There were four of us who walked together, my mom, her friend Charlene, her friend Denise, and myself. Charlene, I found out, is a breast cancer survivor, as was her mother. Her mom had breast cancer, survived, and lived until last year to the ripe old age of 101. We discovered toward the end of it too that Denise has melanoma. So out of the four of us, three went/are going through cancer, and hopefully what I did will help my generation and the younger ones to prevent getting cancer.
My mom picked me up from the airport and we headed to the hotel in Long Beach. This was where the Event Eve was, which was our check in. We started seeing all these crazy and fun signs, shirts and buttons. This whole weekend was all about boobs, and it was as politically incorrect as you could get away with for one weekend. It was great.
Personally, I got two pins, one that said "Save 2nd Base" and one that said "Save the Jugs" and has a moonshine bottle on it (I gave that one to Zach).
We saw everything you can think of, and I have a lot of pictures of some of the stuff. 
There were slogans "Squeeze 'em for a Reason", "Get your mammies grammed", "Healthy Hooters", "Bumps Ahead", etc. We spent a better part of the weekend trying to come up with our own names. Charlene and Denise came down with Charlene's husband Chuck and my dad. We all went out to a yummy Italian dinner before settling in to get a good night's sleep before our very early morning on Saturday.
Saturday we had to be up at 5 a.m. to try to get over to the opening ceremony, where we got breakfast and had someone lead us through some stretches, and heard some inspirational speeches.
One was a lady who did the Avon Walk last year for her sister, and within the past year had been diagnosed herself with breast cancer. She had surgery on Tuesday, but was still going to walk whatever she was able to do.
There were 2100 of us doing this walk and we had raised over $5 million.
We walked through some really nice areas, including about 6 miles along the beach, and then through marinas and everything. It was a nice change for a land-locked girl like me. After lunch we started moving more inland. We got to 13 miles, the halfway point. This was an option for some people who were only doing a half-marathon each day. We decided to keep on going. Which we did. It was a long day full of walking, but we made it through somehow. There were two options, one of camping out at Wellness Village (which is the name of the end of the first day) and the other of staying at the hotel. My mom's vocabulary doesn't have camping in it, so the hotel it was, which was a great idea because there was a hot tub. That felt so good after walking all day. We went out to dinner that night and passed out super early.
Sunday morning we didn't have to wake up as early, but we still had to deal with getting over to the starting point. We get outside and of course we're about 150 deep in a line to get over there, and the busses weren't even there. They were sending two busses over to pick us up, but we weren't going to be within those two busses. We ended up having to take a cab over, because the starting time was 7:30 to 8:00 and they were closing the course at 8:00. We wouldn't have even been able to make it to the starting point if we had waited for the bus. I feel bad for the other people who were waiting around, I don't know what happened to them. (The transportation was the only negative part about the weekend, everything else was incredbily well-organized).
Sunday everyone was walking a little slower. We were all doing what I called "the blister shuffle". Personally, the bottom of my left foot was pretty much one giant blister, but with a thorough coating of moleskin I was able to make it through. Sunday actually wasn't that difficult, until around mile 8 or 9 and then everything just kicked in. All we wanted to do was make it to the finish line. Needless to say, that last mile was so energizing! It was pure adrenaline that we were running (or rather walking) on by that time. We got to the finish line and my dad and Chuck were there to greet us. We didn't stick around too long, we finished about an hour before the closing ceremonies started. I was fortunate enough to have brought my flip flops and changed into them as soon as I possibly could. I also signed up for next year, to do the Rocky Mountains one. Someone I had talked to during the walk said that they signed up for crew, so that they didn't have to worry about doing the fund raising. So that's exactly what I signed up to do. So I am going to crew the Rocky Mountain Avon Walk in 2009. I do have the option of being a walker if I change my mind. As much as I would love to do the actual walk again, I just don't want to have to worry about raising all that money all over again especially in this economy. But the following year I'll be a walker again. I like the alternating theory.
It was a really inspirational and emotional weekend. There were these people who were cheering us along the entire time, following the route, playing music for us and cheering us along. We had our unofficial mascot, which was a Golden Retriever whose mom was doing the walk and we are all dog people, so we always stopped to pet her anytime we walked by her. Also there was the motorcycle crew, which were Harley Davidson guys who were there for us at all major intersections, helping us get through the traffic.
Everyone this weekend was really amazing to be out there doing whatever they were doing, be it walking, crewing, volunteerings, or cheering. While I could barely walk Sunday afternoon, it was definitely worthwhile and I should be able to start walking the dogs again as soon as tomorrow. However, I was thinking ahead of time and did remember to schedule a massage for today :)
Here is a link to the photos I took, hopefully I will be adding the ones Charlene took soon. Avon Walk Photos
or cut and paste: http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=0AbNmbRo3csmTjQ
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