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jayfurr“So what’s all that stuff on your lanyard?” asked the teal-clad 3-Day crewmember, early that Friday morning in the parking lot of a large suburban shopping mall in scenic Edina, Minnesota.
I had just handed in my, um, “thirty five pound gear bag” (whose actual weight might have been just a hair over that) at the truck marked with a “C” placard – C for my tent row at camp – and was smiling vacantly at everyone milling around in the pre-dawn darkness. Giant pink balloons hovered here and there over the gathering hordes, reminding us “STAY POSITIVE” and “KINDNESS ROCKS” and “EAT MOR CHIKIN”. I wasn’t really sure about that last one – it appeared that some of the Chik-Fil-A cows had infiltrated the 3-Day setup crew, but perhaps, on the other hand, it was a misguided attempt to encourage us to consume a protein-rich diet during our upcoming sixty miles of walking.
I glanced down at my chest. As a participant in the 2010 Twin Cities Susan G. Komen 3-Day For The Cure, I had a lanyard looped around my neck holding my official event credential with my name, a barcode to make it possible to figure out who I was in the event that I passed out from sheer excitement or, more likely, from dehydration or hyponatremia, and cool little icons certifying that I had paid for towel service, was staying in camp in tent C-88, and (if memory serves) was a 33rd degree Mason. They used to put a cool little icon on there with a “V” in a black circle to indicate that you had requested vegetarian meals, but too many animal-loving, meat-avoiding walkers unfortunately were mistaken for reptilian invaders from another world… I guess someone must have been watching that “V” series on ABC last year. Instead, starting in 2010 they put us on the honor system: it was up to us to hold one hand high and solemnly intone, “Please, may I have some tofu?” three times slowly each day at lunch and again at dinner.
But in addition to my event credential, my lanyard was bedecked here and there with shiny little metal buttons, known to the Komen crowd as “legacy pins”, attesting to various accomplishments of varying worth. Shiny little pins of no actual intrinsic value, but representing accomplishments most significant. Oh yes!
Starting at the top of my lanyard, up by my neck, I had a little purple pin with a star on it honoring me as a Team Captain (my team, consisting of my wife and myself, was not scheduled to walk together until late October when the Tampa Bay 3-Day took place, but I was entitled to the pin anyway).
Below the first pin was another little purple pin showing a tall, proud silhouetted individual being followed on foot by some smaller beings – possibly benevolent visitors from another planet, perhaps a platoon of Brownies, but most likely meant to represent grateful 3-Day participants being led on an official training walk by a noble Training Walk leader. That was what the pin actually said, anyway, but I preferred to think that the Komen organization would be welcoming to visitors from Zeta Reticuli too. Why not?
Continuing on down the lanyard, I had a little deep-pink pin (my wife calls it 'fuchsia') with a big “3” and a little “peat” on it. This was either a recognition of the valuable role that decaying wetlands vegetation plays in our global economy or an acknowledgement that at my immediate previous 3-Day, the 2010 walk in Boston where I had served as a crew member at Pit Stop 4, I had been so gung-ho for the event that I had immediately signed up to walk or crew in 2011.
I had a purple pin with a big white heart that said I’d been an official Komen 3-Day volunteer at some point – in my case, I had volunteered at the Boston 3-Day Preview Expo in April of 2010 and I had showed up at several Get Started meetings in the greater Boston area in mid-winter to help recruit more … converts, I guess you could say, to the One True Cause of hoofin’ it sixty miles in three days and getting all the peanut butter-and-jelly crackers you could eat in return.
But wait: there’s more. I had a blue pin with a big 3-Day ribbon and the words “Crew ’10” and “Teamwork’. I got that for standing in the hot July sun in various Boston-area playgrounds and parking lots and parks, handing out orange slices and ice and Gatorade and perkiness and cheery encouragement and enthusiasm and stuff. And for trying to hand out sunflower seed butter and rice cakes made from corn. I didn’t have nearly as much luck getting people to accept those as I did handing out the perkiness, but I tried. Really I did. (Fact: years after Earth’s moon has spun off into the outer darkness and the race of man has been replaced by highly evolved wombats, there will still be Komen warehouses packed with sunflower butter and those “corn cakes”.)
