Raincharm’s Weblog

The walk is over. And it was HOT. More later (I hope) This must be a short post for a few reasons, not the least of which is I am kind of tired. But I met two women at 4:30 AM on Friday, and we were still together (with 1800 other men and women) at 4:30 PM on Sunday. They were wonderful. I was on the Kindred Spirits team, although I did not know any of them at the start. One that I met and walk many miles with knew my sister Pooh in High School.  The others I got to know through heat and pit stops and pit toilets (well porta-potties) and truck showers and pink tents and sore feet and road rash and just everything. Getting up readily at hours of the morning I only see when I have to get to work early for something.

Two short notes. 1. This is the fastest time zone change I have ever accomplished. It is done by getting up really early (4 AM) on the west coast, flying all day, getting up reasonably early the next day in the Eastern time zone (7:30 AM), and then getting up at 4 AM again, but Eastern time zone, the next day and then completely exhausting yourself walking 20 miles in 89 degree weather.

2. The 3rd day of the walk went right in front of the house I grew up in! It was exciting. I was hoping to see some familiar sights from my childhood, but I never thought I would get so close to the most familiar. We also went through my Junior High, next to my High School, a block from my grade school and past friends houses … It was a great third day.

Oh – and the Ooo! Cherries is from Carl and Ashlan. They went to many cheering stations (places where they tell folks the walkers will be passing, so they can come out and cheer them on). On the 2nd day afternoon and 3rd day morning they showed up with an old scotch plaid cooler (also from my childhood or maybe earlier) full of fresh cherries, watermelon and pineapple. At dinner of the second day, one of the women on my team was talking about the great fruit at one of the stations, and described Carl & Ashlan’s offerings to a tee. Carl said that he finally figured out what type of cherries they had, because people kept saying, “Ooo! Cherries.”

I was going to post a few pictures, but let’s just say we are having technical difficulties.

This entry was posted on August 16, 2009 at 7:32 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.