saffronhare (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
saffronhare) wrote2006-09-20 11:16 am
saffronhare) wrote2006-09-20 11:16 am
Entry tags:
Day Two: in which our walker is mildly belligerent
Whoops. This was still marked "private" -- sorry.
Day Two started nice and early. I'd set my watch alarm for 5 a.m. and dithered in the tent for a little while, listening to other walkers getting up, unzipping their tents, and shambling to the bathrooms. I took a few minutes to stretch in the darkness and check my bandages before deciding that I'd go eat breakfast in my jammies. There were some folks who were all dressed in the hope of avoiding another round-trip to the tent area, but I figured the extra movement would be good for me. Glad I did it that way.
It was on the walk down to the dining tent that I saw![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
zylch and we giggled about my "mad scientist" hair. I'd gone to bed with it wet, but it seemed silly to do much about it when I'd be sweating under a hat all day anyway. Some walkers were dedicated enough to glamour to shower again in the morning. I am not one of those walkers.
I stood up in the mostly quiet darkness outside the tent and turned my face to the moon, once again still high in the sky, for my morning devotions. No candle to light, but the prayers were spoken and I felt very calm and happy about the whole thing.
Breakfast was yummy. The crew was very accommodating about my request for "about as much bacon as my plate will hold, please." I reconstituted some hot cocoa mix with coffee, and poured in about four packets of french vanilla creamer. Oh, bliss. That one cup of coffee was the only bit of caffeine I got all day...but it was a meaningful moment all the same. I even tried some cream of wheat, which I still don't like. (shrug)
The course opened at 7 a.m. and we were free to start whenever we wanted, as long as we were out of camp by 9 a.m. I got under way at about 7:15 a.m. on the advice of some walkers who had done this before -- they said it's best to start early on Day Two so one has the luxury of time along the route and at the pit stops. Also, with the heat predicted, it made sense to get as many miles under my belt before the heat of the day really hit.
Yes, I put on sunscreen in the dark this time. Lots of it.
Since the 3-Day is an event designed to support non-athletic people, there were all kinds of heat precautions and care to prevent/treat heat injuries. Water and gatorade at every stop. Tubs of ice and water for soaking bandanas and hats. And, as the day wore on, air-conditioned buses running at each stop, so people could take a break. I began to lust after those bananas that have some sort of super-water-absorbing gel bits inside, which then keep one's neck nice and cool for a longer time than wet cloth alone.
This was the day when everyone and their sister felt a need to comment on my sunburn. It was also the day when my pack began to really hurt. I mean, it wasn't ideally comfortable on Friday (even though I'd trained with it), but I began to develop some bruising on Saturday. Blisters also blossomed. I visited the medical tent at lunchtime for help draining the blister on my left heel, and tried to cushion some doozies that were developing on my other heel and the balls of both feet. Yay.
Cookies again at lunch. They were serving peanut butter, but I asked if they might maybe have another flavor. Lo, a box of chocolate chip cookies left over from the day before was found on the instant. I wasn't willing to whimper and make them search or anything. That would've been silly. But it sure seemed worth asking, you know? And there they were! Doesn't take much to cheer me up, does it? (For the record, I dislike peanut butter cookies. The smell of warmed peanut butter -- as encountered when one prepares peanut butter toast or bakes peanut butter cookies -- makes me gag.)
As I set out again after lunch, gritting my teeth until my feet settled back into the shoes and the pace again, I resolved to check the price of a hip-pack at the gear tent once I got back to camp. I figured, if the price was reasonable (here, I defined "reasonable" as $25 or less), then this was a bit of pain I could do something about.
Just after lunch, we hit 119th Street and crossed I-35 to a cheering station at 119th & Blackbob -- my own personal Pit of Despair. See, it was super-hot by this point. For most of the walk, I was able to maintain a protective lack of awareness of where I was or how I might get to where we were going (purposeful denial, but it worked for me). But at 119th& Blackbob? I knew exactly how far away Shawnee Mission Park was...way too fah. It also seemed to me that drivers in this area were a little bit lax in their honking and waving. Normally, I don't give a rat's ass about honking and waving, but it was suddenly Essential to my Morale. I got on with mah bad crankeh self, grumbling as I waved and smiled at passing cars, "Wave, you air-conditioned bastards. Wave!"
