The Streets of Philadelphia
Dec. 28th, 2011 02:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jayfurrThere are all kinds of ways to walk a three-day sixty mile charity walk.
You can walk the distance slowly and take in every sight and sound and smell along the way.
You can walk really slowly, limping every step of the way but gamely trying to stay off the sweep vans.
You can walk with a big team, trying to stay at their pace, taking pit stops and lunch breaks as a group, making sure that no one gets left behind.
You can walk with a partner, starting each day fast and getting slower and slower throughout the day as exhaustion and soreness and aches set in.
You can walk while suffering from a really, really bad cold and come in dead last.
I have tried all of these methods. Not always willingly, mind you. I've walked slow and I've walked sick and I've walked injured and I've walked with a team and I've walked solo.
But once in a while, when you're walking as a solo walker and the weather couldn't be nicer and you feel in tip-top condition and there're wonderful people waiting around every corner to cheer you on... you may just feel like going fast.
As anyone who's ever taken part in a 3-Day For The Cure can tell you, it's not about who finishes first. It's not about who finishes last -- although, sure, we do make a very big deal out of the last walker. It's about the journey and, when you get right down to it, it's about the fundraising. Every walker raises a minimum of $2,300. That's the real accomplishment. Someone who goes balls-out fast isn't doing more to cure breast cancer than someone who rides a sweep van for 55 of the 60 miles, assuming they both raised the same amount of money... and for all one knows, that lady on the sweep van might have raised $20,000 to your $2,300. It's best not to base estimates of dedication on someone's walking speed.
So, okay, no, I don't claim any special prize for having been, er, the first walker to finish on Day 1 of the 2011 Philadelphia Susan G. Komen 3-Day For The Cure. Nor do I want a prize for finishing tenth or so on Day 2. Nor do I feel especially impressed by myself for slowing down just a bit and finishing in 100th place (out of 2,200 or so) on Day 3.
I'll come right out and say it: I basically speed-walked Philly.
I didn't run. I just tend to walk fast when I'm on my own and when I'm not walking with a team or with my wife. See, I do a lot of my training by walking home from work -- 20 miles. Even if I sneak out the door early and get on the road by 4:30 pm, it's still going to take me quite some time to get home, and I'd rather not be there on the side of the road trudging along at 3:00 in the morning. So I train by walking four miles an hour for five hours, and I get home around 9:30 or 10:00. I've done it so many times that it's second nature to me; I don't even feel as though I'm hurrying.
Now, put me on the streets of a 3-Day city and tell me to walk slowly in the back of the pack, shuffling along behind others for miles and miles as we leave the Opening Ceremonies area, going maybe two miles an hour. Uh huh. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt. There's nothing wrong with walking slowly -- again, the slow walkers did just as much to cure breast cancer as the fast walkers. They each raised the $2,300 (or more) and they can walk whatever speed they like.
Anyone who has ever been stuck behind a slow driver on their daily commute knows how frustrating it can be to go much much much more slowly than what you're used to. You may think of yourself as the most mild-mannered person alive on the planet, but after about a mile of going half the speed limit, you find yourself muttering unprintable oaths straight out of a bad dime novel.
I respect the slow walkers. I've been a slow walker. But when I'm completely healthy and walking as a solo walker and the weather is great and I'm feeling cheerful and full of get-up-and-go, it's awfully hard to hold myself back. So once in a while, I don't.
My first experience speed-walking a 3-Day was in the Twin Cities 3-Day in August of 2010. I really cut loose on that 3-Day and was done with each day almost before I knew it. But that left me with plenty of time to think some fairly depressing thoughts about cancer and the toll it takes. I spent that walk walking completely by myself for miles -- literally with no one in sight for long stretches.
This time I tried to stay with other walkers. Other fast walkers, admittedly. And for the most part, that worked out fine. For the most part. But I'll save the details on that for later.
