Walking by Blue Tulip
August 24th, 2009 9:38 PMI started over this year. There were more set-backs this time, but they were external. They were not within myself.
Amy passed away on December 27th, 2008.
On August 21st I set out with a friend I met in the third grade, her husband, his mother, and two women I had just met a few weeks before. We are the only visible part of Amy's Army. We started at the head of a column of 2500 people at 7:30 in the morning in the rain and in tears. We walked and rode, asked for help, sped up, slowed down, shed our rain gear, applied sunscreen, laughed, ate, took care of ourselves and each other and told stories.
If you want to get technical about it I walked 25 miles by about 9:00 AM Saturday August 22nd, but I kept going. I walked 60 miles on the official route over 3 days. As I walked along I found the strength to keep walking.
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I arrived at opening ceremonies at 5:30 AM.
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I worked very hard on our memorial t-shirts. My team knew that high visibility would help us stay together or find each other when we needed to.
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I had my own cheerleaders along the route.
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Oldenburg's wife died of breast cancer last year.
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People groaned when they saw the stairs. Maybe it was better to know they were coming.
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The last walker is celebrated at each opportunity. Upon their arrival into camp they raise the Day One flag.
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In the Remembrance Tent was a photo of Amy from closing ceremonies 2008. It will travel to all of The 3 Days around the country this year.
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Day 2: Still visible!
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People turned out to cheer.
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Lots of people.
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Triumphant return to camp at the end of day 2. That was 22.7 miles.
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We fought hard on day 3 and I kept waiting for it to become impossible. Suddenly we were at the 1 mile marker.
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Then it seemed the finish line rushed up to meet us. (Well not really. I was still waiting for it to overcome me.)
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Closing ceremony: Welcoming the Crew.
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The survivors are the last to arrive. We all get down on our knees and raise a shoe in salute.
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She doesn't mention it here, but she covered quite a bit more than 25 miles just in training. All told, she walked over 200 miles this summer, the majority of it training for the event in this proof.
and it was for such a good cause too.