I had a pin that was hardly unique in the gathering crowds there in the Minnesota morning light: a pink pin with a 3-Day logo and the words “Walker ‘10” and “INVINCIBLE”. I certainly hoped I was invincible, but I’ll be honest: I was wearing a pink hard hat, a pink tie-dyed shirt, a mocha brown kilt, dark blue woolen kilt hose with cerise hose flashes, and New Balance running shoes. I was toting around a lovely rose-pink latte cup with a pack of Nutter Butter peanut butter cookies peeking out of it. While many adjectives might have leapt to your mind when absent-mindedly gazing in my general direction, I highly doubt “invincible” would have been one of them.
The one pin I was truly sort of proud of (and this is not to say that I was ashamed of the others, but they had not been excessively hard to get and out of the two thousand plus walkers present many had the same pins I did, and more) was the last one: the little powder-blue pin showing two walkers carrying tall ceremonial flags over the word ‘CEREMONIES”. Only a rather small number of walkers and crew are asked each year to be flagbearers in opening and closing ceremonies… and in three years of walking, I have been a flagbearer three times. Pretty cool thing to be a part of each time, actually. While everyone else mills around in the darkness waiting for opening to start, a flagbearer gets to line up backstage holding a giant banner with the words “ANNIVERSARIES” or “MY WIFE” or “IRREPLACEABLE” and comes out on cue with the other flags reminding us of all the moments a lifetime should consist of, all the people we’re walking for, and all the values and beliefs that will see us through the fight against breast cancer. I have three Ceremonies pins, earned in '08, '09, and '10. The one I was wearing that morning in Minnesota had been earned walking in the opening ceremonies in Boston in July ’10 carrying the “IRREPLACEABLE” flag. That flag was added in 2010 to remind us of all the irreplaceable people in our lives that we’ve lost to breast cancer, or who are fighting the disease and need our support. It was an honor to be the first ever to bear it.
So yes... every pin around my neck had a meaning and a story. But when I was asked by that anonymous crew member in Edina in August of 2010 what all the stuff I had around my neck was, I simply smiled, offered her a pack of Nutter Butter cookies, and said “It’s swag”.
I mean, that’s why we walk, right? To collect neat-o collectible pins to wear around our necks and on our blazers at the next yachting club regatta and to baby showers and, who knows? Maybe we could wear them to a First Contact ceremony with the aliens of Zeta Reticuli when they land next year in their little round flying saucers. For all they know, all that shiny metal stuff in such vivid colors might go a long way toward convincing them that we’re a highly developed civilization that should be taken absolutely seriously and not particle-beamed into oblivion. If nothing else we might convince them to come join us on a 3-Day, or failing actual participation in the event, to at least come along on some training walks.
I had to admit, though, that the pins I did not have were much more impressive than those I did. In addition to all the participation pins and the pins for being a team captain, a crew team captain, or a crew coach, the Susan G Komen 3-Day For The Cure (say that five times fast – and if you can do it without stuttering, there’s a special legacy pin in it for you), awards pins for fundraising prowess. There’s a pin for the top individual fundraiser at a 3-Day … gold, of course, with a big dollar sign inside an even bigger star. There’s a pin for multi-event participants – people who participate in more than six 3-Day walks in a single year. That pin is gold with a little map of the USA specked with fifteen tiny stars showing the location of all the walks. There’s a gold pin with a big cheerful happy “5” for people who have done a 3-Day for five or more years running. There’s a gold pin showing three sneakers proudly held aloft …signifying the largest team, by membership, at a 3-Day.
There’s a gold pin with three big dollar signs and three big stars for the team that raises the most money at a 3-Day, in terms of outright money raised… and a similar pin for the team that raises the most money per capita, even if it’s not the most money raised outright. There are green Power Team pins for walker teams that raise in excess of $3,300 per member (averaged) and for the crew team that raises the most money, period.
There are pins for crew members who raise $500 or more… and pins for walkers who raise $3,000, $5,000, $10,000, and $15,000.
I’ll happily take my hard hat off to anyone who I meet at a 3-Day with any of those pins on. While the walking is wonderfully fun and totally inspiring (seriously), it’s fund-raising prowess that really fuels the fight against breast cancer.
