Days 121 & 122.

The final days of the walk were… interesting.

Saturday started with the Lollipop Run.  We brought out the wall in all its 21-foot glory.  Two friends came with their mothers to write their own goals on the wall.  The mothers both wrote goals about doing more yoga, but the real fun came when one girl wrote that she was going to cut back to one soda a day.  Her mother laughed: “I’ll believe it when I see it!”

The event was fantastic.  It pairs young girls with adult mentors as running buddies.  So imagine a 5k race with adults all cheering on their girls as they run together.  It had such an amazing energy.

While running the 5k, I was exhausted and wanted to stop loads of times, but each time I kept myself going to be a good example for the girls around me – including the girl who just stopped running ~3 minutes into the race and refused to move… Her buddy was 2-3 strides away when she realized that she was running solo.  As I passed, the buddy was pulling the girl’s arm trying to get her to move again!

I was featured as an inspirational speaker.  I shared our story, and how impressed I was with everyone who ran.  From what I saw, the program is doing a fantastic job of getting these girls excited about setting healthy goals (that one girl who stopped mid-race aside).  It was such a pleasure being involved, and it was a great last event before wrapping up the Walk.

Great morning.  Terrible evening.

San Francisco and cars do not mix.

First, as we were leaving the Lollipop Run, a woman in a beat-up old pick-up truck scraped against our car.  She was on her cell phone completely absorbed in her conversation, ran into our car, and without pausing casually rolled down her window to push in her side view mirror so she could keep driving.  All without even pausing her phone conversation.  It was ridiculous.  She drove away straddling two lanes, and all the surrounding drivers gave her a wide berth.

There’s only minimal damage to the car (just cosmetic aka no denting), but we were still pretty shaken up.  Here we were just hours from wrapping up the walk, and our ride home was being endangered!  Oh, how little we knew at that time…

Fast forward through an hour and a half of looking for parking, and we found a spot along Van Ness.  It was perfect.  It was between a little red car and a driveway.  The driveway had DO NOT PARK HERE painted on the sidewalk, but we could fit when we nosed up to the car in front of us.  No problem, right?

So very wrong.

While we were away, a Jeep Cherokee came and illegally parked in the driveway trapping our vehicle in place.  We had all of a foot clearance between the little red car and the Jeep, and to make matters worse, we were on the 101 portion of Van Ness and Lombard (aka where the giant freeway goes through the city and just after it turns around a corner, so there is tons of traffic coming a high speeds that can’t see cars attempting to get out as they round the corner… yay!)

What I learned: If people illegally park and block you in, there is nothing you can do.  311/traffic and parking/police/aaa – nothing.  Someone actually suggested playing the “Bumper Dance of Doom” and just bouncing back and forth until you’re out.  We tried a bit, but the prospect of solid oncoming traffic made us pause.  So we waited, and waited, and waited.

Ultimately, by 8pm we decided to call it, and opting for a last bit of extravagance, I used my last hotel points to get a room a Hyatt 7 blocks away.  It was worth the splurge.  We rested.  Ma had visions of being stuck in the city for days.  I had visions of putting out a craigslist ad for huge men to help lift the car out of the way.  And we both kept saying, it will be better in the morning.

It wasn’t.  The car was still trapped.  On the bright side though, it was a lot less busy at 7 am on a Sunday.  The traffic was sparse and with an amazing amount of luck, I was able to unwedge our car.

Add in a Mother’s Day brunch to celebrate the end of the walk, and we were on the road again for the last time.  500+ miles by foot, and we nearly got stuck in the city because of our car.