's gonna happen, right? Cool

36:57 It's gonna make it so much easier, faster, but also more inclusive, right? Because a blood test only costs a fraction of what like a brain scan costs, right? And quite often, insurance doesn't

37:11 cover these things. And so people are out of pocket. So many more people are gonna be able to potentially afford a simple blood test. So I think that is coming I certainly am hopeful that we will

37:24 have more drug therapies approved by the FDA.

37:29 right? And hopefully those therapies will extend to cohorts that are more than just those early stage patients. Hopefully you start getting drugs that can help folks in middle stage and then on up

37:41 the chain, right? So I want to leave people on kind of a high hopeful note. There are things coming that are going to make things better. I'm still, I'm still not going to use the C word cure,

37:56 right? Because that, that is our ultimate goal. Certainly. We're not quite there yet. We've got to keep pushing to use a shameless pun for the ride. We've got to keep pedaling here to get

38:10 towards that, to get towards that magic pill for a cure at the end. But there's a lot of reason for hope.

38:17 Fantastic. Thank you. Any final thoughts, Steve?

38:22 Two, I guess. One is we didn't talk about the distances that are available if anybody wants to term. And so this year, Brian will correct me if I'm wrong, there are four distances available, 23,

38:38 46, 65, and 75. Brian, do I have that right? I am. Okay. So if anybody wants to come out, 23 miles is doable for a lot of people, right? And in terms of where I think the ride's going to be,

38:49 I can't, I can't, or the disease is going to be, I can't guess where the disease is going to be. All I would say is I would hope we would no longer need the ride. I would hope that things were in

38:58 such good shape that we no longer needed it. There's no way I think to know whether or not that's going to happen, right? But in a perfect world, we wouldn't, we wouldn't need to put money in

39:07 research because the research would be done.

39:11 Maybe it's, you know, pie in the sky, but I can hope, right? Yeah, that's right. Put me out of a job. I was just going to say, our hope in 10 years is Brian doesn't have to have to do this

39:21 show.

39:24 So you guys were great, man. Thank you so much. I I think one more plug, it is www dot. A-L-Z-D-O-R-G. And then for this specific ride in Colorado, it'sride-C-O, is that right?

39:40 That's correct, yeah. Pretty good for a podcaster, huh? Not bad, didn't you write it down? That's working out everywhere. Thank you, thank you, I'm still with it somehow. Anyways, I

39:51 appreciate you guys, this is meaningful, it's given me a chance to really reflect on how this terrible disease has impacted me and my family and framed a lot for myself and my sisters and my life

40:03 and love the support that you guys are throwing behind this and good for you, Brian, for pivoting your career in this direction and Steve for just doing what you do, man. You don't really do

40:13 anything half-assed, so you might as well jump all the way in and find ways to get exposure for the ride and for the organization. And I hope that your mom

40:22 is doing as well as possible. So really, really appreciate you guys Thank you so much for coming on today. Thanks, Jeremy. Yeah, thank you for having us, Jeremy.