Pre-Walk and Day One

We are back! We had such a great time and it truly was an awesome and humbling experience. I don't have time to blog about the whole weekend all at once so I will break it up into 3 posts.
Edie and I got to Atlanta Thursday evening. We stopped in Leeds on the way to do a little outlet shopping. We had every intention of going out for a nice, relaxing dinner but that didn't happen. Once we finally got checked in and got to our room, I went into the bathroom. I looked all over the place and then came out and asked Edie to go in the bathroom and find the toilet paper. She couldn't find it and we called the front desk. Ten minutes later they bring us some toilet paper and about 2 minutes after that we finally found it!!

Do you see the toilet paper in this picture??

It is underneath the counter. It wasn't pulled down enough so that we could see it. After that whole fiasco, we ended up going downstairs to the bar and grille and we had hamburgers. So much for a nice dinner!

Once we were done eating we really only had a little bit of time to get our things together and go to bed. We got up at 3:30am Friday morning to get ready and get our bags packed. We got downstairs and had a quick breakfast and got on the 5:30am shuttle to the Opening Ceremonies.

me and Edie on the shuttle to Stone Mountain

 It was freezing!! I had on a long sleeve shirt, a short sleeve shirt, and a jacket and I was soooo cold! Edie and I took a few pictures and went to the "facebook" tent. In this tent we could stand in line and sign up to have facebook update our pages when we hit certain points. There were so many people in this enclosed tent that it was actually warm in there and we were thankful for the line. Edie ended up buying us sweatshirts to wear so that was one more layer we had to wear. By mile 3, I was shedding layers because the sun was finally in the sky!

Finally time to get it started!!

We had such a great day on Friday! Everybody was in a great and festive mood. We were so excited to finally get started. Edie and I made a friend during some of our first miles and she remained with us the rest of the day.

These guys were awesome!

The whole experience really exceeded my expectations. I was amazed with how great the crew was and how excited they were. They really would lift your spirits when you were starting to lose it and they were always very concerned with our safety. There is a motorcycle club in Atlanta that volunteers to do this event and they travel to different intersections throughout the day to make sure we get across the street safely. They had their radios on full blast and they were dancing and singing and getting us to do the same. The excitement was definitely contagious. The majority of them were dressed in pink and many of them were in pink kilts. I think at every street we crossed there was someone there reminding us to use that time to stretch while we were waiting for the cars to go by. I was really amazed by how much they cared about our well being and about what we were walking for.

The best sign we saw all day!

We met a woman that was carrying the survivor flag. She was amazing! During the whole weekend, whenever you saw her she was always smiling and dancing and just happy to be alive and have this experience with her group of friends. She was truly one of the most inspirational parts of our trip.

I will tell you something about Atlanta that you may or may not know. Atlanta is mountainous! I would say it is hilly but I don't really think that is the best word to describe it. Edie and I trained on hills and a few inclines but we did NOT train on mountains. I couldn't believe how steep and how long some of these streets and paths were. They would definitely take your breath away and they were definitely "hands on the hips" hills if you know what I mean. Now, we had a fantastic time walking that first day but I am not going to lie; we were thrilled when we saw the "Camp Ahead" sign!! The time had come and we needed to rest.

Feet in the air!

Before I even went to get my luggage or the tent, I got down on the floor and put my feet in the air. My feet were so swollen and I needed to get the blood moving in the other direction. I actually had a few people that got down next to me on the floor to do it too! We finally went to eat but we felt like we were having to force the food down so we didn't eat much. The food was delicious though. We found a very nice man that helped us learn how to get our tent up and we finally made it to the shower truck at about 8:30pm.

a sea of pink tents

The shower truck was an experience. It wasn't as bad as we thought it was going to be but it definitely wasn't like the shower at home. By the time we made it out of the showers the lights were out and we had a little trouble finding our tent. Then it finally hit us that we didn't bring our pillows. I knew that mine wouldn't fit in my bag but I meant to figure out a way to do it and I forgot. So we ended up using the sweatshirts we got that morning for our pillows. We did have a hard time sleeping the first night. It is very hard to slow your muscles down after walking for over 20 miles.

There is so much more that happened that first day and it is hard to remember all of the details. The most important thing on that first day was that we made it through the first day and could continue on the next. The medic line was pretty long and we did see some people getting on the sweeper vans but it looked like most people would make it to day 2. I will blog again tomorrow about Day 2 but I have pictures up on my facebook page as well!

20 miles done!