Never let it be said that the Komen folks aren’t without a sense of humor. We know that a 3-Day doesn’t always turn out the way it’s planned. From torrential rainstorms with lightning and thunder that force the closure of the route in the middle of the first day, to having to ride the “SAG” bus to camp when our blisters and shin splints and tendonitis and such get to be too much to bear, to winding up as the very last walker, the absolute Tail-End Charlie, to make it to camp or to closing on a given day, things can happen that we’re not 100% thrilled about. And so, to make up for it, we get a Legacy Pin! Yes!
Okay, in actuality, I think the Komen folks decided to stop awarding the ominous little pin with the thundercloud and the lightning bolts that signified “SURVIVED A RELO” this year but my wife Carole and I earned that one for the 3-Day From Heck, Philadelphia 2009, where two whole days of a walk were cancelled outright when a pair of freezing cold nor’easter storms of biblical proportions – up to and including rains of frogs and stale Tastykakes – hit the City of Brotherly Love on the same weekend. If the weather hadn’t let up a bit on the third and final day of the walk we’d probably be sporting little black frowny face pins reading “ARGH!” We’d take the "relocation" pin any day over that one.
But they do have a pin for the last walker into camp: a light blue pin with a proud walker bearing a white flag aloft – and I’m sure the resemblance to a surrender flag is completely coincidental, because doggedly continuing to walk, even though you’re the last walker on the route, when you could just say “UNCLE” and catch a sag bus to camp – well, that takes some serious guts and determination. And there’s definitely no shame in “earning” the Sagged and Proud pin, with its happily smiling little white motor coach on a light blue background… we’d rather you took a bus to camp when something annoying like a stress fracture or heatstroke wipes you out, rather than going on to the point of doing yourself serious damage. I’ve never received the Last Walker pin nor the Sagged and Proud pin but if I ever do, I’ll wear ‘em with pride. I mean, it'd mean that at least I was out there trying when I could have been at home on the couch watching a monster truck rally on PBS.
They even have a pin for Best Decorated Tent at camp. I may have to explain that one a bit for those of you who’ve never been to a 3-Day. Camping at a 3-Day has absolutely nothing in common with the last tenting vacation you and your family took, where you had a giant dome-shaped Coleman tent with a generator, television set, gas stove, portable refrigerator, and Domino’s on speed-dial for when Daddy couldn’t get the gas stove lit. Instead, you’ve got to visualize one to two thousand absolutely identical hot pink tents, each just large enough for two adults to lie side by side in fairly intimate proximity to one another and with their (cough, cough) thirty-five pounds’ worth of gear (clothing, water bottles, spare shoes, spare socks, flashlights for trips to the Port-o-jons at night, you name it) piled up around them. Two thousand 6’ by 6’ tents, side by side, so close to one another that when you sneeze at 3 o’clock in the morning voices from all around you say “Gesundheit”. And as anyone who’s crawled on hands and knees out of a tent into the midnight gloom and dew to make a shambling nocturnal visit to the lovely green plastic port-o-jons can tell you, there are few joys on God’s green earth greater than the joy of turning to return to your tent for a few more hours of fitful sleeping only to realize with a shock that your dim recollection of sleeping in a hot pink tent somewhere over there is a wholly insufficient means of finding your way back to your sleeping bag and your teammate and the comforts of home. But imagine that your tent is situated just across from the tent with the full-sized recreation of Amelia Earhart’s doomed Lockheed Electra (in pink, with a giant 44-EEE bra dangling from each aileron) atop it and just down the way from the tent with the flashing neon signs reading “HOT LADIES HOT” in three contrasting colors and just up from the tent with the white picket fence, lawn ornaments, and statue of June Cleaver (complete with pearls, vacuum cleaner, and 44-EEE bra)… and you’ll realize that such things make finding your tent in the darkness of night much easier. Handing out a few legacy pins for tent decorating is a small price to pay if it means fewer sleepy walkers wandering into the wrong tents or worse, accidentally crossing six lanes of traffic and winding up in the coaster maintenance shed at a nearby Six Flags amusement park.