The Philly 3-Day took place the weekend of October 14-16, 2011. The weekend started out rainy (which did not make me terribly happy, given my memories of the torrential rains that plagued the 2009 Philly 3-Day), but all the bad weather miraculously went away about an hour before opening ceremonies got underway at the Willow Grove Park Mall. I showed up for the walk wearing my usual pink hard hat (which I've worn for every one of my 3-Day walks since 2009), a pink tie-dyed shirt (inexpertly created by yours truly), and a brown Utilikilt. Um, and a cute little pink Vermont Teddy Bear named "Hope".
Hope's been a mascot of sorts for my wife and me since we wound up with her after a raffle last year. We raffled off three pink Vermont Teddy Bears from their Breast Cancer Bear collection, but one of the winners didn't actually want the bear she'd won, so we wound up keeping her. Hope's come along on multiple walks -- she was with us in Boston in July (when we served as Route Cleanup crew) and she was with us in San Francisco in September when we did that walk. With my wife done with her 3-Day walks for 2011, it was just Hope and me walking together. Yeah, a few people thought I was kinda weird -- grown man, wearing a kilt, a pink hard hat, carrying a teddy bear. But those people seemed quite ready to give Hope a high-5 at the cheering stations, so it's all good.
There were many sights and sounds worth remembering from opening ceremonies. I ran into many acquaintances from the 2009 3-Day and we all prayerfully agreed that better weather this time around would be a fine thing, well worth having. I encountered the Youth Corps -- 2011 is the first year that 3-Day cities other than Boston had their own corps of youth volunteers assisting the crew. If the energy they showed at opening ceremonies was any guide, the Philly Youth Corps was at least as excited and ready for action as the Boston kids. I ran into Jim Hillman, a California walker attempting to take part in all 14 2011 3-Day walks (he succeeded); I'd originally met Jim a few weeks earlier while walking in the San Francisco Bay Area walk. And I ran into my tentmate, Ken Wells, and his teammates, Sandy Smith and Meg Muiuo, walking in memory of Ken's wife Cheryl, who passed away from breast cancer early last year. Ken and I were randomly assigned together by the tent assignment system and had never met in person -- it was good to have a face to put with the name and the sad CaringBridge journal entries.
Opening Ceremonies are always a wonderful experience. I've been through (stops, counts on fingers) 11 of them (although one year we didn't really have Opening -- Philadelphia 2009 was shortened to a very abbreviated version of events due to weather) and they're always motivational and inspirational. Dr. Sheri Phillips, our new spokesperson and event master of ceremonies, has really done a nice job taking over from Jenne' Fromm and getting the walkers and crewmembers pumped up. It was nice to see Kristian and Kenneth Kauker, long-time members of the Route Safety crew, honoring their mother, Julie Kauker, who lost her fight this past year.
I had a front-row view of the stage during opening; you learn to be first in line to get into the holding area because those walkers get to be down front during opening and, as a result, first onto the route once the route opens. I learned the hard way how frustrating it is to be at the back of the pack during a 3-Day, going at the speed of the very slowest walkers but unable to pass because of narrow sidewalks and three thousand people in front of you.
I made good time over the first mile of the route, smiling amiably at my fellow walkers as I eased by them, picking my way carefully until I had open space in front of me and was able to start walking my normal 4 miles an hour walking pace. And then after that it was just a lovely day for a walk. A few walkers were still in front of me and I wasn't desperate to pass them; it's not a race, after all.
I was very pleased by the community support. We had whole schools' worth of kids out to cheer us on:
We had a whole street that had come out to cheer us, going so far as to put up sawhorses to keep everyone else out:
Hope made lots of friends along the route (below, with Wendy Sklaroff, member of the Lunch crew):
Bit by bit, I passed every walker who was still ahead of me on the route. Well, almost every other walker. I spent the last six miles or so of the route walking with a pair of other walkers, both women, both really determined that I not get ahead of them. THEY wanted to be first. Since I pretend to be a gentleman now and then, I decided to oblige them. We arrived at the 'finish line' at Pit Stop 5, high atop Belmont Plateau, where we took buses down to the camp at the Philadelphia Convention Center. Just as we got on the buses, the skies opened up again and rained hard for a few minutes -- and I was really glad I'd hustled.
