The Night Before...
Aug. 19th, 2010 08:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jayfurrIt is 6:27 in the evening and the skies are gray over the Edina Galleria shopping mall here on the outskirts of the Twin Cities. Tomorrow morning, quite early, two thousand or more Susan G. Komen 3-Day For The Cure walkers will assemble at dawn in the parking lot of the Galleria for the opening ceremonies of the Twin Cities 3-Day... myself among them. I'd have said "bright and early" but the odds are against it being, well, bright. In true 3-Day fashion, the forecast for the first day of the walk calls for rain, and possibly scattered thunderstorms. Rain is one thing -- but if we get actual thunderstorms the organizers will take us off the route, possibly sending out buses to corral us all in some safe location until the threat of lightning passes. While I've had my share of 3-Day misfortune (losing two whole days of the 2009 Philadelphia 3-Day to fall nor'easters), I've never had the experience of being out on the route and getting a hasty EVERYONE OUT OF THE POOL order. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.
This blog entry is my last order of business before retiring for the night, just bringing things up to date before catching some shut-eye.
I got here around 4 pm Central time, checked into my room at the Westin hotel next door to the mall, had a couple of vegetarian burritos (no cheese, no sour cream) at a nearby Chipotle restaurant, and then ran smack into, of all people, Bret Favre. I wouldn't have even noticed him as we passed at the elevators -- I'd done a little semi-circle around him and kept on going -- except that a Vikings fan nearby said, loudly, "Is that Bret Favre?" And it was -- looking rather abashed and "oh no" and all that. I guess being a multimillionaire world-famous athlete can get a little old now and then, especially if he was heading upstairs to meet up with his wife for dinner or something. One doesn't always want to have to put on the public persona, after all.
When I tweeted the news of my passing encounter with the legendary quarterback to the far-flung 3-Day Twitter community many people asked if I'd hit the famous man up for a donation to the 3-Day -- and reminded me that Favre's wife is a breast cancer survivor herself. I must confess, it didn't even occur to me; Favre looked so uncomfortable as heads turned to look in his direction that I just said to myself "Leave the guy alone, you don't need to be a part of the feeding frenzy" and vamoosed.
I've said on a few occasions that I'm walking the Twin Cities walk as a solo walker, but my wife keeps reminding me that I'm forgetting to mention someone. I've actually got a little ... I dunno, "friend" is as good a term as anything else... with me, namely, the 3-Day Mug. It's a pink, hand-painted mug with a breast cancer theme and I'm the latest 2010 3-Day walker to carry it. A pair of 3-Day walkers,Kristen and Julie, came up with the mug as part of a paint-your-own-pottery thing they did. One of them carried it in the Boston walk and posted blog entries and Twitter posts from the mug's point of view and, as these things often do, the whole schtick took on a life of its own. Now there's a whole list of people signed up to be host to Mug over the coming 11 3-Day walks and it's my turn this weekend.
That's why I've got, um, an entire duffel bag full of Nutter Butter peanut butter cookies here in the hotel room with me. Mug apparently got taken to a blood drive at some point and you know how those things go: there're always lots of snacks for people to use to get their blood sugar back up afterwards. Somehow it became part of established canon that Mug loves Nutter Butters. And that's why, a week or two ago, I decided I should have some with me when I walked the Twin Cities walk -- and I promptly got on the Amazon.com website and ordered two boxes of individual four-cookie packs.
Okay, I really misjudged the number of cookies I was ordering, or rather, I misjudged how many cookies 96 four-packs of cookies really is. I'm going to carry a big backpack with as many as I can cram in and the rest will go in a padded bag in my 3-Day duffel, which I'll turn in at a gear truck at opening tomorrow morning and pick up again tomorrow evening at camp after walking twenty miles. The idea, basically, is that each time someone asks me "So what's the deal with the Mug" I'll explain briefly, pose Mug for a photo with the hapless walker, and then hand over a pack of cookies. I don't really know, to be honest, how this is gonna work out. On one hand, perhaps no one will even ask (you see a LOT of weird stuff on the 3-Day) and I'll have to resort to just walking up to people and offering them cookies out of the blue, but on the other hand, maybe word will get around really quickly and I'll have given out half the cookies tomorrow before we even start walking. Neither outcome will really surprise me.
Anyway, you can follow Mug's progress on Twitter at @3daymug while the walk's underway -- and you may also wish to go back and read Mug's back blog entries at http://2ladies1mug.wordpress.com/. To the best of my knowledge Mug won't be blogging during the Twin Cities walk but after it's all over photos and notes from the weekend will be posted there.
I think I've mentioned here and there that I'm going to be costumed rather inanely tomorrow. But in case I didn't mention it here, let me just say that I won't be wearing PANTS during the walk. Instead, I'm going to be wearing a mocha brown men's kilt (a Utilikilt, in case you're familar with them), homemade pink tie-dyed shirts, knee-length kilt hose with pink kilt flashes, and to top it all off, my semi-legendary pink hard hat. I'm really not sure why, but people really seem to like that hard hat. When I crewed the Boston 3-Day this year I lost count of the number of times people said "Hey, nice hard hat". Oddly, they seemed to be speaking entirely without irony. The 3-Day will do that to you -- you start to really celebrate the weird things in life. And as for the kilt... well, I wore a black Utilikilt with pink boxers under it last year when I crewed Boston. Then I lost a lot of weight and it didn't really fit any more, and when I crewed Boston this year a lot of repeat walkers buttonholed me and demanded to know where the kilt was. So, once I got home I sighed and ordered a new kilt in my new semi-svelte size, and I'm gonna wear it all three days this weekend, unless it gets absolutely soaked or something, and if that happens, I have some regular hiking pants and shorts to fall back on.