In this category one might mention a few retired legacy pins from previous years. They used to award a Rock Star legacy pin to anyone who finished in the top three singers in the camp karaoke competition – no, I’m not making that one up – and I’ve heard that they used to give a legacy pin of some sort to anyone who visited the Medical tent at a pit stop or at camp. I think it goes without saying that that pin was perhaps not the smartest idea – especially if men are involved. “Hey, Bob, take a running start at that tree over there. We’ll take your unconscious, bruised body to the Medical tent and it’s legacy pins for the lot of us!!!” As for the Rock Star pin... it was retired for a good reason – they eliminated the championship round of the karaoke competition when they started having country music star Candy Coburn come to each 3-Day and sing for the walkers and crew on the evening of Day 2.
The last pin of all – of the ones they still hand out – is the legendary Survivors Pin. While we respect each and every survivor of breast cancer who takes part in a Susan G Komen 3-Day For The Cure and honor them with a special pink victory shirt at the finish line (the rest of us walkers get white shirts and the crew members get gray), a select few walkers are selected to be in the Survivors Circle during opening and closing ceremonies, bearing flags, joining hands and raising them high in triumph, and ultimately, raising the final flag of the event, the one that reads “A World Without Breast Cancer”. A little blue legacy pin showing the Survivors Circle with their hands joined is the least we can give these ambassadors of hope for their contributions to the event and for reminding all of us what we’re walking for.
Speaking of which -- if you're reading this and wondering, "Hey, I qualified for some of those pins -- where do I get them???" The 3-Day organizers used to mail the captain pins and so on out when you registered as a team captain. Others would be sent when other criteria were met... but now, only the walker and crew pins are mailed out. All the others that you qualify for are handed out at the "3-Day Cafe" at camp, on event. It's part of the "3-Day Main Street" section of camp and there'll be a member of the Camp Services crew there any time camp is open, up until 9 pm Friday and Saturday evening, to award you any pins you've qualified for.
As the bearer of so much swag – with more to come, hopefully, when I finally walk the Tampa Bay 3-Day in late October and get to receive pins for my team (okay, okay, my ‘team’ is my wife and I, but it still counts) qualifying as a Power Team and for my own fundraising prowess (if all continues to go well, I will receive at least the $5K pin) – I often muse about other legacy pins that should be awarded to 3-Day participants, if only the logistics and process for awarding them could be worked out.
For example:
· The Hydration Hero pin, awarded to any walker who so thoroughly drinks her (or his!) share of water and sports drink during the day that multiple, say, three or more, night-time visits to the, um, facilities are required. The pin would depict a port-o-jon and a crescent moon waxing in the sky overhead.
· The Drag King pin, for any male walker who walks the entire 60 miles wearing at least three pieces of female lingerie prominently featured on the outside of his clothing. The pin would show a giant, tassel-equipped sequined bra.
· The Stretch Armstrong pin, for any walker who actually does the five minutes per hour of stretching that the training and walking plan recommends. (It sets a good example for the rest of us slackers.) What would the pin depict? I dunno. A pretzel? Work with me here.
· The Wombat pin – awarded personally to any walker named Julie Brock who takes part in the 3-Day dressed in a light, stylish, breathable wombat suit. (A bit of a niche pin, but if you’re sufficiently motivated, you could earn it! What’s a name change when a legacy pin is up for grabs?)
· The Gratitude pin – awarded to any walker who takes the time out to thank at least one member of every crew team that helps them on a 3-Day. A pink pin with a thumbs-up logo, obviously.
I could go on. The 3-Day is full of unsung heroes who will go officially unrecognized… but who will not go unappreciated. Anyone who has been there on a 3-Day when your feet are just about to give out and has had a fellow walker or a crew member give you the encouragement that helped you go on… anyone who has seen a member of the unsung Camp Hydration crew refilling water stations in the dark at 10 pm, or has been in camp to witness the Camp Logistics crew dealing with the back-breaking loads of garbage left behind the morning of Day 3… anyone who’s broken down crying in the Remembrance Tent on a Saturday evening when you’re trying to write in the memory book about your mom, or your sister, or your best friend, and has had a fellow walker come over and wordlessly give you a hug and let you know that you’re not alone… you know the 3-Day staff and organizers could never recognize all the people who make a difference.