We made it to the Convention Center around 1:30 or so. I'd never been to a 3-Day where camp had been held indoors and it was definitely a different experience. We had to go up an escalator to get scanned in as offically finishing the route, around a corner and down a hall into a giant, cavernous room to collect our bags, and then into another cavernous room to set up our tents. Some of the crew, of course, were already there -- the Camp Logistics crew and Camp Services crew had been onsite setting everything up for us. But otherwise, it was really quiet, really empty, and there were NO LINES for the shower trucks (which were parked outside the convention center in the loading dock area). Imagine that!
I had no idea where my tentmate was and hadn't asked if he'd brought tent decorations, but I went ahead and stuck some balloons on top of the tent so it'd be easy to find when I came back from showering and exploring and found my tent surrounded by thousands of other tents. (Turns out that was a pretty good idea.)
After my shower, I explored the Convention Center, re-organized all my gear, cheered in other walkers, helped set up a few tents, and then had dinner:
Hope and I made the most of the short lines for everything. I don't think I've had a chance to use the "massage chairs" on the "3-Day Main Street" in a long time -- the lines are usually super-long. But with everything out of the way and a whole relaxing evening in front of us, Hope and I took the time to slip on some sterile blue plastic booties and enjoy.
Then we went over to the yoga mats and did some stretching:
I even found time, through a complicated set of circumstances, to appear on the local news as a "supporter" of a breast cancer survivor who I'd found myself eating dinner with. Didn't get to talk, didn't get asked any questions, but got to stand there in the background grinning like an idiot holding Hope.
Eventually it was time for the evening entertainment in the "dining tent". We welcomed in the last walker:
We heard from Dr. Sheri Phillips again, recognized the top fundraiser for the event (a first time walker who'd raised more in one year than I have in FOUR years walking), and heard all about how great we were.
Then before we knew it, it was time for bed... only that's when I realized there was a major, major drawback to this whole "sleeping indoors" thing ... first, walls and ceilings reflect and magnify noise. It was NOISY in the tenting area. Second, they didn't turn all the lights off -- only about half of them, so some poor people found their tents directly under floodlights... and others seemed to be operating under the assumption that if lights were on, it was okay to have loud cell phone conversations right there in their tents, never mind who might be trying to get to sleep next to them. I eventually had to go over and stand outside one particularly chatty walker's tent and say "it is TIME to HANG UP that CELL PHONE" in my sternest, High School Principal voice. (Quiet applause came from the tents around us.)
On Day 2, we walked from the convention center in a big loop up north and west, through places like Bala Cynwyd and Narberth. It was an absolutely super-spectacular day with no rain at all. The cheering stations were PACKED:
I didn't walk quite as fast on Day 2. For one, I was far from the first walker on the route -- many hundreds of people were already lined up waiting to be scanned out when I joined the line, and as a result, I was still moseying along behind people for about half the day. The 3-Day has small flags that participants can carry along the route, small versions of the Futures and Honor and Survivors flags that are carried in opening and closing ceremonies. I was able to snag the "Hope" flag at Pit Stop 1 where another walker had dropped it off and kept it with me most of the day:
Hope quite liked the flag and I liked walking with Hope. After all, that's why we walk in the 3-Day in the first place, isn't it? Because we have hope that a cure will be found and that one day we will all live in a world without breast cancer.
I never did catch up to the leaders on Day 2. I wasn't trying hard to do so, either. Each time I got to a pit stop, the walkers I was with would always ask "Hey, what number are we?" and the crewmember with the little clicker gadget would glance down and say "You're 14, 15, and 16" and we'd go "Cool, thanks", and move on. Right up until a walker named Abby and I got to Pit 4 and got told "You're the first ones here!"
We didn't find out for a few minutes how we'd suddenly jumped from being 14th to being first -- but eventually learned that route signs had been placed in inopportune places and, in at least one case, actually taken down by a road construction crew. Walkers had kept on going past a turn that would have taken them to Pit Stop 4 and instead found themselves far, far off the route before they finally realized that something was amiss. (When you're making good time, sometimes you just put your head down and keep moving, glancing up periodically to see if a sign's there to tell you to turn. If you don't see one, you assume that you're supposed to keep going straight.) They got redirected onto the route by staff members sent out to locate them, and as a result, when I got to Pit Stop 5, things were back to normal. I believe that when I got to the last stop of the day, Grab and Go B, I was in tenth position.
