The Walk: Part I - Road trip and Last-Minute Preparation

A few months back I signed up with some friends to walk 60 miles for the Breast Cancer 3-Day Walk for the Susan G. Komen Foundation. It was this past weekend. Here's part one. If you just want to know how it went, it went great.

Jennifer picked me up early on Thursday morning. We decided to drive to San Diego for a little road trip to make the most of our break from our daily family obligations. So of course, we spent the entire drive chatting about our families.

We made great time on I-5 and landed in Santa Monica right around noon. We had some time to kill as hotel check-in in San Diego wasn't until 4pm so we snuck in one last "training" walk down Montana Avenue, which was one of my favorite streets to stroll when I lived in LaLa Land.

With 60 miles of walking in our near future, we shopped for the basic essentials. We hit the Blue Jean Bar and tried on many pairs of tight, pricey jeans. I ended up with two pairs from the Lucky store down the street. We noshed on fancy salads at the Marmalade Cafe, one of my favorite lunch spots on Montana. As we were heading to the car we both realized we needed more undies for the walk. As luck would have it, the only place that had undies was a cute boutique which had bras priced at $250! But we needed underwear and didn't have time to find the nearest REI. With no other alternatives at that point, I sucked it up and bought some expensive pima cotton panties.

Feeling not-too-guilty about our purchases, we drove the rest of the way down to San Diego. On the drive, we conducted a small chocolate tasting. (Green & Blacks Maya Gold won out over the Dagoba Xocolatl).

At the hotel, where we would spend the night before walking 60 miles and sleeping in tents for two nights, I reduced the amount of stuff I would need for the walk and campsite by at least 30% and put the excess stuff in Jennifer's car.

Then it was time to merchandise the Clif Bar products, donated by my friend who works for Clif. All those years of setting up packaging displays at various software and toy companies really paid off, check out my handiwork.After Lindsey arrived we went out for a carb-loading sushi dinner and then a last-last minute shopping trip to the CVS Pharmacy and drug store. Then our 4th hotel roommate Jeanne arrived. We carefully selected our Clif products for the next few days, packed up, readied ourselves for the upcoming event, and went to bed.

Despite the fact that some obnoxious drunk guys were yelling obscenities like "Shave my a**hole!" in the adjacent parking lot at 3am, I had a good night's sleep.