They leave that to us.
I had just handed in my, um, “thirty five pound gear bag” (whose actual weight might have been just a hair over that) at the truck marked with a “C” placard – C for my tent row at camp – and was smiling vacantly at everyone milling around in the pre-dawn darkness. Giant pink balloons hovered here and there over the gathering hordes, reminding us “STAY POSITIVE” and “KINDNESS ROCKS” and “EAT MOR CHIKIN”. I wasn’t really sure about that last one – it appeared that some of the Chik-Fil-A cows had infiltrated the 3-Day setup crew, but perhaps, on the other hand, it was a misguided attempt to encourage us to consume a protein-rich diet during our upcoming sixty miles of walking.
I glanced down at my chest. As a participant in the 2010 Twin Cities Susan G. Komen 3-Day For The Cure, I had a lanyard looped around my neck holding my official event credential with my name, a barcode to make it possible to figure out who I was in the event that I passed out from sheer excitement or, more likely, from dehydration or hyponatremia, and cool little icons certifying that I had paid for towel service, was staying in camp in tent C-88, and (if memory serves) was a 33rd degree Mason. They used to put a cool little icon on there with a “V” in a black circle to indicate that you had requested vegetarian meals, but too many animal-loving, meat-avoiding walkers unfortunately were mistaken for reptilian invaders from another world… I guess someone must have been watching that “V” series on ABC last year. Instead, starting in 2010 they put us on the honor system: it was up to us to hold one hand high and solemnly intone, “Please, may I have some tofu?” three times slowly each day at lunch and again at dinner.
But in addition to my event credential, my lanyard was bedecked here and there with shiny little metal buttons, known to the Komen crowd as “legacy pins”, attesting to various accomplishments of varying worth. Shiny little pins of no actual intrinsic value, but representing accomplishments most significant. Oh yes!
Starting at the top of my lanyard, up by my neck, I had a little purple pin with a star on it honoring me as a Team Captain (my team, consisting of my wife and myself, was not scheduled to walk together until late October when the Tampa Bay 3-Day took place, but I was entitled to the pin anyway).
Below the first pin was another little purple pin showing a tall, proud silhouetted individual being followed on foot by some smaller beings – possibly benevolent visitors from another planet, perhaps a platoon of Brownies, but most likely meant to represent grateful 3-Day participants being led on an official training walk by a noble Training Walk leader. That was what the pin actually said, anyway, but I preferred to think that the Komen organization would be welcoming to visitors from Zeta Reticuli too. Why not?
Continuing on down the lanyard, I had a little deep-pink pin (my wife calls it 'fuchsia') with a big “3” and a little “peat” on it. This was either a recognition of the valuable role that decaying wetlands vegetation plays in our global economy or an acknowledgement that at my immediate previous 3-Day, the 2010 walk in Boston where I had served as a crew member at Pit Stop 4, I had been so gung-ho for the event that I had immediately signed up to walk or crew in 2011.
I had a purple pin with a big white heart that said I’d been an official Komen 3-Day volunteer at some point – in my case, I had volunteered at the Boston 3-Day Preview Expo in April of 2010 and I had showed up at several Get Started meetings in the greater Boston area in mid-winter to help recruit more … converts, I guess you could say, to the One True Cause of hoofin’ it sixty miles in three days and getting all the peanut butter-and-jelly crackers you could eat in return.
But wait: there’s more. I had a blue pin with a big 3-Day ribbon and the words “Crew ’10” and “Teamwork’. I got that for standing in the hot July sun in various Boston-area playgrounds and parking lots and parks, handing out orange slices and ice and Gatorade and perkiness and cheery encouragement and enthusiasm and stuff. And for trying to hand out sunflower seed butter and rice cakes made from corn. I didn’t have nearly as much luck getting people to accept those as I did handing out the perkiness, but I tried. Really I did. (Fact: years after Earth’s moon has spun off into the outer darkness and the race of man has been replaced by highly evolved wombats, there will still be Komen warehouses packed with sunflower butter and those “corn cakes”.)