Yes, I'm going to look absolutely God-awful. But on a 3-Day walk, the Absolutely God-Awful somehow achieves a sort of sublime grace.
So I think that's all the news from Lake Wobegon... and, wow, that phrase actually fits for once. I am in Minnesota, after all... where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above-average.
Good night -- and thank you for your support in the fight against breast cancer.
This blog entry is my last order of business before retiring for the night, just bringing things up to date before catching some shut-eye.
I got here around 4 pm Central time, checked into my room at the Westin hotel next door to the mall, had a couple of vegetarian burritos (no cheese, no sour cream) at a nearby Chipotle restaurant, and then ran smack into, of all people, Bret Favre. I wouldn't have even noticed him as we passed at the elevators -- I'd done a little semi-circle around him and kept on going -- except that a Vikings fan nearby said, loudly, "Is that Bret Favre?" And it was -- looking rather abashed and "oh no" and all that. I guess being a multimillionaire world-famous athlete can get a little old now and then, especially if he was heading upstairs to meet up with his wife for dinner or something. One doesn't always want to have to put on the public persona, after all.
When I tweeted the news of my passing encounter with the legendary quarterback to the far-flung 3-Day Twitter community many people asked if I'd hit the famous man up for a donation to the 3-Day -- and reminded me that Favre's wife is a breast cancer survivor herself. I must confess, it didn't even occur to me; Favre looked so uncomfortable as heads turned to look in his direction that I just said to myself "Leave the guy alone, you don't need to be a part of the feeding frenzy" and vamoosed.
I've said on a few occasions that I'm walking the Twin Cities walk as a solo walker, but my wife keeps reminding me that I'm forgetting to mention someone. I've actually got a little ... I dunno, "friend" is as good a term as anything else... with me, namely, the 3-Day Mug. It's a pink, hand-painted mug with a breast cancer theme and I'm the latest 2010 3-Day walker to carry it. A pair of 3-Day walkers,Kristen and Julie, came up with the mug as part of a paint-your-own-pottery thing they did. One of them carried it in the Boston walk and posted blog entries and Twitter posts from the mug's point of view and, as these things often do, the whole schtick took on a life of its own. Now there's a whole list of people signed up to be host to Mug over the coming 11 3-Day walks and it's my turn this weekend.
That's why I've got, um, an entire duffel bag full of Nutter Butter peanut butter cookies here in the hotel room with me. Mug apparently got taken to a blood drive at some point and you know how those things go: there're always lots of snacks for people to use to get their blood sugar back up afterwards. Somehow it became part of established canon that Mug loves Nutter Butters. And that's why, a week or two ago, I decided I should have some with me when I walked the Twin Cities walk -- and I promptly got on the Amazon.com website and ordered two boxes of individual four-cookie packs.
Okay, I really misjudged the number of cookies I was ordering, or rather, I misjudged how many cookies 96 four-packs of cookies really is. I'm going to carry a big backpack with as many as I can cram in and the rest will go in a padded bag in my 3-Day duffel, which I'll turn in at a gear truck at opening tomorrow morning and pick up again tomorrow evening at camp after walking twenty miles. The idea, basically, is that each time someone asks me "So what's the deal with the Mug" I'll explain briefly, pose Mug for a photo with the hapless walker, and then hand over a pack of cookies. I don't really know, to be honest, how this is gonna work out. On one hand, perhaps no one will even ask (you see a LOT of weird stuff on the 3-Day) and I'll have to resort to just walking up to people and offering them cookies out of the blue, but on the other hand, maybe word will get around really quickly and I'll have given out half the cookies tomorrow before we even start walking. Neither outcome will really surprise me.
Anyway, you can follow Mug's progress on Twitter at @3daymug while the walk's underway -- and you may also wish to go back and read Mug's back blog entries at http://2ladies1mug.wordpress.com/. To the best of my knowledge Mug won't be blogging during the Twin Cities walk but after it's all over photos and notes from the weekend will be posted there.
I think I've mentioned here and there that I'm going to be costumed rather inanely tomorrow. But in case I didn't mention it here, let me just say that I won't be wearing PANTS during the walk. Instead, I'm going to be wearing a mocha brown men's kilt (a Utilikilt, in case you're familar with them), homemade pink tie-dyed shirts, knee-length kilt hose with pink kilt flashes, and to top it all off, my semi-legendary pink hard hat. I'm really not sure why, but people really seem to like that hard hat. When I crewed the Boston 3-Day this year I lost count of the number of times people said "Hey, nice hard hat". Oddly, they seemed to be speaking entirely without irony. The 3-Day will do that to you -- you start to really celebrate the weird things in life. And as for the kilt... well, I wore a black Utilikilt with pink boxers under it last year when I crewed Boston. Then I lost a lot of weight and it didn't really fit any more, and when I crewed Boston this year a lot of repeat walkers buttonholed me and demanded to know where the kilt was. So, once I got home I sighed and ordered a new kilt in my new semi-svelte size, and I'm gonna wear it all three days this weekend, unless it gets absolutely soaked or something, and if that happens, I have some regular hiking pants and shorts to fall back on.
Yes, I'm going to look absolutely God-awful. But on a 3-Day walk, the Absolutely God-Awful somehow achieves a sort of sublime grace.
So I think that's all the news from Lake Wobegon... and, wow, that phrase actually fits for once. I am in Minnesota, after all... where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above-average.
Good night -- and thank you for your support in the fight against breast cancer.