The last few miles of the long, 22-mile Day 2 route were along the river and back into downtown. Again, it was just a perfect day for walking: sunny and scenic. I can't tell you how many wonderful conversations I found myself in. Some of them were rather sad, when you get right down to it -- after all, many people I met were walking in honor of or in memory of a breast cancer victim, but the hope and enthusiasm for the cause was really inspiring.
I'll freely admit that I was just a little bit tired when I got back to the convention center and got scanned in, but not too tired to pose for a photo with the just ever so slightly bored members of the Camp Services crew waiting to scan walkers in off the route:
I got back to camp on Day 2 around 2:30 pm and after showering and changing, went "okay, now what do I do?" And that's how I came to spend a couple of hours outside the Convention Center cheering walkers in.
Including the last walker of Day 2:
The high point of the evening was the testimony from the Youth Corps -- 20 kids, all between the ages of 10 and 18, all affected by breast cancer in their families. Each kid got to take the microphone and share their story with thousands of walkers and crew in the "dining tent".
Not a dry eye in the house, or on the stage, either:
Day 3 was another beautiful day. We broke down our tents, packed up our gear and handed our duffels over to the crew, then hit the road for a 14.5 mile route looping west across the Schuykill into the area around the University of Pennsylvania and the hospitals, then back across, through downtown again, and then south into South Philadelphia and on to the closing ceremonies at the Navy Pier.
I walked a good bit slower on Day 3 because I found myself walking for a ways with they hyper-competitive walkers I'd ended Day 1 with, and frankly, that got old after a while. I kept arriving at pit stops before they'd technically opened, and one of the obscure rules of the 3-Day is that you cannot leave a pit stop until it's formally opened -- thereby avoiding having walkers so far ahead on the route that the pit stops aren't even ready for them. Each time I arrived, I'd find a cadre of ten or so walkers standing eyeing their watches, walking in place, glaring at the crew captain who was trying to keep them from leaving. Walking fast is one thing. That sort of behavior is just silly.
So I started hanging around at stops talking to the crew and taking lots of photos... but still wound up at the lunch stop around position 100 out of 2200.
With a short Day 3 route, we were at the Navy Yard, scene of Closing Ceremonies, before we knew it:
Hope and I crossed the finish line at 1 pm on the dot -- and closing ceremonies weren't until 4:30. So, yeah, I took lots and lots and lots of pictures and cheered other walkers in:
Meg and Ken and Sandy finished around 2:45:
My friend (and survivor) Anne Moss came in around 3:22:
But eventually it was time for closing. The survivors went off together to form up for their parade, the crew members went another to line up, and we walkers were formed into a long column, ten walkers wide for our procession. Somehow, through sheer dumb luck, I was in the right place at the right time and wound up dead front center again, right up next to the stage when we were done walking in. We cheered the crew in, and then all together, we took our shoes off and held them on high in honor of the survivors. It's a 3-Day thing. It's a way of saying "We walk for you."
Closing was as tearful and sentimental as always, and if you've never walked in the 3-Day ... well, you'll just have to come walk sometime to find out all you missed. But we celebrated and we honored and we cried.
And altogether we raised $5.9 million for the fight against breast cancer.
I'm glad to have been there and glad to have had a chance to walk in the streets of Philadelphia, all sixty miles. I'd never stopped regretting that the 2009 Philadelphia 3-Day turned into a one-day 14-mile walk, thanks to horrible, cold, rainy, miserable, windy weather. It was great to see the enthusiastic cheering stations, enjoy the scenic vistas of Fairmount Park and elsewhere, and get to know so many of my fellow walkers and members of the crew. But no matter how positive the experience may have been... I'm still sorry as hell that we have to hold such events.