I had a pin that was hardly unique in the gathering crowds there in the Minnesota morning light: a pink pin with a 3-Day logo and the words “Walker ‘10” and “INVINCIBLE”. I certainly hoped I was invincible, but I’ll be honest: I was wearing a pink hard hat, a pink tie-dyed shirt, a mocha brown kilt, dark blue woolen kilt hose with cerise hose flashes, and New Balance running shoes. I was toting around a lovely rose-pink latte cup with a pack of Nutter Butter peanut butter cookies peeking out of it. While many adjectives might have leapt to your mind when absent-mindedly gazing in my general direction, I highly doubt “invincible” would have been one of them.
The one pin I was truly sort of proud of (and this is not to say that I was ashamed of the others, but they had not been excessively hard to get and out of the two thousand plus walkers present many had the same pins I did, and more) was the last one: the little powder-blue pin showing two walkers carrying tall ceremonial flags over the word ‘CEREMONIES”. Only a rather small number of walkers and crew are asked each year to be flagbearers in opening and closing ceremonies… and in three years of walking, I have been a flagbearer three times. Pretty cool thing to be a part of each time, actually. While everyone else mills around in the darkness waiting for opening to start, a flagbearer gets to line up backstage holding a giant banner with the words “ANNIVERSARIES” or “MY WIFE” or “IRREPLACEABLE” and comes out on cue with the other flags reminding us of all the moments a lifetime should consist of, all the people we’re walking for, and all the values and beliefs that will see us through the fight against breast cancer. I have three Ceremonies pins, earned in '08, '09, and '10. The one I was wearing that morning in Minnesota had been earned walking in the opening ceremonies in Boston in July ’10 carrying the “IRREPLACEABLE” flag. That flag was added in 2010 to remind us of all the irreplaceable people in our lives that we’ve lost to breast cancer, or who are fighting the disease and need our support. It was an honor to be the first ever to bear it.
So yes... every pin around my neck had a meaning and a story. But when I was asked by that anonymous crew member in Edina in August of 2010 what all the stuff I had around my neck was, I simply smiled, offered her a pack of Nutter Butter cookies, and said “It’s swag”.
I mean, that’s why we walk, right? To collect neat-o collectible pins to wear around our necks and on our blazers at the next yachting club regatta and to baby showers and, who knows? Maybe we could wear them to a First Contact ceremony with the aliens of Zeta Reticuli when they land next year in their little round flying saucers. For all they know, all that shiny metal stuff in such vivid colors might go a long way toward convincing them that we’re a highly developed civilization that should be taken absolutely seriously and not particle-beamed into oblivion. If nothing else we might convince them to come join us on a 3-Day, or failing actual participation in the event, to at least come along on some training walks.
I had to admit, though, that the pins I did not have were much more impressive than those I did. In addition to all the participation pins and the pins for being a team captain, a crew team captain, or a crew coach, the Susan G Komen 3-Day For The Cure (say that five times fast – and if you can do it without stuttering, there’s a special legacy pin in it for you), awards pins for fundraising prowess. There’s a pin for the top individual fundraiser at a 3-Day … gold, of course, with a big dollar sign inside an even bigger star. There’s a pin for multi-event participants – people who participate in more than six 3-Day walks in a single year. That pin is gold with a little map of the USA specked with fifteen tiny stars showing the location of all the walks. There’s a gold pin with a big cheerful happy “5” for people who have done a 3-Day for five or more years running. There’s a gold pin showing three sneakers proudly held aloft …signifying the largest team, by membership, at a 3-Day.
There’s a gold pin with three big dollar signs and three big stars for the team that raises the most money at a 3-Day, in terms of outright money raised… and a similar pin for the team that raises the most money per capita, even if it’s not the most money raised outright. There are green Power Team pins for walker teams that raise in excess of $3,300 per member (averaged) and for the crew team that raises the most money, period.
There are pins for crew members who raise $500 or more… and pins for walkers who raise $3,000, $5,000, $10,000, and $15,000.
I’ll happily take my hard hat off to anyone who I meet at a 3-Day with any of those pins on. While the walking is wonderfully fun and totally inspiring (seriously), it’s fund-raising prowess that really fuels the fight against breast cancer.
