3-Day Journey: Day 1

Our alarms (we set multiple because of my wake up fiasco Thursday morning) went off at 3:15am. We silently trudged around getting dressed and throwing our non-walking clothes into bags that we would leave in Michelle’s car. I have never needed the in-room coffee maker more until that morning. The coffee tasted good even with that nasty powdered creamer. That is when you know you are tired.

We headed downstairs exactly at 4am, put our gear bags by some chairs, put our non-walking clothes in the car, grabbed our breakfast and found ourselves more coffee. We sat there eating and watching people file in with crazy headbands, matching outfits and more pink duffel bags than I thought were actually made. As we were sitting there watching all this chaos go on around us, we met this crazy lady named Wendy. It turns out her team mate bailed on her at the last minute so she informally joined our team. She had personal reasons for doing the walk as well without all the pink fanfare. We liked her immediately.

The bus pulled in and we loaded our gear on. Some really excited and pumped up people started loading on the bus as did other people more like ourselves who were sitting there wishing for a Starbucks fairy to appear. But the attitude in the bus was infectious and we all found ourselves in better moods by the time our bus pulled up to Bellevue Community College – our starting point.

It was quite the sight! People dressed up as fairies with wands and crowns, people in crazy pajamas, people with orange cones on their head and others dressed up as pirates were everywhere cheering us as we got off the bus. My bag was a little bit lopsided on the wheels and some really nice woman ran up and picked up the back part of the bag and helped me carry it to a waiting semi trailer. We had our tent assignment on our credential which had been mailed to us a few weeks earlier and it said J69, so we headed to the “J” semi trailer. These nice people dressed up with animal hats and in crazy jammies loaded our bags and we headed off to look around.
We were one of the first people there so we had time to put up a sticker to tell my mom and Kerry’s mom (Michelle’s other BFF’s mother) that we were walking for them. Then we took pictures of the lights they had everywhere with messages of encouragement and headed to the line for Starbucks as soon as they opened up. We also acquainted ourselves with the porta potties that would be our best friends for the rest of the walk.

My feet were already starting to protest so much standing, so we sat down on a curb as the rest of the walkers filed in. I heard that we had somewhere in the range of 3,500 people doing this walk. We eventually found the other two members of our team- Nancy and her sister, Lyn. Michelle worked with Nancy in San Diego and her sister, Lyn lives in Seattle. There was a big opening ceremony with lots of fanfare and encouragement, lots of cheering and inspirational music and then we were off.

The walk on the first day was not all that pretty. Our route was along a lot of busy streets that were mostly business or industrial. Not much pretty to look at. Luckily the route had these pit stops every 2-3 miles that really broke up the walk and enabled us to potty at regular intervals. Each of these pit stops had water, Gatorade, ice, pretzels, chips, granola bars, bananas, oranges, nuts and little PB&J sandwich things. There was no going hungry while doing the walk. They also provided lots of salt so that people like me who sweat, didn’t puff up like the Pillsbury Dough Girl. I ate a lot of potato chips to try and combat my puffy fingers and feet. Michelle was never without her pretzels.

Lunch at mile 10 was really yummy. Chicken breast sandwiches, sun chips, an apple and cookies. This event was so well organized everything went smoothly everywhere we went. Because walkers have to stay on sidewalks we naturally formed a long line that must have stretched out for miles. This meant that the waves of people hitting the pit stops did so in small groups. It wasn’t until the very end of the last day that I really got an idea of the true number of people that walked.

Ic must say, the best thing about walking were the people that parked themselves along the side of the road in parking lots and held up signs cheering us on, telling us thank you for walking for them/their children/parent/spouse, telling us we were heroes, handing out candy, otter pops, red vines, bubble gum and spray bottles with water spritzing us down when the temps were crawling into the 80’s. It felt so good to have people take the time out of their day to cheer on a total stranger. Those people cheering really gave me personal motivation for finishing, especially on the last day, when I was having a hard time putting one foot in front of the other because it hurt so badly.

For those people that couldn’t finish the walk at any point along the way were the sweep vans. They were decked out with themes and they patrolled alongside of us waiting for some person to show a thumbs down that they needed a ride. We had the “Peace” van. They had slogans like “Make love not blisters” on their windows and they blared 60’s and 70’s music as they drove by. And of course they wore tie dye and giant bras over their shirts. There were the “Mammogrammies” that wore mumus and grey wigs and had “Be a film star, get a mammogram” written on the back of their van. The “Dawg Patrol” that had dog costume hats and pictures of dogs all over their van. They had “Are Your Dawgs Barkin’?” on their van. The van would pick these people up and take them either to lunch or to the camp depending on the time of day. The Cow Ladies just rode alongside us every day with loud music, a moo horn and lots of clapping and encouragement. Everyone loved those lovely ladies.

We also loved all the motorcycles that belonged to our safety folks. These guys and gals had their motorcycles decked out with plastic boobs (when else would this be socially acceptable?), bras, pink teddy bears and flamingos, boas and flags. The safety folks made sure that we got across all of those more hairy intersections safely. They were awesome standing on their feet all darn day with a smile on their faces while directing weary walkers along their path. And they were there for us at the end of the walk too. But more of that later.

Michelle and I lost our other teammates along the way, but we trudged ourselves through to the very end of day 1. Our feet hurt, our knees hurt, Michelle’s back hurt and we didn’t talk at all for the last few miles since we had to concentrate on our own personal pain levels.

As we rounded the corner on the last blessed mile we walked along our camp and saw just how massive it was. What a production! HUGE white tents for our eating area and food service area, seas of pink sleeping tents, semi trucks labeled mobile showers, more rows upon rows of porta potties… it was massive. As we came to the entrance of the camp there were more crew members there cheering us on and congratulating us that we finished. We walked down the flag lined path to the sleeping area and grabbed our stuff off the ground and our tent and got everything set up.

After setting up our tent, rolling out our sleeping mats and bags we grabbed our pajamas and shower stuff and headed over to the towel tent. We had both paid for towel service so we picked up our two towels that were slightly bigger than a hand towel and washed the days grime off of ourselves. Total gym class rules in there. If you were a modest person you were in a world of hurt. But most of us are older broads with childbirth scars, cellulite on our ample thighs (despite all those training walks) and I met one that had mastectomy scars.

We grabbed our spaghetti dinner and ate as fast as possible because the dinner music that night was some opera singer that was getting on my nerves. At least sing cheesy Italian restaurant music instead of whatever the heck he was singing. From there we went to the La Croix tent (one of our sponsors) and had ourselves a nice cold sparkling water beverage and vibrated our tired feet for a while before heading back to our tent and crashing for the night. Other people went to the big tent and did karoke until lights out at 9pm. For once, Michelle was not in a karoke mood.