Because as long as we keep adding pictures to the Remembrance Tent...
... our work is still far, far from finished.
You can walk the distance slowly and take in every sight and sound and smell along the way.
You can walk really slowly, limping every step of the way but gamely trying to stay off the sweep vans.
You can walk with a big team, trying to stay at their pace, taking pit stops and lunch breaks as a group, making sure that no one gets left behind.
You can walk with a partner, starting each day fast and getting slower and slower throughout the day as exhaustion and soreness and aches set in.
You can walk while suffering from a really, really bad cold and come in dead last.
I have tried all of these methods. Not always willingly, mind you. I've walked slow and I've walked sick and I've walked injured and I've walked with a team and I've walked solo.
But once in a while, when you're walking as a solo walker and the weather couldn't be nicer and you feel in tip-top condition and there're wonderful people waiting around every corner to cheer you on... you may just feel like going fast.
As anyone who's ever taken part in a 3-Day For The Cure can tell you, it's not about who finishes first. It's not about who finishes last -- although, sure, we do make a very big deal out of the last walker. It's about the journey and, when you get right down to it, it's about the fundraising. Every walker raises a minimum of $2,300. That's the real accomplishment. Someone who goes balls-out fast isn't doing more to cure breast cancer than someone who rides a sweep van for 55 of the 60 miles, assuming they both raised the same amount of money... and for all one knows, that lady on the sweep van might have raised $20,000 to your $2,300. It's best not to base estimates of dedication on someone's walking speed.
So, okay, no, I don't claim any special prize for having been, er, the first walker to finish on Day 1 of the 2011 Philadelphia Susan G. Komen 3-Day For The Cure. Nor do I want a prize for finishing tenth or so on Day 2. Nor do I feel especially impressed by myself for slowing down just a bit and finishing in 100th place (out of 2,200 or so) on Day 3.
I'll come right out and say it: I basically speed-walked Philly.
I didn't run. I just tend to walk fast when I'm on my own and when I'm not walking with a team or with my wife. See, I do a lot of my training by walking home from work -- 20 miles. Even if I sneak out the door early and get on the road by 4:30 pm, it's still going to take me quite some time to get home, and I'd rather not be there on the side of the road trudging along at 3:00 in the morning. So I train by walking four miles an hour for five hours, and I get home around 9:30 or 10:00. I've done it so many times that it's second nature to me; I don't even feel as though I'm hurrying.
Now, put me on the streets of a 3-Day city and tell me to walk slowly in the back of the pack, shuffling along behind others for miles and miles as we leave the Opening Ceremonies area, going maybe two miles an hour. Uh huh. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt. There's nothing wrong with walking slowly -- again, the slow walkers did just as much to cure breast cancer as the fast walkers. They each raised the $2,300 (or more) and they can walk whatever speed they like.
Anyone who has ever been stuck behind a slow driver on their daily commute knows how frustrating it can be to go much much much more slowly than what you're used to. You may think of yourself as the most mild-mannered person alive on the planet, but after about a mile of going half the speed limit, you find yourself muttering unprintable oaths straight out of a bad dime novel.
I respect the slow walkers. I've been a slow walker. But when I'm completely healthy and walking as a solo walker and the weather is great and I'm feeling cheerful and full of get-up-and-go, it's awfully hard to hold myself back. So once in a while, I don't.
My first experience speed-walking a 3-Day was in the Twin Cities 3-Day in August of 2010. I really cut loose on that 3-Day and was done with each day almost before I knew it. But that left me with plenty of time to think some fairly depressing thoughts about cancer and the toll it takes. I spent that walk walking completely by myself for miles -- literally with no one in sight for long stretches.
This time I tried to stay with other walkers. Other fast walkers, admittedly. And for the most part, that worked out fine. For the most part. But I'll save the details on that for later.