This mood only lasted about a half-mile, until we came to the cheering station. I didn't see anybody I knew, but a lovely little boy gave me a Bomb Pop. I announced to anyone within hearing that this young hero was now My Favorite and would surely do well in life. In another half-mile or so, we had another pit stop. Here, the medical team was getting all draconian about prevention of heat injuries because the heat index had just been raised to Extreme or Stoopid or whatever-you-call-it. They wanted everyone to take a few minutes in the air-conditioned bus before going on. I was feeling pretty strong (in a non-delusional way) and knew in my bones that the temperature change would be No Good for me. I rested for a bit in the shade, had plenty of water, soaked my head and my hat for a bit, confirmed that my pee was still plentiful and light-colored (bet you wanted to know that, huh?) and managed to get out of the rest stop sneaky like a bunny ninja. :)
Really, I did take the heat pretty seriously. I've been heat-fucked before, and have no desire to repeat the experience. Plus, just enough of y'all are medical types that I'm certain you would be kicking my ass all the way home. In my worst nightmares, Dory would be the dispatcher providing scathing commentary the whole way through, Adam would be the EMT making me suffer in the bus, and my mother-in-law would be my primary nurse at the hospital. Ack.
A few more miles down the road, just before the next (and final) rest stop of the day, I looked up to a honking horn and saw the Minivan Galactica, filled with my husband and offspring. They did a great many three-point turns and met me at the pit stop for some sweaty hugs. Princess !Kaboom did about eleventy-billion cartwheels for me. She and Princess PrettySchool had acquired shiny beads (like Mardi Gras) at the cheering station where they'd been waiting with varying patience for the last hour. They drank a lot of my water before I refilled. Princess Boredom was unimpressed by the whole experience, and complained to me that it was too hot and could they please go now. Remarkably enough, I was not moved to smite her. I just smiled and agreed that it was awfully hot, and said I was glad she'd come out. Then I promised to teach her how to do a breast self-exam, which elicited a gratifying expression of horror on her face. She was quite happy to go fill up my water then, so I could be on my way.
I got to point out Barry, an older gentleman who is heroically doing all 12 of the 3-Days around the country this year. And the gel-filled bandanas that were so nifty. And I got to announce that I wanted Crocs Real Bad. And then it was time to get back to it. They did a few honking drive-bys on the way out, and then I slogged the last couple of miles back to camp.
At one particularly awful moment, the route had us entering the park pertty darn close to where our tents were. I could see them and everything! Sadly, we had another 87 miles to walk before we reached the finish. Okay, maybe that's not quite true. But at one point, a safety person told me there was only a third of a mile left...and it took me about 15 minutes to finish. One third of a mile, my ass. I wasn't going that slow.
Anyway, we were greeted by a camp in response mode. I was handed a little piece of paper announcing that they were going to relocate camp to an indoor location for the night due to the lightning storms predicted. One side of the paper provided instructions for those checking out to go home for the night; the other side was for those staying with the camp for the night. I figured I'd hang. But first -- off to the gear shop, where I walked in and pointed at the hip pack. How much? I managed to ask. $25. Schweet. I'll take one, please.
