Jay Furr's Dreamwidth Blog

It's all the rage these days to grimace mockingly at stores full of pink products every October... to roll one's eyes at pink ribbons hung on walls and mounted in car windows. People love to talk about "pinkwashing" and question how big of an impact a penny per yogurt lid will have in the fight against breast cancer. Your neighbor Bob asks "Why do we make such a big deal about it? It's a disease. Where's the love for people with lung cancer? What about people with heart disease? Why don't we wallpaper downtown with whatever color ribbon they use for ... I dunno, cirrhosis?"

In some ways, the movement fighting breast cancer has been a victim of its own success. People get jaded by constant reminders that breast cancer is an awful disease, blah blah blah blah blah, isn't it wonderful that these brave women and men are fighting it with such spirit and courage, blah blah blah. Everywhere they look there're pink-ribbon products for sale, people Racing and Walking and Bowling and God Only Knows What For A Cure®, and there comes a point where they just want to say "SHUT UP ALREADY, I GOT IT, YOU'RE SICK."

Imagine for a second that your co-worker knocking on the door is asking for donations for the fight against ... skinned knees. Or the common cold. You'd want to say "oh come ON, people! People get skinned knees. People get colds. CRY ME A RIVER."

Yeah, that's sort of the situation that we sometimes find ourselves in when we talk about breast cancer. We're up against "awareness overkill". People are sick of the whole subject.

What good has all this "awareness" accomplished? Why do people like me keep right on walking and fundraising and, yes, wearing pink, and yes, hanging big illuminated pink ribbons in our living room windows? Why do we keep on acting as though there's something special about breast cancer, something that sets it apart from other diseases, cancers and otherwise?

Go back in time 25 years. Imagine that you're a woman who's discovered a lump in her breast. Imagine that your doctor is poorly informed about breast cancer treatment options and is ready to order a radical mastectomy without even considering other treatment options. Imagine that your family acts ... embarrassed about your cancer. Imagine that none of your friends feel comfortable discussing it. Imagine that people take you aside and ask you to just refer to it as a "female cancer" and not specify further exactly what part of your body is afflicted. Imagine that your insurance won't cover your treatment. Imagine that your employer lets you go when they find out that you're sick. Imagine that you're treated by everyone around you as though you've done something shameful, as though you've got a big scarlet "C" on your forehead. Imagine that your husband is unable to cope with the situation and asks for a divorce because he "just can't deal with it."

That's what life was like for many, if not most, women diagnosed with breast cancer just a few years ago. And in some respects, that's how it still is.

Some women still find themselves out of a job because their employers are not willing to deal with them taking time off, unpaid or otherwise. Women still find themselves ostracized by "friends" and fellow employees and people at church because breast cancer's come a'knocking, as though it's either contagious, a horrible disgrace, or both. HMOs find reasons to terminate health coverage when a woman is diagnosed with breast cancer. Want cites? I can provide them.

Many women of my acquaintance have gone through absolute hell in their battles with breast cancer... and not all of it's caused by the cancer. Friends they thought they could count on were suddenly not around. Phone calls have gone unanswered. Husbands have packed up and moved out. It's hard enough to keep your spirits up when you're up against a potential death sentence. Imagine how much harder it must be when your entire social network and support structure decides it doesn't want to be reminded of its own mortality and vamooses.

And this is the year 2012, people. If, for some women, it's that hard, still, in this day and age, imagine what things were like 25 years ago, before the Pink Ribbon Revolution had begun raising awareness, and eyebrows?

I regard the women and men of my acquaintance who wrestle every day with cancer as heroes. Not because they chose to get sick, because they didn't. But because I'm impressed as hell by anyone who can endure chemo, and radiation, and disfiguring surgery, get declared all better, only to wake up one morning and guess what's baaaaaaack? And go through the whole thing again. AND do so despite the jaded, breast-cancer-was-so-yesterday detachment of American society at large.

These women and men are heroes. They deal with crap the likes of which I can only imagine. And that's why every year, several times a year, you'll find me standing in a big crowd of people, all of us wearing gobs and gobs of pink, holding shoes over our head as survivors of breast cancer march tearfully, or proudly, or both, in front of us.

Each time I go off to a Susan G. Komen 3-Day walk, I never really know what I'm going to encounter on my sixty-mile, three-day journey. It may rain, it may be bakingly hot, it may even snow. I may walk with others, I may walk alone. I may end the journey feeling strong and happy... or I may finish limping, feeling sad and injured. But no matter what crosses my path, I know how every 3-Day journey will end: with a parade of survivors of breast cancer marching together into the Closing Ceremonies while I, and thousands of other walkers and crewmembers around me, hold a sneaker or running shoe in the air to honor them... to say "I walked for you."



We veteran walkers don't exactly go out of our way to tell new walkers and crewmembers about it, coming as it does at the end of a weekend full of challenge and fatigue: "You're gonna walk sixty miles, you're going to go pee in a whole bunch of port-o-jons, you're going to drink so much sports drink that you're going to sweat purple, you're gonna sleep in a pink tent, you're gonna get blisters on your blisters ... oh, and at the end, you're gonna stick your shoe up in the air." It's not really the sort of thing that you get by just getting told about it. You have to experience it.

That's why the very first time I attended closing ceremonies, at the Washington DC 3-Day in 2008, I found myself holding a cheap plastic sandal in the air during the parade of survivors. No one had told me about the whole shoes-in-the-air ritual, so when I found myself with about 90 minutes to kill between finishing the route and the start of closing ceremonies, I grabbed my gear bag and changed out of the hiking boots I'd worn all weekend and slipped on ... day-glo yellow and black sandals. Yeah, I felt just a tiny bit silly when I looked around and everyone was holding up their stinky, smelly, sweaty, well-worn-in sneakers and there I was, like a dork, sticking a Flip-Flop up in the air.

But no one laughed and pointed. I think they could excuse me for being a bit footsore and for having changed into something more comfortable. I had just walked sixty miles in support of women and men everywhere fighting breast cancer. If I wanted to hold up a Flip-Flop, then more power to me.

Since that fall weekend in Washington I've held up my sneakers (or, in one case, a heavy steel-toed boot I'd worn while spending the weekend collecting 3-Day garbage as captain of the Route Cleanup crew) 10 more times. And it never gets old. I'm honored to do it every time.

Many 3-Day participants cite it as the most evocative, moving, emotional part of the entire weekend... and that's just the walkers and crew talking. If you're a cancer survivor, and you've born your cross in silence... going through radiation and chemo and surgery and endless trips to and from the doctor... and now, finally, people... THOUSANDS of people... are saluting you and your struggle and your courage and your bravery... it's little wonder that many survivors are openly sobbing as they parade through at the end of Closing Ceremonies.



The tradition dates back, apparently, to the early 2000s, in the early days of the 60-mile breast cancer walks. No one's quite sure, apparently, who held up the first shoe, but it's hard to imagine the 3-Day ending without it. And it's not necessarily the same in every city: when I walked in Minneapolis/St. Paul in the summer of 2010, I was surprised to find that every walker just knew to drop to one knee as they raised their shoes on high. (I didn't mind this, although I was wearing a kilt and had to be ... careful as I knelt down.) And I'm given to understand that each year at the Michigan 3-Day, the assembled walkers hurl the roses they're given as they finish the walk into the center ring. Roses raining down on the survivors from all sides! (The roses are generally the thornless variety.)

I've asked survivors their impression of the shoe salute and I've never found anyone yet who's said "Yeah, that gets old after a while."