The Philly 3-Day took place the weekend of October 14-16, 2011. The weekend started out rainy (which did not make me terribly happy, given my memories of the torrential rains that plagued the 2009 Philly 3-Day), but all the bad weather miraculously went away about an hour before opening ceremonies got underway at the Willow Grove Park Mall. I showed up for the walk wearing my usual pink hard hat (which I've worn for every one of my 3-Day walks since 2009), a pink tie-dyed shirt (inexpertly created by yours truly), and a brown Utilikilt. Um, and a cute little pink Vermont Teddy Bear named "Hope".
Hope's been a mascot of sorts for my wife and me since we wound up with her after a raffle last year. We raffled off three pink Vermont Teddy Bears from their Breast Cancer Bear collection, but one of the winners didn't actually want the bear she'd won, so we wound up keeping her. Hope's come along on multiple walks -- she was with us in Boston in July (when we served as Route Cleanup crew) and she was with us in San Francisco in September when we did that walk. With my wife done with her 3-Day walks for 2011, it was just Hope and me walking together. Yeah, a few people thought I was kinda weird -- grown man, wearing a kilt, a pink hard hat, carrying a teddy bear. But those people seemed quite ready to give Hope a high-5 at the cheering stations, so it's all good.
There were many sights and sounds worth remembering from opening ceremonies. I ran into many acquaintances from the 2009 3-Day and we all prayerfully agreed that better weather this time around would be a fine thing, well worth having. I encountered the Youth Corps -- 2011 is the first year that 3-Day cities other than Boston had their own corps of youth volunteers assisting the crew. If the energy they showed at opening ceremonies was any guide, the Philly Youth Corps was at least as excited and ready for action as the Boston kids. I ran into Jim Hillman, a California walker attempting to take part in all 14 2011 3-Day walks (he succeeded); I'd originally met Jim a few weeks earlier while walking in the San Francisco Bay Area walk. And I ran into my tentmate, Ken Wells, and his teammates, Sandy Smith and Meg Muiuo, walking in memory of Ken's wife Cheryl, who passed away from breast cancer early last year. Ken and I were randomly assigned together by the tent assignment system and had never met in person -- it was good to have a face to put with the name and the sad CaringBridge journal entries.
Opening Ceremonies are always a wonderful experience. I've been through (stops, counts on fingers) 11 of them (although one year we didn't really have Opening -- Philadelphia 2009 was shortened to a very abbreviated version of events due to weather) and they're always motivational and inspirational. Dr. Sheri Phillips, our new spokesperson and event master of ceremonies, has really done a nice job taking over from Jenne' Fromm and getting the walkers and crewmembers pumped up. It was nice to see Kristian and Kenneth Kauker, long-time members of the Route Safety crew, honoring their mother, Julie Kauker, who lost her fight this past year.
I had a front-row view of the stage during opening; you learn to be first in line to get into the holding area because those walkers get to be down front during opening and, as a result, first onto the route once the route opens. I learned the hard way how frustrating it is to be at the back of the pack during a 3-Day, going at the speed of the very slowest walkers but unable to pass because of narrow sidewalks and three thousand people in front of you.
I made good time over the first mile of the route, smiling amiably at my fellow walkers as I eased by them, picking my way carefully until I had open space in front of me and was able to start walking my normal 4 miles an hour walking pace. And then after that it was just a lovely day for a walk. A few walkers were still in front of me and I wasn't desperate to pass them; it's not a race, after all.
I was very pleased by the community support. We had whole schools' worth of kids out to cheer us on:
We had a whole street that had come out to cheer us, going so far as to put up sawhorses to keep everyone else out:
Hope made lots of friends along the route (below, with Wendy Sklaroff, member of the Lunch crew):
Bit by bit, I passed every walker who was still ahead of me on the route. Well, almost every other walker. I spent the last six miles or so of the route walking with a pair of other walkers, both women, both really determined that I not get ahead of them. THEY wanted to be first. Since I pretend to be a gentleman now and then, I decided to oblige them. We arrived at the 'finish line' at Pit Stop 5, high atop Belmont Plateau, where we took buses down to the camp at the Philadelphia Convention Center. Just as we got on the buses, the skies opened up again and rained hard for a few minutes -- and I was really glad I'd hustled.