The buses wouldn't start loading until 7 p.m., so I wandered up to the tent to gather up my shower gear and went to eat dinner, then get a shower in. I cannot recall what we had for dessert that night, but I think it was scooped into a bowl. (ETA: Cheesecake! It was cheesecake! There. I feel better now.) After my shower, I tried to stop at the medical tent for blister care, but I was too late. They'd closed up shop for the night -- relocating to our alternate location. I saw the lovelycynthiaweb for a moment as I was ever-so-graciously turned away. Hm. I was assured that there would be help at the alternate location (wherever the hell that was going to be) and that the tent would be reopening at 6 a.m. tomorrow, before the course opened. Oh, well, I figured...there are worse things than having blisters air out for the night. Up to the tent again, to gather what I needed for the night (no other gear was permitted) and to secure everything as well as possible. The ever-glorious zylch had acquired Real Live Tent Stakes and staked down my tent against the weather. Yay! I was able to borrow somebody's cell phone to give agrnmn the heads-up about the night, and to reassure him that I wouldn't be sleeping outside that night. Then I wandered off to find a bus for the night.
Got on the first set of buses and very soon found myself at the FedEx warehouse off I-435 and Lackman. Only the finest of concrete floors for us, yo. All the snacks and water we could ever want were already set up for us, as well as a generous number of portajohns. They'd made a serious effort to sweep the floor but, you know, warehouse. (sigh) It wasn't precisely air-conditioned, either, though I managed to find a spot near one of the swamp coolers with some good cross-ventilation. By this point, we had boiled away all the people who were never going to sleep at the camp anyway, the people who hadn't wanted to sleep at camp once they saw the tents and the necessity of setting them up themselves, and the people who didn't want to go to the relocation site. The group left (only a couple hundred of us, I think) were pretty hard-core. There were a few folks who seriously tried to bed down, but just couldn't do it, so they called their husbands and went home for the night. They really did give it a try.
More medical failure was experienced. Turns out, they were only prepared to take care of the Truly Injured and Critically Ill people. Two walkers left by ambulance during the night. Ick. Blistered people (and I considered myself lucky to only have blisters) were ordered to keep their feet clean, to air them out overnight, and to check in with medical back at the camp in the morning. The first buses were scheduled to leave at 5 a.m. With the medical tent scheduled to open at 6 a.m. and the course opening at 7 a.m., I figured I should get moving as early as possible and set my alarm for a few minutes before 5 a.m. My self-inflating air mattress was an under-achiever, failing to hold air to any discernable degree at all. (sigh) I've passed worse nights, I guess.
And then, there was Day Three. But that's another story.
Day Two started nice and early. I'd set my watch alarm for 5 a.m. and dithered in the tent for a little while, listening to other walkers getting up, unzipping their tents, and shambling to the bathrooms. I took a few minutes to stretch in the darkness and check my bandages before deciding that I'd go eat breakfast in my jammies. There were some folks who were all dressed in the hope of avoiding another round-trip to the tent area, but I figured the extra movement would be good for me. Glad I did it that way.
It was on the walk down to the dining tent that I saw
zylch and we giggled about my "mad scientist" hair. I'd gone to bed with it wet, but it seemed silly to do much about it when I'd be sweating under a hat all day anyway. Some walkers were dedicated enough to glamour to shower again in the morning. I am not one of those walkers. I stood up in the mostly quiet darkness outside the tent and turned my face to the moon, once again still high in the sky, for my morning devotions. No candle to light, but the prayers were spoken and I felt very calm and happy about the whole thing.
Breakfast was yummy. The crew was very accommodating about my request for "about as much bacon as my plate will hold, please." I reconstituted some hot cocoa mix with coffee, and poured in about four packets of french vanilla creamer. Oh, bliss. That one cup of coffee was the only bit of caffeine I got all day...but it was a meaningful moment all the same. I even tried some cream of wheat, which I still don't like. (shrug)
The course opened at 7 a.m. and we were free to start whenever we wanted, as long as we were out of camp by 9 a.m. I got under way at about 7:15 a.m. on the advice of some walkers who had done this before -- they said it's best to start early on Day Two so one has the luxury of time along the route and at the pit stops. Also, with the heat predicted, it made sense to get as many miles under my belt before the heat of the day really hit.
Yes, I put on sunscreen in the dark this time. Lots of it.