We often say that life on the 3-Day is life as it ought to be: full of support and acceptance and without judgment and without negativity. I'm sorry that there are still those who regard breast cancer as something to be ashamed of, and I'm sorry that there are so many people who "can't handle cancer" and turn their backs on loved ones and friends in need. And I'm very very very grateful for those who go the extra mile to support their wives and mothers and daughters and friends and co-workers... their heroes who refuse to give up and give in.

So if you at times find yourself a bit awareness-weary and think it's time we shifted our focus to another disease, something less ... well, intimate... think twice. We've come a long way, baby -- but we've got such a very long way left to go.

Spotted a $20 bill lying on the sidewalk?   Whoop!

Arrived at the airport late for your flight only to find that the flight's delayed and you'll easily make it after all?  Yeeha!

Put your last dollar down on 7 playing roulette -- and had 7 come up?  Awesome!

But none of these feelings can top the incredible, wonderful, ray-of-sunshine-on-a-cloudy-day feeling of opening your email and seeing a message with the subject line "A donation was made on your behalf".

When you sign up to walk in the Susan G. Komen 3-Day, you commit to raise a minimum of $2,300.  If you don't raise $2,300, you don't get to walk in the event.

Some of you might be thinking "Okay, so...?"  No one who's walked a 3-Day would say that, but if you're new to the event, or if you're merely an interested supporter or family member or friend of a walker, you might well be thinking that it'd be a good thing to miss out on a 3-Day.  No walking sixty miles, no sleeping in a tent, no widdling in portable toilets for three days.  WOO-HOO!  Right?

Right?

Bzzt!

If you've spent all summer training for a 3-Day -- walking five or six miles most weeknights, then walking eight, ten, fourteen, eighteen miles every Saturday and almost as many on Sunday -- you'd be beside yourself if all that training went for nothing because you didn't manage to raise the $2300.

To say nothing of how disappointed you'd be if you stood outside a Wal-Mart shaking a can asking for spare change, ran bake sales at the mall or library, emailed and wrote and called everyone you've been friends or even acquaintances with since, well, ever... and still came up short.

I've seen walkers in tears because after doing everything they could to raise funds they'd only raised, oh, $375 with two weeks to go until the walk.   You know those dreams we all have where we're back in high school and it's a week before graduation and you suddenly realize you've skipped this one class all year and aren't going to be able to graduate?   That dream is almost as bad as the feeling of being really, really, really short of your $2,300 goal with the 3-Day right around the corner.

A caveat: if you're short of $2,300, there is a way you can still walk -- you simply provide your own personal credit card and the Komen folks hit you for the difference.  It used to be that you could give a credit card and then have up to a month after the walk to make your target, but as of 2012, if you haven't raised enough by the week of the walk, it's "pay up or don't walk."

That may sound harsh, but the deferred self-donation program was developed years ago when a lot of donations were mailed in via snail mail and took weeks to process.   Nowadays, with the vast majority of donations coming in via online donations and posting immediately, there's no real reason to say "go ahead and walk, and we'll see what's still floating around in the pipeline, and if you're still short in a month, then we'll hit you for the difference."

So yeah, I can understand those tears from walkers who've done everything they can to raise funds and are still short.  I'd be sick -- absolutely sick -- if I'd spent all summer training and passing the hat and, well, begging -- and still came up short.

But there's a bright side -- most walkers who sign up do manage to make the $2,300 minimum.  In fact, many raise much more.   There are lots of fundraising ideas available on  the 3-Day website and they've been developed with care by experienced walkers who know what works and what doesn't.  But the simple fact remains -- that $2,300 doesn't come easy.  It comes in $5 and $10 donations.  Now and then you get $35.  Sometimes you get $50.  Sometimes you get $100 ... and sometimes you get a dollar because that's what the person who saw you standing out in the hot sun all day, dressed from head to toe in pink and shaking a can labeled "DONATIONS FOR BREAST CANCER" happened to have in their pocket.

There've been times in my five years walking 3-Day walks that I thought I'd written the greatest fundraising letter ever: poignant, funny, heart-warming, etcetera, etcetera.  And then:

...crickets

Day after day I'd check my email hoping to see some donations rolling in -- and found none.  I've had to ask my wife "Re-read the letter I sent out.  Did I absent-mindedly say something really awful in my letter?  Did I forget to actually ask for a donation or include my fundraising link?"  And she's looked it over and said "No, no, it was fine.  Are people not donating?"

But then, sometimes, out of the blue, lightning strikes.  I opened my email one day last summer to find that I'd gotten a donation -- a pretty darn big one -- from a former co-worker who just happened to have seen a short post I'd absent-mindedly posted on LinkedIn.  I hardly ever talk about the 3-Day on LinkedIn -- it seems to be a site where people post resumes, add their current and former co-workers as connections, and then forget all about.  But there it was, in my inbox --"A donation was made on your behalf".

And I'd been having a pretty rotten day at that point.  Suddenly, though, the clouds parted and angels sang hosannas.  I had to look twice at my email to prove I wasn't dreaming.  But there it was:  "A donation was made on your behalf".   I didn't know if it was going to be for $5 or for $125.   You've got to open the email to find out.  But that didn't matter -- it was a donation.   I was some unknown distance closer to making my fundraising minimum.   And then, when I opened the email, and saw the amount and who it was from, my perplexity at having gotten a donation from an unexpected source was definitely outweighed by my pleasure at the size of the donation.   Nothing could get me down the rest of that day, that's for sure.

(It's important to note that donations don't go into our pockets -- they go directly to Susan G. Komen For The Cure.  We walkers and crew have no direct monetary stake in the event at all -- except, of course, in the sense that we may  have to donate a big lump sum out of our own pockets if we come up short.)

People often ask "Why do you have to raise so much?  Why not lower the minimum?"

The 3-Day is a huge event in each city where it's held, 14 cities in all, involving anywhere from one thousand to over five thousand walkers and crew and volunteers and staff.   And that's with the minimum at $2,300.  If the minimum was $500, the event might draw 15,000 walkers and there's no way, logistically, that a 3-Day event of that size would be manageable.    And with that said, a much larger event with a much smaller minimum might raise less money than a smaller event with a larger minimum.

Participants who don't feel able to raise that much money can always take part in the Race for the Cure, which takes place in dozens of cities all across the USA and which has no fundraising minimum.  The 3-Day is for the real loonies -- the diehards who don't quail at the idea of walking sixty miles in 3 days OR the idea of raising $2,300.

Call me a loony.  Lots of people do.  But I maintain -- even though I know the task of raising all that money is hard -- it will come in time and I have faith in the goodness and generosity of my friends and co-workers and fellow church members.  After all, breast cancer affects one in every eight women, on average -- and I have a lot of friends and acquaintances.   Do the math.

But even with my faith, there's still no feeling quite as good as opening my email and seeing those magic words:

 "A donation was made on your behalf".

Because every time that happens, I know I'm one step closer to my fundraising minimum, and furthermore, we might -- we just might -- be one step closer to funding the clinical trial or discovering the drug that makes all this worthwhile.  And if we don't find a drug with the money I raise, well, helping fund mammograms is a pretty damn good thing too.

And another thing... no, never mind.  Let me cut to the chase:

Even though my graduate school alma mater, Virginia Tech, is currently doing its best to lose the Sugar Bowl right this second, I'm feeling pretty good about life.

Take a look:

Thanks, David, Ken, Joe, and Jill.   Thanks to you, today's been a good day.