We made it to the Convention Center around 1:30 or so. I'd never been to a 3-Day where camp had been held indoors and it was definitely a different experience. We had to go up an escalator to get scanned in as offically finishing the route, around a corner and down a hall into a giant, cavernous room to collect our bags, and then into another cavernous room to set up our tents. Some of the crew, of course, were already there -- the Camp Logistics crew and Camp Services crew had been onsite setting everything up for us. But otherwise, it was really quiet, really empty, and there were NO LINES for the shower trucks (which were parked outside the convention center in the loading dock area). Imagine that!
I had no idea where my tentmate was and hadn't asked if he'd brought tent decorations, but I went ahead and stuck some balloons on top of the tent so it'd be easy to find when I came back from showering and exploring and found my tent surrounded by thousands of other tents. (Turns out that was a pretty good idea.)
After my shower, I explored the Convention Center, re-organized all my gear, cheered in other walkers, helped set up a few tents, and then had dinner:
Hope and I made the most of the short lines for everything. I don't think I've had a chance to use the "massage chairs" on the "3-Day Main Street" in a long time -- the lines are usually super-long. But with everything out of the way and a whole relaxing evening in front of us, Hope and I took the time to slip on some sterile blue plastic booties and enjoy.
Then we went over to the yoga mats and did some stretching:
I even found time, through a complicated set of circumstances, to appear on the local news as a "supporter" of a breast cancer survivor who I'd found myself eating dinner with. Didn't get to talk, didn't get asked any questions, but got to stand there in the background grinning like an idiot holding Hope.
Eventually it was time for the evening entertainment in the "dining tent". We welcomed in the last walker:
We heard from Dr. Sheri Phillips again, recognized the top fundraiser for the event (a first time walker who'd raised more in one year than I have in FOUR years walking), and heard all about how great we were.
Then before we knew it, it was time for bed... only that's when I realized there was a major, major drawback to this whole "sleeping indoors" thing ... first, walls and ceilings reflect and magnify noise. It was NOISY in the tenting area. Second, they didn't turn all the lights off -- only about half of them, so some poor people found their tents directly under floodlights... and others seemed to be operating under the assumption that if lights were on, it was okay to have loud cell phone conversations right there in their tents, never mind who might be trying to get to sleep next to them. I eventually had to go over and stand outside one particularly chatty walker's tent and say "it is TIME to HANG UP that CELL PHONE" in my sternest, High School Principal voice. (Quiet applause came from the tents around us.)
On Day 2, we walked from the convention center in a big loop up north and west, through places like Bala Cynwyd and Narberth. It was an absolutely super-spectacular day with no rain at all. The cheering stations were PACKED:
I didn't walk quite as fast on Day 2. For one, I was far from the first walker on the route -- many hundreds of people were already lined up waiting to be scanned out when I joined the line, and as a result, I was still moseying along behind people for about half the day. The 3-Day has small flags that participants can carry along the route, small versions of the Futures and Honor and Survivors flags that are carried in opening and closing ceremonies. I was able to snag the "Hope" flag at Pit Stop 1 where another walker had dropped it off and kept it with me most of the day:
Hope quite liked the flag and I liked walking with Hope. After all, that's why we walk in the 3-Day in the first place, isn't it? Because we have hope that a cure will be found and that one day we will all live in a world without breast cancer.
I never did catch up to the leaders on Day 2. I wasn't trying hard to do so, either. Each time I got to a pit stop, the walkers I was with would always ask "Hey, what number are we?" and the crewmember with the little clicker gadget would glance down and say "You're 14, 15, and 16" and we'd go "Cool, thanks", and move on. Right up until a walker named Abby and I got to Pit 4 and got told "You're the first ones here!"
We didn't find out for a few minutes how we'd suddenly jumped from being 14th to being first -- but eventually learned that route signs had been placed in inopportune places and, in at least one case, actually taken down by a road construction crew. Walkers had kept on going past a turn that would have taken them to Pit Stop 4 and instead found themselves far, far off the route before they finally realized that something was amiss. (When you're making good time, sometimes you just put your head down and keep moving, glancing up periodically to see if a sign's there to tell you to turn. If you don't see one, you assume that you're supposed to keep going straight.) They got redirected onto the route by staff members sent out to locate them, and as a result, when I got to Pit Stop 5, things were back to normal. I believe that when I got to the last stop of the day, Grab and Go B, I was in tenth position.
