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Yeah yeah, uphill both ways, Ray. Shut up about it.
The source of today's Stream of Consciousness was a Friend here, who's part of a team in Maryland that's doing a Relay for Life in support of the local American Cancer Society. Their particular gig involves members of each sponsored team walking a track for twelve hours (in total, not per team member- ouch). Seeing it in this form- measuring the goal-attaining by time- is a different spin on the usual walk/race/run-for-charity event's measurement of the miles or km's.
Most of the ones I've seen and supported in recent years have been on the order of 5 kilometres, 10 at most. Wusses. The ones of this ilk which I walked for many a year were the springtime Super Walks for the March of Dimes, which back in the day, in our location at least, were 20 full miles.
( The more-or-less course, for any familiar with the terrain of Nausea County )
Whew. I don't know if charity walks still do this- my walkin' days were long before things like the Rosie Ruiz subway shortcut on the Boston Marathon- but even back then we had to get our pledge cards stamped at checkpoints all along the route. Other than these stops- most of them staffed by volunteers not much older than we were- we were totally unsupervised teenagers, walking with no medical clearance or legal releases along some of the busiest commuter routes in the state (granted, between 8 a.m. and 3 p.m. on a Sunday, usually), and our pledges tended to be a few pennies per mile per donor if we were lucky, but we didn't care. We were raising money for a good cause, spending a whole day out in the sun (there were rain dates, but I don't think one ever got invoked) and laughing it up with both friends and strangers in the same pursuit. It's a shame and a certainty that this sort of event just couldn't be put on this way anymore.
----
The afterparty didn't get you anything other than the t-shirt, maybe some cheap hot dogs and soda, and a usually low grade musical act performing in the park. One year, I am not making this up, the band's name was ??????, and I don't mean the 96 Tears guys. It wasn't until years later that I discovered one of those bands had semi- "made it" in the world. Maybe it was the '74 or '75 walk, but it ended with highlighters at the party named The Good Rats.
The Rats never got all that much pub beyond their Long Island roots, although they did play Madison Square Garden at least once and they had a surprisingly faithful Rochester following in the good old days of WCMF, long before I ever heard of that station. It was on some late night Unkle Roger show there in the late 80s, I think, that I first heard "Tasty" again, which dated back to my days hearing them play the park.
Hey! They have a Wikipedia entry so they must be good. And they're still playing! Founder Peppi Marchello's got his kids in the band with him now, they do a Long Island music festival every summer called Ratstock, there are two studio CDs from the last decade or so, plus a recorded-live one titled Rats, The Way You Like 'Em, which is from "a 1979 appearance on a Rochester radio show" which has GOT to be CMF.
::happysigh:: All these memories because someone's doing something for a good cause. Isn't life great when it works out like that?
[insert link to Anne's donation site here when she says it's okay]
The source of today's Stream of Consciousness was a Friend here, who's part of a team in Maryland that's doing a Relay for Life in support of the local American Cancer Society. Their particular gig involves members of each sponsored team walking a track for twelve hours (in total, not per team member- ouch). Seeing it in this form- measuring the goal-attaining by time- is a different spin on the usual walk/race/run-for-charity event's measurement of the miles or km's.
Most of the ones I've seen and supported in recent years have been on the order of 5 kilometres, 10 at most. Wusses. The ones of this ilk which I walked for many a year were the springtime Super Walks for the March of Dimes, which back in the day, in our location at least, were 20 full miles.
( The more-or-less course, for any familiar with the terrain of Nausea County )
Whew. I don't know if charity walks still do this- my walkin' days were long before things like the Rosie Ruiz subway shortcut on the Boston Marathon- but even back then we had to get our pledge cards stamped at checkpoints all along the route. Other than these stops- most of them staffed by volunteers not much older than we were- we were totally unsupervised teenagers, walking with no medical clearance or legal releases along some of the busiest commuter routes in the state (granted, between 8 a.m. and 3 p.m. on a Sunday, usually), and our pledges tended to be a few pennies per mile per donor if we were lucky, but we didn't care. We were raising money for a good cause, spending a whole day out in the sun (there were rain dates, but I don't think one ever got invoked) and laughing it up with both friends and strangers in the same pursuit. It's a shame and a certainty that this sort of event just couldn't be put on this way anymore.
----
The afterparty didn't get you anything other than the t-shirt, maybe some cheap hot dogs and soda, and a usually low grade musical act performing in the park. One year, I am not making this up, the band's name was ??????, and I don't mean the 96 Tears guys. It wasn't until years later that I discovered one of those bands had semi- "made it" in the world. Maybe it was the '74 or '75 walk, but it ended with highlighters at the party named The Good Rats.
The Rats never got all that much pub beyond their Long Island roots, although they did play Madison Square Garden at least once and they had a surprisingly faithful Rochester following in the good old days of WCMF, long before I ever heard of that station. It was on some late night Unkle Roger show there in the late 80s, I think, that I first heard "Tasty" again, which dated back to my days hearing them play the park.
Hey! They have a Wikipedia entry so they must be good. And they're still playing! Founder Peppi Marchello's got his kids in the band with him now, they do a Long Island music festival every summer called Ratstock, there are two studio CDs from the last decade or so, plus a recorded-live one titled Rats, The Way You Like 'Em, which is from "a 1979 appearance on a Rochester radio show" which has GOT to be CMF.
::happysigh:: All these memories because someone's doing something for a good cause. Isn't life great when it works out like that?
[insert link to Anne's donation site here when she says it's okay]