For years now I've had a particular quote from French author Antoine de Saint-Exupery featured on my Facebook profile:

"What saves a man is to take a step. Then another step. It is always the same step, but you have to take it."

Faced with a challenge, faced with adversity, to overcome you must keep trying, keep on going, no matter what.

And I've tried to live my life that way.  I haven't always succeeded, but I've tried.

Another man, President Calvin Coolidge, said:

"Nothing in the world can take the place of Persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan 'Press On' has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race."

Winston Churchill expressed the same point in typical Churchillian fashion:

"Never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, give up. Never give up. Never give up. Never give up."

None of these men, however, with all their wisdom and sagacity, could top my dad.

When I was a kid, my father was fond of predicting that I would quit and give up.  Gratutiously so.   I will never forget the time I signed up to walk in the Blacksburg, Virginia "Hunger Hike" charity walk.   I was 11 or 12.  Dad ridiculed the idea of me walking 11 miles and spent a merry few weeks offering various predictions on how far into the walk I'd be when I decided to quit.

When the day of the walk came, I did just fine and spent most of the walk well in front of the mass of walkers; I arrived at the finish line (a few hundred yards from the starting line -- we'd walked a big loop and returned)  just in time to see my parents' familiar green Chevrolet van pulling up.  Dad and Mom were inside, still arguing over how absolutely pointless it was to be there so early when (according to Dad) I was no doubt sitting on my butt somewhere or trailing along at the back of the pack.

When I opened the door of the van and said "Hi!" his congratulatory words were absolutely heart-warming, just the kind of thing a young boy craving respect and approval would want to hear:

"You've been here the whole time, haven't you?  You didn't even walk."

Yeah, Dad could be a little harsh with his criticism.  He's mellowed as he's gotten older, but when I was a kid, he was absolutely withering in his belief that I'd give up on everything, every time.

But I've taken his words, and the words of Saint-Exupery, Coolidge, and Churchill to heart. When you start something, you finish it.  You don't cut corners.  You do it right.   In fact, if there's a way to hilariously over-do something, then I'll do that.  I'm kind of legendary among some of my friends for being bullheaded, stubborn, and annoyingly inflexible on this subject.

And that brings me to the point of this article.

This past October, I took part in the Atlanta Susan G. Komen 3-Day For The Cure -- a 60-mile, 3-day walk to raise funds for the fight against breast cancer.  I walked as a member and co-captain of a group of 32 walkers and crew, "Team Twitter ATL".  We drew our members from all over the USA; the largest number, to be sure, were from the southeast, but we had two members from California, one from Illinois, two from Massachusetts, and so on, and so on -- and the two captains flew in from Connecticut and Vermont.  Every walker member had raised at least $2,300 (the event minimum) for the fight against breast cancer, and some had raised much more.   Collectively, we raised just over $50,000 -- and I salute the members of my team for their tireless efforts to spread the word and pass the hat.

As founder of the team, I had espoused a simple rule: we leave no walker to struggle in on their own while the rest of us race on ahead.  I have heard too many stories of walkers who are all but abandoned by their speed-walking teams and left to trail in to camp hours after the rest of the team has finished for the day, and I promised that sort of thing would not happen.   People could go on ahead, but I would stay behind with any slow-paced walker, no matter how slowly they went.   If they wound up having to hop on a sweep van, I'd then hurry forward to catch up to whomever was next slowest, and so on.   If this all makes it sound like I was pretty darn confident in my own walking abilities, then, well, I summed things up accurately.

As a walker, I'm usually one of the most fit and most able 3-Day participants.  I walk a lot as I train for each event.  I walk home from work once or twice a week during the warm summer months ... and I live 18 miles from my office.  I've speed-walked two 3-Days; sometimes it just feels good to cut loose (but never when I was a member of a team).    The Atlanta 3-Day would be my eighth 3-Day walk and I was quite, quite sure that I'd be able to rise to any challenge on the route.  It turns out that I was wrong: what I had not counted on was the physical strain of going slow.

I'm a tall guy.  I stand 6'2" and I've got long legs.  When I walk home from work, I walk four miles an hour without even really working hard.  I rarely take breaks; I just keep on going and going and going like a big ungainly ugly bearded Energizer bunny.

When I walked with my team in Atlanta, wonderful lovely people each and every one of them, I was not walking at my normal pace. I was walking 2.5 miles an hour at times and when we came to a pit stop we took some pretty long breaks.   And I have no problem with that.  If 2.5 miles an hour is the best my teammates could do, que sera sera.  And if they needed a long break, then c'est la vie.   Philosophically, I was absolutely okay with taking all day long to do the 20 mile route --and in actual point of fact, that was pretty much what it took us.   Just as Andrew Marvell wrote, "But at my back I always hear Time's winged chariot hurrying near", we were acutely aware that not far behind our little gaggle of Team Twitter ATL walkers was a 3-Day staff member on a mountain bike, the "caboose" rider.  Fall behind the caboose, get swept.  It's that simple -- and none of us wanted to get swept.

We kept on going.   Some of our team had to take sweep vans during Day 1 just to get by.  Not everyone has the flexibility of schedule and/or time to get in all the training needed to really kick butt on a 3-Day route, and some of the team weren't in the best shape.  There's no shame in riding a sweep van if you're in pain, you're injured, or you're just flat out not able to make the distance and need a break.  By sweeping forward to the next pit stop, you can get some attention from the medical crew, take a break, get a drink and a snack, and get ready to go on.

That maxim, of course -- "no shame in taking a sweep van" -- applies to everyone but me.

We finished the Day 1 route almost at the end of the pack.   And I finished in a bit of pain. Shin splints.  I don't know what exactly caused it -- was it the speed?  The long breaks?  The extremely hilly route?  Or combinations of all three?  That night I took time to visit the Medical crew at camp and got my legs looked at.   With some ice and some rest, I figured, I'd be right as rain in the morning.

In the morning, I felt mostly okay, but as the day wore on, the pain returned, and got worse, and worse, and worse.  Our team spread out along the route but I continued to stay with the slowest walkers -- and to my immense surprise, this was becoming less of a choice than a necessity.   Our team would typically gather back together again at pit stops but then spread out again after we departed the pit.   I found that my continuing along the route required me to spend a lot of time doing the stretches the sports medicine professionals on the Medical team had shown me the previous night .. and even then, I found myself literally (and I mean that in the actual, correct sense) yelping in pain at random, unpredictable intervals.  It did not help that the route was extremely hilly.  When I walked on the infrequent level ground, my shins didn't hurt anywhere near as much as the did on the ascents and descents... but the route was far from level.

Periodically, my bemused teammates would ask me if I wanted to take a sweep van.  Stubbornly, I'd say "No, I'll continue on, I'll be fine."  In other words, precisely the kind of dogged claptrap that I've heard from other walkers during other 3-Day walks.  Only, when those walkers gritted their teeth and said "I'll be fine," it was often the case that they really wanted to take a sweep van and were looking for reinforcement and encouragement that they wouldn't be seen as quitters for doing so.   (How do I know this?  People in pain can sometimes be fairly candid when they feel that they're not going to be judged.)

Me?  When I said "I'll be fine" I meant it.  I'd take a sweep van, I thought, when pigs fly.  But it wasn't easy to stick to that vow.  I spent most of the afternoon of that Saturday, Day 2 of 3, mechanically muttering Saint-Exupery's words.  "What saves a man is to take a step.  Then another step.  It is always the same step, but you have to take it."   And I'd take another step.  And another.  I wasn't the same merry, carefree, devil-may-care Jay that some members of my team may have expected, but I was in pain.