The last few miles of the long, 22-mile Day 2 route were along the river and back into downtown. Again, it was just a perfect day for walking: sunny and scenic. I can't tell you how many wonderful conversations I found myself in. Some of them were rather sad, when you get right down to it -- after all, many people I met were walking in honor of or in memory of a breast cancer victim, but the hope and enthusiasm for the cause was really inspiring.
I'll freely admit that I was just a little bit tired when I got back to the convention center and got scanned in, but not too tired to pose for a photo with the just ever so slightly bored members of the Camp Services crew waiting to scan walkers in off the route:
I got back to camp on Day 2 around 2:30 pm and after showering and changing, went "okay, now what do I do?" And that's how I came to spend a couple of hours outside the Convention Center cheering walkers in.
Including the last walker of Day 2:
The high point of the evening was the testimony from the Youth Corps -- 20 kids, all between the ages of 10 and 18, all affected by breast cancer in their families. Each kid got to take the microphone and share their story with thousands of walkers and crew in the "dining tent".
Not a dry eye in the house, or on the stage, either:
Day 3 was another beautiful day. We broke down our tents, packed up our gear and handed our duffels over to the crew, then hit the road for a 14.5 mile route looping west across the Schuykill into the area around the University of Pennsylvania and the hospitals, then back across, through downtown again, and then south into South Philadelphia and on to the closing ceremonies at the Navy Pier.
I walked a good bit slower on Day 3 because I found myself walking for a ways with they hyper-competitive walkers I'd ended Day 1 with, and frankly, that got old after a while. I kept arriving at pit stops before they'd technically opened, and one of the obscure rules of the 3-Day is that you cannot leave a pit stop until it's formally opened -- thereby avoiding having walkers so far ahead on the route that the pit stops aren't even ready for them. Each time I arrived, I'd find a cadre of ten or so walkers standing eyeing their watches, walking in place, glaring at the crew captain who was trying to keep them from leaving. Walking fast is one thing. That sort of behavior is just silly.
So I started hanging around at stops talking to the crew and taking lots of photos... but still wound up at the lunch stop around position 100 out of 2200.
With a short Day 3 route, we were at the Navy Yard, scene of Closing Ceremonies, before we knew it:
Hope and I crossed the finish line at 1 pm on the dot -- and closing ceremonies weren't until 4:30. So, yeah, I took lots and lots and lots of pictures and cheered other walkers in:
Meg and Ken and Sandy finished around 2:45:
My friend (and survivor) Anne Moss came in around 3:22:
But eventually it was time for closing. The survivors went off together to form up for their parade, the crew members went another to line up, and we walkers were formed into a long column, ten walkers wide for our procession. Somehow, through sheer dumb luck, I was in the right place at the right time and wound up dead front center again, right up next to the stage when we were done walking in. We cheered the crew in, and then all together, we took our shoes off and held them on high in honor of the survivors. It's a 3-Day thing. It's a way of saying "We walk for you."
Closing was as tearful and sentimental as always, and if you've never walked in the 3-Day ... well, you'll just have to come walk sometime to find out all you missed. But we celebrated and we honored and we cried.
And altogether we raised $5.9 million for the fight against breast cancer.
I'm glad to have been there and glad to have had a chance to walk in the streets of Philadelphia, all sixty miles. I'd never stopped regretting that the 2009 Philadelphia 3-Day turned into a one-day 14-mile walk, thanks to horrible, cold, rainy, miserable, windy weather. It was great to see the enthusiastic cheering stations, enjoy the scenic vistas of Fairmount Park and elsewhere, and get to know so many of my fellow walkers and members of the crew. But no matter how positive the experience may have been... I'm still sorry as hell that we have to hold such events.
Because as long as we keep adding pictures to the Remembrance Tent...
... our work is still far, far from finished.
