And we’re Walking

Good Morning friends!! Did you notice I was gone…. yet again?? Sorry about all that! This summer will be the end of me yet with all we have been up to since April. Hang with me… I will get consistent before Christmas, I promise!!

So, you know those commercials with Flo from the insurance company? I have been thinking about this a lot lately, because first, I love Flo and those commercials make me laugh. But the one where she says, “And we’re walking….” has been at the forefront of my mind because I was walking… and walking…. and walking this last weekend! I know I haven’t talked much about it on the blog, and I most likely should have. But let me catch you up on what I have been doing.

Almost 10 months ago, I helped some friends of mine from all over the country do some fundraising for the Susan G. Komen 3 Day Walk for a Cure. Their energy leading up to the event was exciting, and I was happy to be able to help them with their fundraising. They all walked in Philly, PA last year, and while their 3 day event was only really 1 day because of the weather they faced, their pictures and video’s they all posted online made me cry like a baby right here at my computer screen. I honestly felt like the Holy Spirit was touching me on the shoulder and saying, “Hey girl…. what are you waiting for? YOU can do this!” So I decided that weekend that I would take the challenge and start fundraising myself for the 3 Day Walk in Chicago. I asked several people to join me, but honestly, I think the requirements of having to each raise $2300 in order to participate in the walk itself was a bit daunting for most. I formed Team Painted Lady anyway, and would have walked it by myself if I had to, but thankfully I didn’t have to. My twin sister Erin and my dear friend Kristina both joined along.

Heading out!!

I am not kidding you… we all stressed about the fundraising thing, but each of us pulled it off wonderfully and we all had the minimum (and them some) to walk this last weekend. Now, you might think, 20 miles a day… well, that is a bit excessive, but I could do that! TRAINING, TRAINING, TRAINING is all I have to say to that! My training was going very well until my grandmother passed away in May. I was away from home for about a month, and then back and forth out of state for weeks at a time after that. My training, went to heck in a hand basket! Even my team mates slacked on the training, so I didn’t feel so bad. I mean really, I know there must have been hundreds of those people at the event that didn’t train a stitch. If they can do it, so can I!

We drove to Chicago on Thursday, August 5th and stayed at the Embassy Suites with our friends Jen King and Jenni Booth, who were both crewing the event. (The CREW help in any way they are asked. From setting up tents, to cheering in walkers, to folding towels, etc). We laughed, and cried that night, and were full of excitement for Friday morning and the opening ceremony. I do have to tell you that 4am came much sooner than I had hoped, but before you knew it, we were standing all together in anticipation of Opening Ceremonies! They played some seriously fun motivational music, and the people watching was AWESOME! Loved those boys from the Boobie Bra-Gade!! You guys rocked!

Boobie Bra-gade

 Erin left to do something, when the song “She’s a Brick House” came on. I wept, and before I knew it, Erin was by my side. When my grandmother was in her last days, the family took to calling me “The Powerhouse”, and we would break into the Brick-House song throughout that weekend saying goodbye to grandma, so when that song played at the opening ceremony, well, I lost it!

We did some stretching, chatted with new friends, took some pictures and before you knew it, we were walking! Day One was 22 miles. The community support was amazing! We followed the arrows, and many times we felt like we were at the back of the pack, but we walked. There were many pit stops along the way. The organizers of the event were great. Each pit stop had water and gatorade for us to fill our packs and waterbottles with, snacks, port-a-potties and lots of people cheering us on. I never knew how much I appreciated port-a-potties until that day! The pit stops were mostly 1-4 miles apart, and when you are drinking 2 liters between each stop, well, you get the idea! The “Sweeper Vans” were going all day, in case anyone on the route needed to get picked up. LOVED the Sweeper Peepers! They honked and cheered as they drove by, as did many others on bikes, motorcycles, vans, cars and more! Some of those people have a great imagination when it comes to apparel! Pink Tu-tu’s (even on the men!), feather boa’s, and well… anything you can imagine, we saw it all! By lunch time, the 11 mile mark, my hips decided they didn’t like the position God put them in, and they just wanted to stray their own way. I could hardly walk or move, so my sister and I took the bus back to camp while our friend Kris pressed on! GOOD ON YA KRIS!!

We got back to camp where we were met by our friends Jen and JenniB. They were awesome to us, and were kind enough to let us know that our “Tent Angels” had come while we were walking!! They not only set up our tents for us, but they gathered our bags as well and had everything waiting for us!  Once we got through getting our tents in order, we ate, gathered our mail from the 3 Day Post Office, and then hit the showers! Even after just 11 miles… we were stinky! P.U.! After our showers, we hit the medical tents. They provided not only medical care for those in need, but CHIROPRACTIC and deep tissue massage!! YIPPEEE! I was brought to a table where JESS from medical totally hooked me up! She put my hips back into joint, and deep tissued my back like no-body’s business! I was ready for another day for sure!! That evening in our tent, Erin and I started to go through all our mail we received. I was blessed with 35 cards and letters, and while I wanted to open them all on Day One, I opened just half of them and saved the other half for Saturday night. A BIG THANK YOU to all who supported me with cards and letters!! That was AWESOME!

Day Two was awesome! The weather was perfect. It was supposed to be a bit hotter than Friday, but both days were a bit overcast with a nice breeze, so that rocked. I was more worried about the heat of the days than anything else. We did notice that one particular pit stop was 4 miles away, and we were certain we needed to relieve ourselves before that point, so we did take a little sweep in the bus to lunch, but other wise our team walked 16 miles on Day Two. The community support on Day Two was AMAZING!! I have to say, if you are in the Chicago area, those folks over in Mount Prospect outdid themselves. The police and fire departments wore Pink shirt uniforms that day and there was one stretch in our walk where the community was out in full force.