When the pain got really bad, I'd just go "Jay never sweeps.  Jay never sweeps.  Jay never sweeps.  Jay never sweeps."  Under my breath.  I assume no one heard me because no one showed up from a local mental hospital to take me away for psychiatric evaluation.

We encountered some non-participating supporters of our team at a bus shelter along the route late on the afternoon of Day 2.    Among them was everyone's favorite doctoral candidate, Kristen, who wasn't walking this year in order to focus on completing her dissertation. Kristen had been following our progress on Twitter during the day and had some idea of what I was going through -- not that I was openly moaning about agonizing pain on Twitter, but apparently I'd been open enough that she knew I wasn't having a good time.  Kristen knows me pretty well and came up to me as our little pod of walkers was getting ready to continue on and asked me, sotto voce, if I was refusing to take a sweep van.  "Yeah," I muttered.  "Typical," she replied, and shooed us on down the route.

So yeah, I guess it was becoming pretty obvious to casual observers that I was not in good shape.  And it was becoming obvious to my teammates as well.  But they'd worked out that I wasn't going to take a sweep van unless Nancy Brinker, founder of Susan G. Komen For The Cure personally showed up and ordered me onto a van.  Or, of course, if a member of the Medical crew saw me gimping it into a pit and just flat-out red-carded me... so I tried to show a brave face whenever I saw the red shirts of Medical crew around.

I finished Day 2 without having swept and promptly got myself showered and fed and to the Medical tent for more ice and more stretching and kneading and massaging.  I actually found myself feeling halfway human by bedtime that evening and had great hopes for the future.  I was not the only member of Team Twitter ATL to be in pain -- other walkers had wound up sweeping to pit stops and a couple had wound up taking the so-called SAG bus from the pit back to camp.   Again, there's no shame there -- we had a pregnant member of the team, two cancer survivors, and several members who simply hadn't been able to fit in all the training they needed.  Every one of them had raised the $2,300 or more required to enter the walk, and that's the main thing -- the walking is symbolic and is meant to increase awareness and motivate donors to give generously.

I was back at the Medical tent the moment they opened on Day 3, having gotten up extra early to pack up my gear and my tent and have nothing between me and sweet, sweet ice.  I wasn't in a huge amount of pain but I wanted to keep things that way, and I knew ice would help.

When I got out on the route that Sunday morning, though, things took a turn for the worse.  I started hurting a lot about as soon as I began striding.  My left leg was especially bad; my right hurt, but not excruciatingly, while my left felt like someone was trying to chop it in two at the shinbone with a very dull cleaver.   I was unable to keep up with the bulk of my team -- only one walker, Kathleen, stayed with me for very long, and the rest kept going, having their own crosses and burdens to bear.  We had a couple of walkers who were in such pain that they'd been held at medical and were taking the SAG bus directly to the lunch stop, so Kathleen and I formed the Team Twitter ATL caboose that morning.

I'm very grateful to Kathleen for sticking with me -- I know she was doing well enough that she could have been much further down the route but she stuck with me, apparently having reasoned that if the team captain was unwilling to leave an injured walker trailing along by themselves, it would have been just as wrong for a walker to leave an injured team captain trailing along by himself.

I made it to Pit Stop 1 -- but only just.  I found myself popping ibuprofen even though I'd had four when I got up and two more when I stepped onto the route.  I insisted I was competent to leave Pit 1 and continue, but with my condition steadily deteriorating I could see the frustration on Kathleen's face.  I think it probably bears some similarity to the look on someone's face when they see a co-worker well in their cups insisting that they're okay to drive, even though they're having to cling to the door of their car to keep from falling down: just sheer "how can someone be this much of an idiot?"

And I think that's what did it.  I was limping along, a mile or two past Pit 1, sitting down every hundred feet to try to stretch and flex some life back into my shins, when I saw her looking down at me and went "I can't do this to her.  And I'm setting an appalling example for other walkers."

And I said, "Okay.  Flag down a sweep van."

We didn't have too terribly long a wait.  But as I sat there on the curb I felt lower than low; I was giving up.  I was quitting.   Part of me wanted to jump up and go "No!  Never mind!  I can keep going."   But the larger part of me said "Remember all those times you told people that there was no shame in taking a sweep van?  That by raising the $2300 they've already made a huge difference?   Was that all a lie?"

The hardest step I ever took was the step onto that sweep van that cold Sunday morning in Atlanta, Georgia in October of 2011.

 



The crew on the Sweep Van couldn't have been nicer; they passed us stickers to write our names on and had us stick them to the ceiling of the van, and they reminded us not to be sorry or ashamed, that we'd done great, that we could rest at the next pit stop and then keep going.    I kept my head down and said nothing at all to anyone and kept planning my next move.  Ice was clearly in my future, but then what?

As it happened, I had a long walk ahead of me to get to the ice -- the sweep van could not get into the public park where the pit stop was set up, so they let us out a quarter mile away and I had to hobble back, against the flow of walkers, just to get to the pit and get some ice.

I wound up, after some reflection, taking a SAG bus on from that pit stop to the lunch stop, trimming 5 or 6 miles off the route.



And then I sat at the lunch stop for an hour with bags of ice on both shins for the better part of an hour, chatting with Belinda and Lisa, our two walkers who'd been SAG'd from camp directly to lunch, before we decided we were tired of waiting for the rest of the team to catch up and started walking.  I hurt, but after an hour with ice on my shins, I didn't hurt so badly that I couldn't continue.  I knew that my immaculate record of walking every mile of every 3-Day I'd signed up for had been wrecked, but at least I could try to walk as much as I could.  So we walked from lunch to the next stop at Grab and Go A, then made it a mile and a quarter further to Pit 4, and then sat down to wait for the rest of the team to catch up.

The rest of the team was in no huge hurry -- remember, we'd finished well back at the end of the pack on Day 1 and 2... so we had a long wait. And that meant "more ice".

But finally Team Twitter ATL was all back together and we walked the last two miles together from Pit 4 to the finish line and holding area at Turner Field.

And even though half us were in pain and all of us were tired, we were still very proud of the effort each one of us had showed and were proud to walk in as a team:



 

In the end, what matters is not that we didn't all walk all 60 miles -- although I know that every one of us would have preferred to do so.   Did some of us "give up" along the route?

Yes.

But we did not give up for good -- we got back up off the ground when we'd been knocked down, and resumed walking.  We kept on fighting, and I know I speak for the rest of my team when I say that when it comes to the real fight -- the fight against breast cancer...

We will never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, give up.

I'm entering a time of the year that I don't particularly enjoy.

No, not the "it's getting dark at 4 pm" time of the year, although it's true, that can wear on me. And no, not the "three feet of snow on the driveway -- better get started with the snowthrower" time of the year either, although that's also not always fun. (We've decided to just pay the guy who does our road to do the driveway as well this year. We got so much snow last year that sometimes Carole would have to blow snow for two hours when she got home from work just to get the car up the driveway.)

The unpleasant time of the year I'm specifically thinking of is the "not having anything to look forward to" time of the year. Last year (2010) I had registered for the 2011 Boston, Atlanta, and San Francisco 3-Days by this time of the year. Each gave me something specific to look forward to. In the case of Boston, I hoped for a chance to be a crew captain for the first time -- always wanting to try new experiences, that's me! In the case of San Francisco, Carole and I were going to do that walk together and were going to combine it with a fun vacation to the West Coast before the walk. And in the case of Atlanta, I was working on forming a team of walkers and crew that, in the end, was 32 members strong. As captain, I had my hands full all year long motivating and encouraging and organizing and so on.