Never let it be said that the Komen folks aren’t without a sense of humor. We know that a 3-Day doesn’t always turn out the way it’s planned. From torrential rainstorms with lightning and thunder that force the closure of the route in the middle of the first day, to having to ride the “SAG” bus to camp when our blisters and shin splints and tendonitis and such get to be too much to bear, to winding up as the very last walker, the absolute Tail-End Charlie, to make it to camp or to closing on a given day, things can happen that we’re not 100% thrilled about. And so, to make up for it, we get a Legacy Pin! Yes!
Okay, in actuality, I think the Komen folks decided to stop awarding the ominous little pin with the thundercloud and the lightning bolts that signified “SURVIVED A RELO” this year but my wife Carole and I earned that one for the 3-Day From Heck, Philadelphia 2009, where two whole days of a walk were cancelled outright when a pair of freezing cold nor’easter storms of biblical proportions – up to and including rains of frogs and stale Tastykakes – hit the City of Brotherly Love on the same weekend. If the weather hadn’t let up a bit on the third and final day of the walk we’d probably be sporting little black frowny face pins reading “ARGH!” We’d take the "relocation" pin any day over that one.
But they do have a pin for the last walker into camp: a light blue pin with a proud walker bearing a white flag aloft – and I’m sure the resemblance to a surrender flag is completely coincidental, because doggedly continuing to walk, even though you’re the last walker on the route, when you could just say “UNCLE” and catch a sag bus to camp – well, that takes some serious guts and determination. And there’s definitely no shame in “earning” the Sagged and Proud pin, with its happily smiling little white motor coach on a light blue background… we’d rather you took a bus to camp when something annoying like a stress fracture or heatstroke wipes you out, rather than going on to the point of doing yourself serious damage. I’ve never received the Last Walker pin nor the Sagged and Proud pin but if I ever do, I’ll wear ‘em with pride. I mean, it'd mean that at least I was out there trying when I could have been at home on the couch watching a monster truck rally on PBS.
They even have a pin for Best Decorated Tent at camp. I may have to explain that one a bit for those of you who’ve never been to a 3-Day. Camping at a 3-Day has absolutely nothing in common with the last tenting vacation you and your family took, where you had a giant dome-shaped Coleman tent with a generator, television set, gas stove, portable refrigerator, and Domino’s on speed-dial for when Daddy couldn’t get the gas stove lit. Instead, you’ve got to visualize one to two thousand absolutely identical hot pink tents, each just large enough for two adults to lie side by side in fairly intimate proximity to one another and with their (cough, cough) thirty-five pounds’ worth of gear (clothing, water bottles, spare shoes, spare socks, flashlights for trips to the Port-o-jons at night, you name it) piled up around them. Two thousand 6’ by 6’ tents, side by side, so close to one another that when you sneeze at 3 o’clock in the morning voices from all around you say “Gesundheit”. And as anyone who’s crawled on hands and knees out of a tent into the midnight gloom and dew to make a shambling nocturnal visit to the lovely green plastic port-o-jons can tell you, there are few joys on God’s green earth greater than the joy of turning to return to your tent for a few more hours of fitful sleeping only to realize with a shock that your dim recollection of sleeping in a hot pink tent somewhere over there is a wholly insufficient means of finding your way back to your sleeping bag and your teammate and the comforts of home. But imagine that your tent is situated just across from the tent with the full-sized recreation of Amelia Earhart’s doomed Lockheed Electra (in pink, with a giant 44-EEE bra dangling from each aileron) atop it and just down the way from the tent with the flashing neon signs reading “HOT LADIES HOT” in three contrasting colors and just up from the tent with the white picket fence, lawn ornaments, and statue of June Cleaver (complete with pearls, vacuum cleaner, and 44-EEE bra)… and you’ll realize that such things make finding your tent in the darkness of night much easier. Handing out a few legacy pins for tent decorating is a small price to pay if it means fewer sleepy walkers wandering into the wrong tents or worse, accidentally crossing six lanes of traffic and winding up in the coaster maintenance shed at a nearby Six Flags amusement park.
