Day 2 - Saturday

I rarely get much sleep on the first night of the 3-Day and this year was no exception. I don’t know the exact reason – sleeping on a thin air mat on the hard ground, in a tent with walls so thin you can hear the person snoring two tents away, the lack of a climate-controlled bedroom…it’s still a mystery to me. Maybe I’m just not tired enough after walking 21.5 miles.

Saturday morning brought cool, clear skies and the prospect of warm sunshine all day long. We began Day 2 shortly after 7:00AM, heading north out of Harvest Park through Maplewood and White Bear Lake, and into Vadnais Heights, where we passed the first of three cheering stations for the day. Hundreds of spectators – family, friends…and perhaps a few curious onlookers – were ready and waiting before 8:00AM, a most pleasant surprise and a great way to start would prove to be a very long day. My parents were there to greet me and my walking partners Maria, Selina, and Lori with smiles and hugs, waving little 3-Day flags handed out at the cheering station – a nice touch and a great idea by the amazing 3-Day organizers.

Our morning route took us through several wooded parks, along the shores of lakes with water smooth as glass, and past two fire stations, where female walkers returned the cheers of firefighters with their own cheers. At the first fire station, there was more than one request for a particular firefighter to remove his shirt as he stood on the extended ladder of a truck. He refused, most likely aware that doing so could incite a riot and bring the entire 3-Day to an immediate halt.

After lunch, we continued through the residential neighborhoods of Roseville, before turning onto Lexington Ave. Within a few blocks, I could make out a large gathering of people ahead of me on the sidewalk. Initially, it simply looked like a stream of walkers, bunched together, perhaps slowed by a stoplight. But I soon realized it was far more than that. We were coming up on the second cheering station of the day at Lake Josephine Park and the crowd of spectators started at least two blocks in advance. They sat on a grassy hillside and stood between the sidewalk and the street, filling nearly every square foot of ground. The crowd grew as we reached the main park entrance; my walking partner Maria was greeted by her friend Michelle and out of the massive throng I saw the familiar faces of Claudia and Tanya, unrelated to each other, but both of whom I remembered from the 2007 3-Day.

The Lake Josephine cheering station seemed to be without end; it was three or four people deep in places and extended more than a block past the park. It was the largest cheering station I could recall in my five years on the Twin Cities 3-Day and, as I heard later in the day from 3-Day staff and crew, it was possibly the largest and most enthusiastic crowd of spectators at any cheering station seen on any 3-Day event in any city. Obviously, we’re going to be a little biased here in our hometown, but it was without a doubt an awesome display of emotion and support that lifted my feet off the ground and truly a sight to behold. THANK YOU!!!

In the afterglow of the cheers, we made our way into St. Paul and through more park trails which provided intermittent shade from the brilliant sunshine as the midsummer-like temperature soared into the 80s. The final stretch of the 22.7-mile day followed the Gateway Trail from St. Paul into Maplewood under a canopy of trees, during which the urge to…um…er…find a “pit stop” overtook every other thought. The heck with the lovely scenery, I gotta pee!!! Fortunately, the familiar sight of a bank of green porta-potties appeared before the need to make an emergency stop in the woods! And all was well in the world...

We arrived in camp to the welcoming cheers of walkers, crew, and volunteers at 4:45PM – more than 9 ½ hours after starting the day. I went to my tent, took off my shoes and sighed audibly, drawing laughter from my neighbors. They knew the feeling.

After dinner, the evening program included heartwarming, tear-jerking stories from walkers and survivors, including a woman named Becky – 38 years old and mother of two young children, who spoke of having fought off a diagnosis of stage 2 breast cancer, only to have her doctor report the results of a scan earlier this past year, in which he said that she would die from stage 4 breast cancer. Becky walked the 2008 3-Day and fully expects to walk next year and the year after that and spend the years to come watching her children grow and celebrating decades worth of anniversaries with her husband.

The tears turned to cheers, as the 3-Day Rock Star karaoke finalists performed one more time. Chris, a young man walking in memory of his girlfriend Jolene who passed away earlier this year, rocked the house with his rendition of Rick Springfield’s “Jessie’ Girl” and, in an unprecedented occurrence, was called back to the stage for an encore – “Only in Minnesota could you see a curtain call in a karaoke contest,” he said – of Billy Joel’s “It’s Still Rock & Roll To Me”.

I left the dining tent as the Saturday night dance party kicked into high gear and retired to my own personal palatial estate. I fell into my sleeping bag and drifted off to sleep to the sounds of chirping crickets, buzzing cicadas…and the voices of women in the tent behind me performing blister-related surgical procedures on each other. Day 2 was over; one more day and 17 miles to go.


"Man is here [on Earth] for the sake of other men; above all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own happiness depends." - Albert Einstein