Now those walks are all in the past. I did get to be a crew captain in Boston, albeit of a two-member team made up of Carole and me... Route Clean-Up, represent! San Francisco didn't work out to be nearly as much fun as I'd hoped; the week's vacation before the walk evaporated when my mom died on September 1. We went to Florida, handled the funeral, helped organize my father's house, and just made it to San Francisco for the walk proper. (On a positive note, Carole did walk all 60 miles in San Francisco, her first complete no-sweeping 3-Day ever.) I added the Philadelphia walk at the last minute and walked that one as a solo walker, had a great time, and felt wonderful at the end of each day.

Then came Atlanta. I worked really hard to come in with the last walkers on our team, the ones who couldn't speedwalk 4.5 mph if their lives depended on it, on the principle that it's rotten for a team to power on in to camp while some of the team are still out on the route, hurting. We were almost the last to camp on Day 1, but no one was left to struggle. Unfortunately, for some reason -- either because I'd just walked Philadelphia a week earlier and wasn't recovered, or because I'd just about halved my walking speed in Atlanta, I got severe shin splints that made my Atlanta Day 2 hell and caused me, in the end, to ride a sweep van on Day 3, the first time I've ever cut short the distance in 8 3-Days as a walker.

And I still hurt, weeks after the Atlanta 3-Day finished. An X-ray I had on Friday seems to indicate that I'm not dealing with a stress fracture, although friends say that a traditional X-ray won't spot stress fractures anyway. All I know is that my leg aches and hurts and this has kept me from getting active and getting exercise and in any case, it's just plain not fun.

But to return to the central theme of depression -- I've got nothing exciting to look forward to. I'm signed up to crew Boston next July, but I'm having a hard time getting all excited about that. If I wind up as captain again, that'd be fun, but I'm not sure I want to do route clean-up again. Right now I'm signed up for the "Use me wherever I can be useful" crew slot, which means that I might literally not find out what I'm doing until a week before the event. I'm signed up to walk Seattle with the "Kindred Spirits" team, a team primarily made up of Washingtonians and West Coasters, some of whom I do know online, but unfortunately, won't have any opportunity to interact with in person until next September -- unless the work travel fairy at my employer randomly sends me in that direction for a class. And then I'm signed up to be Route Marking Crew with Carole in the 2012 San Diego 3-Day -- over a year away. Hard to get super-motivated about something so far in the future.

As for traditional vacation, Carole and I were signed up to do an Austria/Czech Republic bicycling tour next May, but Carole's underemployment (working temp accounting positions one after another) has left us wondering if blowing that much money for an overseas vacation would really be smart. We might switch and do Martha's Vineyard/Nantucket instead -- minimal expense for the travel, obviously, while still getting to explore a place we've never been.

But other than that, that's it. I hate having nothing exciting to look forward to. When something exciting is happening, I'm at my best. Ready for anything, ready to pitch in and help out and do what I can. But when tedium settles over the landscape... man. I feel like I'm trudging through molasses under a gray, moody sky. I'm sleepy each night at 8 pm and don't feel rested and perky in the morning.

If my left leg wasn't so achy I could at least go work out on a treadmill or go for a ten mile training walk in hopes of burning some of the crazy out, but right now, even that's not a realistic option. I don't want to aggravate whatever's wrong with my leg by overdoing it.

Sigh.

Carole and I took part in the San Francisco 3-Day For The Cure almost six weeks ago and it occurred to me last night that I never actually sat down and wrote up a recap of what the event was like and whether we enjoyed it or not. I did post many, many photos from the event at http://picasaweb.google.com/jayfurr, for what it's worth, but no actual recap.

The San Francisco Bay Area 3-Day was unlike any other 3-Day For The Cure that I've taken part in, and I've walked in six, crewed three, and have two more coming up this year alone. My mother passed away nine days before the event, not of breast cancer but of complications from congestive heart failure, infection, and pneumonia. Instead of flying to San Francisco for a week's vacation prior to the walk, I headed abruptly to Florida in hopes of seeing my mother one last time before she passed. I wasn't in time. We helped arrange her memorial service, then stayed around my father's house helping with the aftermath for several days. Our tickets called for us to continue on to San Francisco for the 3-Day, but it wasn't until a couple days out that I finally said "You know what? We might as well go." Even though we both knew my head wouldn't really be in it.

We got to San Francisco on Thursday, September 8. The weather was sunny, cool, and very very windy. So windy, in fact, that it felt about twenty degrees cooler than the actual temperature on the thermometer. We took part in opening ceremonies rehearsal at the Cow Palace coliseum in Daly City, south of San Francisco, since both Carole and I had been invited to be flagbearers in opening and closing ceremonies. We didn't actually get to practice with the flags because it was so windy they'd probably have turned into airborne projectiles, snatched out of our hands. Then we raced off to the REI store in south San Francisco to purchase additional cold-weather gear: gloves and long-sleeved technical shirts that we hadn't thought to pack. Silly us. Then we got back to our hotel, decided what would be going with us on the walk and what would be packed in our gear bags that we'd drop off at opening ceremonies, and what would be staying in the car. Fun times!

Day 1 began misty, cool, but not as windy as the day before. Carole and I did our flagbearer thing, coming out from behind the stage at the appropriate time, Carole carrying the "My Aunt" flag and me carrying the "My Neighbor" flag, honoring the people we're walking on behalf of. Carole's Aunt Debbie is a ten-year survivor and quite a few people at my office and church are survivors. A nice side benefit of being flagbearers in opening ceremonies is that we're the first ones on the route. Carole and I are accustomed to setting a fast pace when we walk, but if we'd been at the back of the pack and among the last scanned out, it would have been impossible to walk at the speed we prefer. Or really, at any speed at all. You can only go so fast on sidewalks in bunches of humanity numbering in the hundreds, and it drives Carole nuts when she's having to shuffle along, barely able to move left or right because of all the walkers. We didn't stay at the very front all day long but we were generally well ahead of the main pack.

We were fairly noticeable as we walked. I had on my usual pink hard hat and we were wearing vivid purple technical t-shirts with a giant pink map of Vermont on the front and the words "TEAM OTTER & LEMUR" emblazoned across the chest. (Carole likes purple.) And we were carrying a pink teddy bear with us, one of the Vermont Teddy Bear Company's breast cancer bear collection. Our little bear was named "Hope" and had a pink ribbon "birthmark" on the bottom of one foot; she was a big hit with spectators and other walkers, many of whom posed for photos with her.

The first part of Day 1 was gray and overcast and a bit drizzly and it wasn't anything to get super-excited about. We were walking through neighborhoods in Daly City and the southern outskirts of San Francisco, then by Lake Merced, a large reservoir. I perked up considerably when our path from the Cow Palace, which had been trending generally west by northwest, finally took us over to the Pacific coast and the long stretch of coastal road called the Great Highway. Gray it may have been, and overcast it may have been, but I've always liked walking next to the ocean. We walked north along the western side of the peninsula, up to Ocean Beach, where we had our first cheering station of the day. It was lightly attended, but Friday morning cheering stations aren't usually crowded. :) We rounded the turn at Cliff House and had our lunch stop at the parking lot for the Coastal Train through Lands End. If you've never walked through Lands' End, the rugged coastal woods and cliffs area at the northwest corner of San Francisco, and looked out on the Golden Gate and north to the Marin Headlands, you're definitely missing one of the great city walks anywhere. I've done the Lands End trail many times before, but it was especially special to be doing it as part of a 3-Day.