In this category one might mention a few retired legacy pins from previous years. They used to award a Rock Star legacy pin to anyone who finished in the top three singers in the camp karaoke competition – no, I’m not making that one up – and I’ve heard that they used to give a legacy pin of some sort to anyone who visited the Medical tent at a pit stop or at camp. I think it goes without saying that that pin was perhaps not the smartest idea – especially if men are involved. “Hey, Bob, take a running start at that tree over there. We’ll take your unconscious, bruised body to the Medical tent and it’s legacy pins for the lot of us!!!” As for the Rock Star pin... it was retired for a good reason – they eliminated the championship round of the karaoke competition when they started having country music star Candy Coburn come to each 3-Day and sing for the walkers and crew on the evening of Day 2.
The last pin of all – of the ones they still hand out – is the legendary Survivors Pin. While we respect each and every survivor of breast cancer who takes part in a Susan G Komen 3-Day For The Cure and honor them with a special pink victory shirt at the finish line (the rest of us walkers get white shirts and the crew members get gray), a select few walkers are selected to be in the Survivors Circle during opening and closing ceremonies, bearing flags, joining hands and raising them high in triumph, and ultimately, raising the final flag of the event, the one that reads “A World Without Breast Cancer”. A little blue legacy pin showing the Survivors Circle with their hands joined is the least we can give these ambassadors of hope for their contributions to the event and for reminding all of us what we’re walking for.
Speaking of which -- if you're reading this and wondering, "Hey, I qualified for some of those pins -- where do I get them???" The 3-Day organizers used to mail the captain pins and so on out when you registered as a team captain. Others would be sent when other criteria were met... but now, only the walker and crew pins are mailed out. All the others that you qualify for are handed out at the "3-Day Cafe" at camp, on event. It's part of the "3-Day Main Street" section of camp and there'll be a member of the Camp Services crew there any time camp is open, up until 9 pm Friday and Saturday evening, to award you any pins you've qualified for.
As the bearer of so much swag – with more to come, hopefully, when I finally walk the Tampa Bay 3-Day in late October and get to receive pins for my team (okay, okay, my ‘team’ is my wife and I, but it still counts) qualifying as a Power Team and for my own fundraising prowess (if all continues to go well, I will receive at least the $5K pin) – I often muse about other legacy pins that should be awarded to 3-Day participants, if only the logistics and process for awarding them could be worked out.
For example:
· The Hydration Hero pin, awarded to any walker who so thoroughly drinks her (or his!) share of water and sports drink during the day that multiple, say, three or more, night-time visits to the, um, facilities are required. The pin would depict a port-o-jon and a crescent moon waxing in the sky overhead.
· The Drag King pin, for any male walker who walks the entire 60 miles wearing at least three pieces of female lingerie prominently featured on the outside of his clothing. The pin would show a giant, tassel-equipped sequined bra.
· The Stretch Armstrong pin, for any walker who actually does the five minutes per hour of stretching that the training and walking plan recommends. (It sets a good example for the rest of us slackers.) What would the pin depict? I dunno. A pretzel? Work with me here.
· The Wombat pin – awarded personally to any walker named Julie Brock who takes part in the 3-Day dressed in a light, stylish, breathable wombat suit. (A bit of a niche pin, but if you’re sufficiently motivated, you could earn it! What’s a name change when a legacy pin is up for grabs?)
· The Gratitude pin – awarded to any walker who takes the time out to thank at least one member of every crew team that helps them on a 3-Day. A pink pin with a thumbs-up logo, obviously.
I could go on. The 3-Day is full of unsung heroes who will go officially unrecognized… but who will not go unappreciated. Anyone who has been there on a 3-Day when your feet are just about to give out and has had a fellow walker or a crew member give you the encouragement that helped you go on… anyone who has seen a member of the unsung Camp Hydration crew refilling water stations in the dark at 10 pm, or has been in camp to witness the Camp Logistics crew dealing with the back-breaking loads of garbage left behind the morning of Day 3… anyone who’s broken down crying in the Remembrance Tent on a Saturday evening when you’re trying to write in the memory book about your mom, or your sister, or your best friend, and has had a fellow walker come over and wordlessly give you a hug and let you know that you’re not alone… you know the 3-Day staff and organizers could never recognize all the people who make a difference.
They leave that to us.