Since the 3-Day is an event designed to support non-athletic people, there were all kinds of heat precautions and care to prevent/treat heat injuries. Water and gatorade at every stop. Tubs of ice and water for soaking bandanas and hats. And, as the day wore on, air-conditioned buses running at each stop, so people could take a break. I began to lust after those bananas that have some sort of super-water-absorbing gel bits inside, which then keep one's neck nice and cool for a longer time than wet cloth alone.
This was the day when everyone and their sister felt a need to comment on my sunburn. It was also the day when my pack began to really hurt. I mean, it wasn't ideally comfortable on Friday (even though I'd trained with it), but I began to develop some bruising on Saturday. Blisters also blossomed. I visited the medical tent at lunchtime for help draining the blister on my left heel, and tried to cushion some doozies that were developing on my other heel and the balls of both feet. Yay.
Cookies again at lunch. They were serving peanut butter, but I asked if they might maybe have another flavor. Lo, a box of chocolate chip cookies left over from the day before was found on the instant. I wasn't willing to whimper and make them search or anything. That would've been silly. But it sure seemed worth asking, you know? And there they were! Doesn't take much to cheer me up, does it? (For the record, I dislike peanut butter cookies. The smell of warmed peanut butter -- as encountered when one prepares peanut butter toast or bakes peanut butter cookies -- makes me gag.)
As I set out again after lunch, gritting my teeth until my feet settled back into the shoes and the pace again, I resolved to check the price of a hip-pack at the gear tent once I got back to camp. I figured, if the price was reasonable (here, I defined "reasonable" as $25 or less), then this was a bit of pain I could do something about.
Just after lunch, we hit 119th Street and crossed I-35 to a cheering station at 119th & Blackbob -- my own personal Pit of Despair. See, it was super-hot by this point. For most of the walk, I was able to maintain a protective lack of awareness of where I was or how I might get to where we were going (purposeful denial, but it worked for me). But at 119th& Blackbob? I knew exactly how far away Shawnee Mission Park was...way too fah. It also seemed to me that drivers in this area were a little bit lax in their honking and waving. Normally, I don't give a rat's ass about honking and waving, but it was suddenly Essential to my Morale. I got on with mah bad crankeh self, grumbling as I waved and smiled at passing cars, "Wave, you air-conditioned bastards. Wave!"
This mood only lasted about a half-mile, until we came to the cheering station. I didn't see anybody I knew, but a lovely little boy gave me a Bomb Pop. I announced to anyone within hearing that this young hero was now My Favorite and would surely do well in life. In another half-mile or so, we had another pit stop. Here, the medical team was getting all draconian about prevention of heat injuries because the heat index had just been raised to Extreme or Stoopid or whatever-you-call-it. They wanted everyone to take a few minutes in the air-conditioned bus before going on. I was feeling pretty strong (in a non-delusional way) and knew in my bones that the temperature change would be No Good for me. I rested for a bit in the shade, had plenty of water, soaked my head and my hat for a bit, confirmed that my pee was still plentiful and light-colored (bet you wanted to know that, huh?) and managed to get out of the rest stop sneaky like a bunny ninja. :)
Really, I did take the heat pretty seriously. I've been heat-fucked before, and have no desire to repeat the experience. Plus, just enough of y'all are medical types that I'm certain you would be kicking my ass all the way home. In my worst nightmares, Dory would be the dispatcher providing scathing commentary the whole way through, Adam would be the EMT making me suffer in the bus, and my mother-in-law would be my primary nurse at the hospital. Ack.
A few more miles down the road, just before the next (and final) rest stop of the day, I looked up to a honking horn and saw the Minivan Galactica, filled with my husband and offspring. They did a great many three-point turns and met me at the pit stop for some sweaty hugs. Princess !Kaboom did about eleventy-billion cartwheels for me. She and Princess PrettySchool had acquired shiny beads (like Mardi Gras) at the cheering station where they'd been waiting with varying patience for the last hour. They drank a lot of my water before I refilled. Princess Boredom was unimpressed by the whole experience, and complained to me that it was too hot and could they please go now. Remarkably enough, I was not moved to smite her. I just smiled and agreed that it was awfully hot, and said I was glad she'd come out. Then I promised to teach her how to do a breast self-exam, which elicited a gratifying expression of horror on her face. She was quite happy to go fill up my water then, so I could be on my way.