Carole began feeling some pain in her hip around lunchtime as we worked our way through some especially hilly sections of San Francisco such as Presidio Heights and Pacific Heights. But on a more positive note, the sun finally managed to burn away the fog and let daylight in, and from that point on the weather was warm and the mood cheerful. Our second cheering station of the day was at Alta Park on Jackson Street, best known as the park where Barbra Streisand and Ryan O'Neal drove a VW Bug down the steps in the zany, madcap movie "What's Up, Doc?" It was also lightly attended, but again, it's not easy to leave work early and fight your way into a crowded city on a working day. We were grateful for the people who did come out.

I felt gloomy at times along the route. Partly because it'd been such a gray gloomy day until the sun finally came out sometime after noon, but partly because, well, less than a week earlier I'd given the eulogy at my mother's memorial service. I tried not to spend the whole time thinking about it, but unfortunately, enough 3-Day crew and walkers had heard about my loss from Facebook or Twitter and would see me along the route and feel compelled to give condolences. I appreciated the spirit of what they were trying to accomplish, but it tended to drag me back down into the dumps.

At some point along the route we'd encountered some crew who were former residents of the same little Vermont town, Richmond, that we now live in. As far as I can recall, we didn't overlap with them at all -- they moved away before we moved there. But while you can take a Vermonter out of Vermont, you can't take the Vermont out of a Vermonter. When they saw our Vermont maps on our shirts, the couldn't help asking where we were from, and when we told them, they went "Small world." Then, for the rest of the weekend, whenever we saw them, we got big cheers and hollers from the former Vermonters for all we were doing to uphold the honor of Richmond, Vermont. I told them my mom had passed away less than a week earlier, and unfortunately, that got brought up a lot as well.

After the cheering station at Alta Park we worked our way north and east along the marina area and into Fisherman's Wharf. Because we were relatively far out in front of the main pack, we didn't get to enjoy the experience of large gangs of 3-Day walkers plowing through aimlessly milling mobs of tourists -- mostly, it was just a few of us, fighting our way through oblivious crowds stopping to take photos of one another in front of anything that wasn't actively moving around. Once we made it to Fisherman's Wharf we had an experience unlike any other we've had on a 3-Day walk: we had to wait a half hour or so to catch a ferry to camp. The 3-Day organizers had, somehow, gotten permission to put camp on Treasure Island, an artificial island and former Navy base, halfway across San Francisco Bay. And they'd persuaded the Red and White Fleet ferry company to shuttle walkers and crew to and from camp at the end and beginning of each day. It was a very scenic way of getting to camp... although strictly speaking we didn't go directly to camp. We were dropped at the end of the island and had to walk another mile and a half or so to the actual campsite.

The campsite, in a nutshell, was windy. I didn't get an actual Beaufort scale reading, but the wind was blowing hard enough that even with our sleeping bags and sleeping pads and pillows and clothing and other gear inside, the tent practically blew away. It got better once more walkers got to camp and set their tents up too and served as kind of a windscreen for our tent, but yes, before you ask, we did see a few tents literally blowing away when walkers carelessly didn't put their gear inside the minute the tents were up. And we had to reassemble our neighbor's tent when we got to camp at the end of Day 2 because it had, well, collapsed under the force of the wind and wound up half on top of OUR tent.

It was a scenic place for a camp, but not exactly the best camp we've ever had. The wind was one factor -- it was so chilly and windy out there that I actually went to the 3-Day gear store and bought a pair of fleece pants because I, naively, hadn't packed any. And the showers -- well, I have no problem showering in a stall in a tractor trailer. I've done it many times before. But the whole social concept of people waiting patiently for a shower breaks down a bit when one of the shower trucks, er, breaks down. They couldn't get the heater to work and that took 20% of our shower capacity out in one fell swoop. I'm not sure that we couldn't have used more shower trucks, period -- the lines were unreal and I don't know if having one more truck would have made that big a difference.

On the evening of Day 2 they decided that since so few men were participating in the walk -- and I'll be honest, percentage-wise I think I've never seen such an overwhelming women-to-men ratio at any of the other events I've done -- they'd have the men take turns using the "ADA shower" -- a single, wheelchair-accessible shower that was built out of the same plastic shell as a large porto-jon. It had no lighting inside and only a shower curtain stretched diagonally across the interior to separate a chair to pile your clothing up in from the handheld shower nozzle. There was no drainage, either, other than right out the door, and with three inches of water swimming around beneath your feet, you prayed that none of your clothing would slide off the chair while you were precariously balancing, getting undressed and getting dressed again. And, as I said, we had to take turns. I hope I never again have to wait for two hours in a stiff wind to take a shower in conditions like that. :) If that's the worst thing that ever happens to me, I'm golden -- in any case, it beats the heck out of chemotherapy, right?

Friday evening we had to take Carole to sports medicine in the Medical tent and get her worked on by a chiropractor, iced, and, if memory serves, taped up. And we were advised to get more ice and more tape on the following morning, but the lines for medical (blister care, taping, etcetera) were LONG when we got over there early on Saturday. As a result, we decided to get Carole taped up and iced at the first pit stop along the route.

Day 2 started with a ferry ride across to the Berkeley Marina. It was, once again, gray and cloudy in the morning. Our walk wended its way steadily uphill through Berkeley to the University of California campus. The constant climbs and descents took a real toll on Carole. We'd trained in Vermont on hilly routes, doing 4 miles an hour for 20 miles, several times during the summer... but for some reason Carole wasn't feeling as strong as we thought she would have been. Perhaps it was the walking in crowds (which we did for much of Day 2) altering her stride, and perhaps it was just the sheer AMOUNT of climbing. Carole says we should have trained by doing nothing BUT hills in Vermont. Perhaps she's right. In any case, we slowed down a LOT on Day 2, trying by hook or by crook to walk all the miles and not wind up having to catch a sweep van.

The high point of Day 2 was the huge cheering station at the California campus. A LOT of people were there, including one group of women we learned to expect every few miles, women who took pains to appreciatively smack me on the butt every time we went by. We had Hope (our teddy bear) out and the people there to cheer went crazy giving her high 5s and giving her pink plastic bracelets to wear and posing for photos. A camera crew filming the cheering station went backpedaling along getting as much footage of Hope, 3-Day Superstar, as they could.

After the cheering station, we began working our way back down, with occasional climbs, toward the coast again. Lunch was at Lake Merritt, a big lake in the middle of downtown Oakland, and Carole's mood began to improve after lunch. The route wasn't super-scenic for most of the afternoon -- just neighborhoods in Oakland. Periodically employees of the Safeway supermarket chain came out to give us eclair bites at unofficial cheering stations they set up along the route. Those, we liked. But they also handed out bags of dry granola -- and no one really much wanted to walk the route eating dried granola out of bags. When we got to the next pit stop we found a giant mound of granola packets on a table where walkers had gone "ah, so I'm not the only one who wanted this." Verdict: more eclair bites, less granola. We were grateful for the Safeway employees' support, though, and their enthusiasm.

We were also most grateful for the members of the San Jose Police Department who served as route safety; we had actual Route Safety crew members working the route and managing traffic at intersections, but the SJPD also had a sizeable contingent out, all on police patrol bicycles. They weren't getting paid to help; they'd all taken time off to go to the opposite end of San Francisco Bay and help out in San Francisco and Berkeley and Oakland and, on Day 3, across the Golden Gate in Marin County.