Pink it up officer!!

 I swear, it had to have been at least four or five blocks of folks lined up on both sides of the sidewalks, just cheering us on, handing out candy and water, freeze pops and spraying us with water bottles! And everyone was thanking US… can you imagine? We were thanking them for their support because surely, many of them could have been doing other things!  Actually walking into camp that day was great! Teams of crew people were there to cheer us in, and it felt amazing to come to the finish line that day! We got into camp, and ate right away. The first night was grilled steaks, the second night, we had grilled chicken Parmesan… DELISH! After dinner we hit the showers again. They had 6 truck trailers that had 8 showers in each trailer… with hot and cold running water! We were feeling great. When I got out of the shower, I looked at my feet to see that I was having some issues I wasn’t aware of on the walk that day. My big toe had a huge blister on the inner side, and my second toe, well… it was just downright disturbing! I had a blister UNDER my toe nail. My nail was raised up and pushed out… and I will certainly be losing that nail sooner than later. Good thing about this particular blister…. it won’t need chemo to treat it, so I kept a positive attitude about it and hit the medical tents again. The foot girls rocked, and while they didn’t do anything for me that night (told me to cover it with vaseline, and come back in the morning), they treated us all with kindness and respect! We decided after medical, that we needed to eat dinner again, so we did! The entertainment for the evening was again, amazing. The M.C. of the event guided us with words of encouragement, told us of the route, and the weather for the next day, and then Officer Frank (in his pink uniform still) showed us how to roll up our tents for the next morning. Go Officer Frank!  We decided to stop by the Remembrance tents before heading to bed. This was an area of the camp site that had white tents, lit up from the inside to memorialize those that have lost their fight. Each city was represented, with the Chicago tent inside a larger tent for us to write on. The large tent was lined with photos of some of those who have passed on, and it was certainly an emotional time for each of us who walked through and wrote a message on the tent.

To honor those who have fought the fight and lost

  We went back to the tent, killed a monster Wolf Spider that wanted to bunk with us (I swear, I beat on that thing for 20 minutes before he decided to give up the battle), and went through the rest of our mail. We organized our stuff to get ready for tear down the next morning, re-inflated our air mattresses, and off to dream land we went.

Day Three found me back in the medical tent after breakfast. I packed both pairs of tennis shoes and decided to use my flip flops that day. (only because my toes would not fit into my shoes again). Concerned for my tootsies, we decided to sweep right to lunch from camp. The highlight of Day Three was when my sister’s husband Alex showed up to be our personal Walker Stalker that day on his motorcycle!! It was awesome!!  Alex kept up with the route with us, not only cheering us on, but other walkers as well! At one point, he rode to a Fish Taco place that gave me stuff to make  a sign, and then to the gas station to stock up on candy to give out to the walkers! It was totally cool!

Stalkers for Walkers ~ Thanks Alex!

And then, the rains came…. light at first, but the wind kicked up and my bandages started to fall off. I took a small sweep to pit stop 3 where I told the girls at medical that I just wanted them to wrap my shoes to my feet if they had to! One of the gals came up with a great idea, and I sacrificed a pair of socks for it. She re-wrapped my feet (I had them entirely wrapped from heel to to at pit stop 2 because my arches were screaming at me), and then put the sock on my feet and cut them between my two toes and wrapped those socks to my feet. While I looked like a teenage mutant ninja turtle walking, it worked great, and I didn’t have to content with that again until the last pit stop where we sacrificed another pair of socks (the first pair were pretty wet after that rain). We walked along Lake Shore Drive, and even got to catch some of the music playing at Lalapalooza in Grant Park that day! Yippee! Of course, once the rains stopped, it got HOT and HUMID. The thing I worried about more than anything was coming to life in front of my eyes! Thankfully by that point, we were just 2.5 miles from the finish line!

The walk after that was a bit uncomfortable, but we did it. Before you know it, we were ONE MILE from the holding area at Soldier Field!! I hugged that sign like it was a lifeline! Hehehe. The closer we walked, the louder it got. You could hear cheering like crazy. We started to come into the walk ways to Soldier Field, and there were people lined both sides of the walk way. The cheering was enough to make Erin and I break down in tears. Then when we spotted our friends JenniB and Jen… they both came into the walk way and hugged us like mad! I cannot explain the feeling of it all… it is just something you will have to experience for yourself! And I highly suggest you do!  We were in the holding area for a while. Many came out to support their loved ones who walked, and then we were directed outside for the closing ceremony. The ending of the most amazing experience was upon us. We were told that of the 1600+ walkers, Chicago had raised 4.5 MILLION dollars! Amazing!! Of those 1600 walkers, I believe I heard there were 400 Survivors among us. Inspiring! The Crew was representing, the Motorcycle Brigade, the Volunteers and everyone who had a hand in that weekend were thanked and applauded!

While we all had every intention of getting tattooed to commemorate our time together in Chicago, we decided that our bodies had been through enough. A tattoo would surely send our bodies into shock, so we got our car and drove out of town. We did hit some traffic, so instead of driving all the way to Platteville WI to Erin’s place, we stopped at a Radisson hotel, and slept on a sleep number bed. We hit the Machine Shed for breakfast and drove to Erin’s. Her Chiro got us in that afternoon, and really, the rest of Monday was a blur.

And while I am still on the 3 Day high, I am all ready wondering if I will crew next year, or try to actually walk the entire 60 miles next year. Let me just say though, if you have a 3 Day event coming close to your city, consider taking the kids and going out to cheer your walkers on!

And for all those who supported me over the last 10 months, THANK YOU!! The money you donated, your prayers and kind words, your cards and letters, and your support of the garage sale that took us over what we needed to walk, it is all so greatly appreciated. I could never express what you each mean to me!! THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!

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