Ok, so instead of doing a recap of the day like I did in the Boston walk earlier this year, I wanted to specifically talk about the community support that I saw today.  I had already written half of a recap post, but I just talked to a couple of walkers here about the awesome cheering stations that I changed my mind.  Community support is a huge thing for me on the 3-Day for the cure.  When people are honking as they drive past or showing up at cheering stations or making their own cheering stations is really helps me to Keep Going®. It’s just a huge morale booster when your muscles are sore and there are still many miles left in the day.  So I wanted to talk about the different kinds of community support that I saw and what some of my favorites were.  I’m going to start with my all time favorite first.

W.T. White High School

To the teachers and students of W.T. White High School, I would like to personally say that you rock!  It was very close to the end of the day when we came across the school and the students were out in droves.  There were at least 75-100 people out there and instead of being on one side of the sidewalk like most cheering stations, the lined both sides of the sidewalk for a good distance.  You walked by the high school and it was like this massively loud victory tunnel.  I am quite serious when I say that this was THE loudest cheering station I have ever seen.  We heard them from several blocks away.

But the noise wasn’t the only thing.  All of the students really looked like they wanted to be there, everyone wanted to give us a high five when we walked through.  If they weren’t high fiving they were clapping.  It was an immense experience to walk through that and when I it was past I had to find out the name of the school because I wanted to make sure that I wrote about them in one way or another.  Again, a huge thanks to W.T. White high school for being so awesome and making that last leg of our day that much better!

Elementary

I really don’t know the name of the elementary school that we passed early that morning, but they were great too.  What they lacked in volume compared to the high school, they made up for in sheer numbers.  We kept walking and waking and there were more and more students!  I took some video of them and will post it on here as soon as I get the chance!

Forest Lane Cheering Station

The Forest Lane cheering station was the last of the day and it was a long one.  In my recollection, Friday’s usually aren’t huge days for cheering stations.  You still have a lot of people at work that can’t make it out, they end up at the cheering stations on Saturday or Sunday.  The cheering station on Forest Lane had the definite feeling of a Saturday cheering station.  There were lots of people there and it took me a long time to make it through because there were a lot of people that wanted me to stop so they could get a picture of the crazy guy in the bra!

I especially liked the gentleman that had used the temporary pink hairspray not only on his hair and beard, but also on his dog!  I saw him last year and really enjoyed him being there again this year.

At Your House!

I enjoyed the impromptu cheering stations at people’s houses.  Especially the ones that went all out and decorated.  The one that sticks out in my mind had a sign out front that said, “A 31 Year Breast Cancer Survivor Lives Here”.  In addition to the decorations, they had some of the cheerleaders from a local high school cheering as we went by.

Ok, that’s all I have time for tonight.  It’s kind of short, but I really wanted to talk about the awesome community support that we had out and about today here in Dallas.  I love it!  I’ll write more tomorrow and maybe even a more full recap of the day!