The afternoon of Day 2 was also noteworthy because we met a number of really interesting people, some of whom had not-so-happy stories to share. We walked for a while with one walker who had been diagnosed with breast cancer, had radiation, had chemo, had gotten tentative good news, then had gotten the full how-ya-doin' series of tests, then had gotten some pretty bad news -- the day before the walk. She was BRCA positive -- she has the gene for breast cancer -- and the odds are high that her daughters will have it as well -- but they can't get checked for it because as soon as it's shown that they carry it, their insurance will drop them due to a "pre-existing condition".

Yeah.

We also wound up walking for a ways with Jim Hillman, this year's guy-who's-doing-all-the-walks. Jim managed to raise enough money, $2,300 times 14 events, to enter each 3-Day this year, and was able to take the time off from work and cover the travels costs and so on, to come to every event. You may remember this post where I talked about a particularly poignant photo of a sad little girl, taken along the 3-Day route in Boston this year. Jim was the guy who took the photo. Jim told us the amazing news that while walking in San Francisco some walkers behind him had recognized the girl in the photo and wound up telling Jim her name and some fairly sad, depressing facts about her situation. Jim hopes to reach out to the family and see if collectively, we can help.

Day 2 finished at Jack London Square in Oakland, just after a medium-sized cheering station. The weather was sunny and warm and people were cheerfully enjoying refreshments at waterside restaurants before taking the ferry back to camp... in fact, some of them enjoyed themselves SO much that they wouldn't leave until the staff of the 3-Day said "this is the last ferry. it's leaving WITH or WITHOUT you." We weren't on the last ferry, but heard several stories about the excitement later on. We were on a very crowded ferry, probably about halfway back in the pack. Lots of walkers were already in camp when we arrived, but we got Carole some ibuprofen and some ice and she seemed better once she wasn't having to put her weight on her left hip.

Unfortunately, the evening of Day 2 was the day the shower situation just went to heck and I wound up sitting in line for a couple of hours just to shower in, basically, a porto-jon. And I thought I had it bad -- when I got back to the tent Carole was there, frustrated and sad, unshowered... she'd given up waiting because the lines for the women were hours long as well. I told her that by the time I'd left the area by the showers the lines were very short and she needed to come with me and get cleaned up so she'd be able to sleep well.

On Day 3 we had to pack up everything, hand our gear bags back over to the Gear and Tent crew, take down our tent, hand IT in, and then catch a ferry to Tiburon, north of San Francisco in Marin County. We moved slow on Day 3. I chafed a bit at the pace because I hate walking in a slow-moving mob just as much as Carole does, but on the other hand, I knew how important it was to both of us that Carole not have to ride a sweep van, so I said I'd walk just as slowly as she wanted me to if it meant she wasn't in pain, felt happy, and felt able to keep going. This was Carole's fourth 3-Day walk, after Philadelphia '09, Dallas '09, and Tampa Bay of '10. She'd never gotten to walk all sixty miles... once because the event was shortened due to weather, once because she just went so slowly that she got swept, once because she felt so sick that she wasn't physically able to walk all the miles... so this time, we both really wanted her to be able to look back at the end and say "I did all sixty miles!" Her left hip ached severely at times and tape and ice only did so much to help. We probably fed her more ibuprofen than was really good for her, too, and somehow she managed to summon up the will to keep going.

Day 3 was VERY hilly. Especially as we were nearing the north end of the Golden Gate Bridge, walking through Sausalito and Fort Baker. We had some very well attended cheering stations, which perked us up, but we also had some climbs that seemed just about inhuman. Still, we knew that once we were actually on the Golden Gate Bridge proper, we only had a short distance left to go... and that kept us going. Hope continued to be a huge hit with walkers and spectators and wound up with about as much pink swag (beads, bracelets, buttons) as one little bear could possibly fit on her body.

We had lunch at Fort Baker, just before the Golden Gate Bridge. The coordinator for the group of teen crewmembers known as the Youth Corps had lined her charges up cheering the walkers into lunch. As we came into the lunch stop, she came up to me and said "Hi, Jay. Can I tell them about you?" I had absolutely no idea what she was talking about, so I said, "Um, sure!" She said "This is Jay Furr. His mother passed away less than a week ago and he's walking ANYWAY!" Big cheers from the kids. Me, I felt sort of gut-punched, but I know that wasn't her intent. I felt bad about going off to do something fun like the 3-Day before she'd even been dead a week. My brain was just negatively-inclined enough to turn what she said into a reproach, even though I absolutely KNOW it wasn't intended that way.

Walking across the Golden Gate Bridge was scenic as all-get-out, thanks to the sunny, warm weather and the incredible vistas that a fog-free day afternoon presented. On the other hand, the bridge was crowded as all-get-out... zillions of tourists on foot and on bicycles, all walking without a sense in the world that there might be anyone in their path going the other direction. The Bridge has a dedicated, protected bike lane on the western side of the bridge, but lots of tourists couldn't be bothered to ride in the bikes-only lane and instead insisted on pushing their way through on the pedestrian side. Annoying, to say the least. It wasn't as splendid a "We'll turn the Golden Gate Bridge PINK" experience as I'd dreamed of. But we made it. Carole had to stop several times along the way to stretch -- getting her some hard looks from bridge pedestrians who didn't want to have to walk around anyone for any reason, and I got to practice my hard-stare bad-ass persona right back at them. :)

Once we crossed the Bridge, we had only two and a half miles left to go to get to the finish line just south of Marina Green. I think it was when we were walking along the waterfront in San Francisco, looking at people playing frisbee on the green, that it finally hit us -- Carole was going to make it. She might not be walking four miles an hour with a spring in her step, but she was going to make it. I didn't even ask her to take a picture of me as we got to the final five hundred yards -- I've done these before, I've never had the slightest urge to catch a sweep van. It wasn't about me. It was about her proving to herself that she could do this. At times, she sourly said she was continuing just to make me happy, but the fact is, she acknowledged that this was an important goal of hers and that she was grateful for being firm about sticking with it so long as she was physically able. And despite the achiness, she did make it. I took photo after photo as she neared, reached, and went through the big inflatable cubes that represent the finish line. Hope and I were both very proud of her.

As it happened, we were pretty far toward the back of the pack when we finished, and we still had flagbearer duty at closing ceremonies to take care of. Closing ceremonies were actually a few blocks north of the finish line, and we weren't to wait to march over at 5 pm with all the other walkers... WE had to be backstage and accounted for at 4:30 pm. So we sighed and picked our backpacks up and got over there ... and THEN we rested.

We didn't get to see all of closing, as we were backstage hunkered down on equipment, resting, while the walkers and the crew marched in to the holding "corrals". But when the Survivors marched in, and we saw all the walkers and crew doing what walkers and crew always do -- taking off one sneaker and holding it in the air to say "We walk for YOU, survivors!" we flagbearers looked at each other and wondered if we should. I mean, we were backstage; no one in the crowd could see us. I settled the matter by whipping a shoe off and holding it up ANYWAY, whether we could be seen or not. Most everyone in the flagbearer contingent promptly followed suit. What difference does it make if we could be seen? We'd all walked to honor those who've battled breast cancer ... whether they knew we were honoring them, or not.