I got to point out Barry, an older gentleman who is heroically doing all 12 of the 3-Days around the country this year. And the gel-filled bandanas that were so nifty. And I got to announce that I wanted Crocs Real Bad. And then it was time to get back to it. They did a few honking drive-bys on the way out, and then I slogged the last couple of miles back to camp.
At one particularly awful moment, the route had us entering the park pertty darn close to where our tents were. I could see them and everything! Sadly, we had another 87 miles to walk before we reached the finish. Okay, maybe that's not quite true. But at one point, a safety person told me there was only a third of a mile left...and it took me about 15 minutes to finish. One third of a mile, my ass. I wasn't going that slow.
Anyway, we were greeted by a camp in response mode. I was handed a little piece of paper announcing that they were going to relocate camp to an indoor location for the night due to the lightning storms predicted. One side of the paper provided instructions for those checking out to go home for the night; the other side was for those staying with the camp for the night. I figured I'd hang. But first -- off to the gear shop, where I walked in and pointed at the hip pack. How much? I managed to ask. $25. Schweet. I'll take one, please.
The buses wouldn't start loading until 7 p.m., so I wandered up to the tent to gather up my shower gear and went to eat dinner, then get a shower in. I cannot recall what we had for dessert that night, but I think it was scooped into a bowl. (ETA: Cheesecake! It was cheesecake! There. I feel better now.) After my shower, I tried to stop at the medical tent for blister care, but I was too late. They'd closed up shop for the night -- relocating to our alternate location. I saw the lovely
cynthiaweb for a moment as I was ever-so-graciously turned away. Hm. I was assured that there would be help at the alternate location (wherever the hell that was going to be) and that the tent would be reopening at 6 a.m. tomorrow, before the course opened. Oh, well, I figured...there are worse things than having blisters air out for the night. Up to the tent again, to gather what I needed for the night (no other gear was permitted) and to secure everything as well as possible. The ever-glorious zylch had acquired Real Live Tent Stakes and staked down my tent against the weather. Yay! I was able to borrow somebody's cell phone to give agrnmn the heads-up about the night, and to reassure him that I wouldn't be sleeping outside that night. Then I wandered off to find a bus for the night. Got on the first set of buses and very soon found myself at the FedEx warehouse off I-435 and Lackman. Only the finest of concrete floors for us, yo. All the snacks and water we could ever want were already set up for us, as well as a generous number of portajohns. They'd made a serious effort to sweep the floor but, you know, warehouse. (sigh) It wasn't precisely air-conditioned, either, though I managed to find a spot near one of the swamp coolers with some good cross-ventilation. By this point, we had boiled away all the people who were never going to sleep at the camp anyway, the people who hadn't wanted to sleep at camp once they saw the tents and the necessity of setting them up themselves, and the people who didn't want to go to the relocation site. The group left (only a couple hundred of us, I think) were pretty hard-core. There were a few folks who seriously tried to bed down, but just couldn't do it, so they called their husbands and went home for the night. They really did give it a try.
More medical failure was experienced. Turns out, they were only prepared to take care of the Truly Injured and Critically Ill people. Two walkers left by ambulance during the night. Ick. Blistered people (and I considered myself lucky to only have blisters) were ordered to keep their feet clean, to air them out overnight, and to check in with medical back at the camp in the morning. The first buses were scheduled to leave at 5 a.m. With the medical tent scheduled to open at 6 a.m. and the course opening at 7 a.m., I figured I should get moving as early as possible and set my alarm for a few minutes before 5 a.m. My self-inflating air mattress was an under-achiever, failing to hold air to any discernable degree at all. (sigh) I've passed worse nights, I guess.
And then, there was Day Three. But that's another story.
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