We'd both been involved in opening ceremonies, as I said above, but closing is much more ceremonial, especially for the survivor flagbearers and the "honor" flagbearers. At opening, we'd just come up onstage, crossed, and gone down to stand with our flags on either side of the audience. But at closing, we came up onstage and stayed there ... and several of the flagbearers had the person or people they were honoring there with them. It never fails to bring a few tears out when someone carrying the "My Wife" flag is joined onstage by his wife... or by their kids if he was walking in memory of his wife. Carole's Aunt Debby was not with her, and none of my co-workers from church or work were with me, so we stayed at the back of the stage with our flags while those whose honorees were present took the stage.

After that, and after the final flag of the event, the "One Day Closer To A World Without Breast Cancer" flag was raised, well, I'd like to say we quickly got back to our hotel, got cleaned up, had a good night's sleep, and flew home the next day. But I can't. We had shuttle passes to shuttle all the way back to the hotel we'd stayed in the night before Day 1 and it took us at least a half hour for that blasted bus to even get OUT of the Marina Green Parking lot ... and about 75 minutes more to get through traffic to our hotel. But make it we did -- and THEN we got cleaned up, repacked, and got a good night's sleep. Next day we flew home... and somewhere along the way it came crashing down on me that I couldn't lose myself in my 3-Day world any longer. My mother was gone and not coming back... and that was not a happy way to spend eight hours on planes and in airports.

Mortality's a frustrating thing. We're all going to go sometime, and my mother had a long, full life, but I just wasn't ready to say goodbye. I'd fully expected to see her alive and cranky as ever in October when I flew down after walking the Philadelphia 3-Day. Unfortunately, that was not to be. But in the end, I am going to get over the blue feelings... and emerge, I hope, even more strongly motivated to do what I can to make sure that everyone else's mom, sister, aunt, grandma, wife... brother, husband, co-worker, neighbor, and friend as well... has just as much chance for a full, happy lifetime as my mom did.

You're probably familiar with the parable of the Good Samaritan, regardless of your religious affiliation or lack thereof. Let me paraphrase it for you, though, in case you don't remember the specifics.

An "expert in the law" -- we'll call him Bob -- decided to test Jesus. Bob asked what he had to do in order to gain eternal life.

Jesus said, "Well, Bob, what does the law say?"

Bob replied, in essence, "Well, Jesus, the law says to love the heck out of God, and also, look out for your neighbor in the same way you look out for yourself."

Jesus said "Right. Do that."

Bob decided to take it a step further and asked "Okay, so, who is my neighbor? What exactly do you mean by that? Do you mean Bill and Wendy next door, or in a more general sense?"

Jesus offered up a parable to explain the concept.

"There was this guy, going from Jerusalem to Jericho. He got robbed and beaten up along the way. Muggers left him half-dead in a ditch."

"So, a priest of his faith happened by, and seeing the guy in the ditch, decided 'hmm, best not get involved' and crossed to the other side of the road."

"A Levite -- a respected member of the community -- came by, saw the guy in the ditch, and he crossed to the other side."

"Probably they both thought 'Hey, if this guy got mugged and I go over and help, what's going to happen to me? The muggers might still be around.'"

"Then a guy from the wrong side of the tracks happened by -- a guy who had no connection to the guy in the ditch and who, in fact, probably had familial bad blood with him going back generations. But he looked at the guy in the ditch and rather than thinking 'What's going to happen to me if I try and help him?', thought 'What's going to happen to him if I don't?'"

"So he stopped, and helped the guy up, and put him on his donkey, and took him to an inn, and paid for his lodging, and came back by in a couple of days to see if he was all right."

"Now: which of these men was his neighbor?"

Bob thought, and replied, "The one who showed him mercy."

Jesus agreed. "Right. Now go and do likewise."

Your neighbor isn't necessarily Bob and Wendy next door. Your neighbor is your fellow man in need of your help. God instructs us to love our neighbor as ourselves if we want to gain the kingdom of Heaven.

And if you're not religious, okay, can you grant me that it's worthwhile to remember that the world's a lot better place if we look out for each other? You never know when you might be the one in need. Pay it forward when someone helps you out. A little kindness helps the world go 'round.

I recently got to take part in a symbolic revisiting of this creed at the San Francisco Bay Area Susan G. Komen 3-Day For The Cure -- a sixty mile fundraising walk lasting three days.

Each year the 3-Day starts with elaborate opening ceremonies ... and ends with an veritable panoply of hoopla that leaves the pomp and circumstance of opening ceremonies to shame. One element that's been included in both opening and closing, going back years and years, is the flags -- walkers and crewmembers carrying ceremonial banners reminding us all what we walk for.

There are flags to remind us what a full, happy lifetime should consist of: birthdays, graduations, anniversaries, you name it. Other flagbearers carry banners in memory or in honor of loved ones who've fought breast cancer: my sister, my mother, my husband, my daughter, my friend, my partner -- the list goes on and on. Survivors carry flags reading "Courage" and "Hope" and "Patience" and "Commitment" and so on. All in all, the processions of flags take up maybe ten minutes of the ceremonies at opening and somewhat longer at closing, but the emotional impact is all out of proportion to the time spent. The crowd reaction to the triumphant entrance of the survivors has to be seen to be believed.

Due to just sheer dumb luck and gormless enthusiasm, I've been a flagbearer four times in four years. I carried the "Anniversaries" flag in 2008 in my first-ever 3-Day walk in Washington, DC. I carried the "My Wife" flag in 2009 in the abbreviated-due-to-act-of-God Philadelphia 3-Day. I carried the "Irreplaceable" flag in Boston's opening ceremonies in 2010 and then put my flag down and scurried off to spend the weekend working as crew at Pit Stop 4. Each time I'd been nominated for the honor by someone else or asked directly.

This year I really hadn't thought about carrying a flag -- until I saw the field coordinator for the San Francisco walk asking her training walk leaders (I'm one) for flagbearer nominations since she still had lots of slots to fill. If I'd known anyone else who was walking in San Francisco, I'd have nominated them, but San Francisco was pretty far afield for us; we live in New England. So I wrote and said "Well, not that we're desperate to or anything, but if you're actually short, my wife and I would be happy to help."

Famous last words. Next thing you know my wife was tapped to carry the "My Aunt" flag in honor of her Aunt Debbie, a breast cancer survivor of many years, and I'd been asked to carry ...

... the "My Neighbor" flag.

To the best of my knowledge, none of my neighbors on our little seven-house Vermont dirt road have been afflicted by breast cancer. None of them have volunteered the information, anyway. I could call and ask ... no, that'd be strange.

But I've got several co-workers who're survivors -- and I've spent most of the last three years walking around the office bald as an egg in honor of their battles against cancer and their bouts of chemotherapy. One such survivor occupies the office twenty feet to the left of my doorway. My office neighbor, in other words.

But after being offered the My Neighbor flag, I decided to look at the honor not as a literal acknowledgment of people who live or work near me and their fight against cancer, but in a larger sense... in honor of all the women and men out there who I've crossed paths with, some who are still winning their fight and others who lost.

No one in my immediate family has ever had breast cancer. Even my wife's Aunt Debbie is an aunt by marriage; both our bloodlines have been especially lucky (so far). I have no direct, personal connection to breast cancer. I'm involved in this cause because I want to make my life count for something. So I fundraise and I walk and I try to build awareness. And I thank all of you who do likewise or who have contributed on my behalf.

Why do I try so hard to make a difference?

Because it's the right thing to do. And because, at the end of the day, I didn't want it to be said, "Jay crossed to the other side."