The Women of Letters Pittsburgh chapter spent 24 hours walking relay-style for E4K. Most participants walked in shifts of four hours. Those who were not walking (or who were unable to walk) assembled knotted quilts, which were donated to Harbor Cat Rescue. We also constructed a paper chain, with each link representing the money we'd raised for Random Acts. All told, we raised $1,500.
We started out optimistic and strong. The venue, an elementary school that one of our members had secured for us, was perfect and bordered a beautiful nature trail. As our first walkers took to the trail at noon on Saturday, the rest of us began the blankets. We quickly found out, though, that the process of cutting the squares, cutting the strips and knotting everything together was ridiculously tedious - perfect for a 24-hour test of endurance! Around four hours later, our first shift of walkers returned, grim-faced and splattered in mud. The beautiful nature trail was full of sneaky mud pits. They gratefully toweled off and sat down to start cutting and knotting, as our new walkers stepped out to face mother nature.
The hours wore on, with each shift of cramp-handed knotters switching places with mud-splattered walkers. Occasionally, we'd look at the Crowdrise page, then log on Twitter to playfully heckle our Portland counterparts. When the sun set, the knotters moved outside and started a fire. Literally. Sharon, our member who had gotten us the school for the 24 hours, had also somehow managed to convince the school powers that be that a fire in her portable fire pit - in the parking lot - was a swell idea. So, then we had mud-caked walkers stumbling around in the dark - who were actually grateful for the mud by then because it was helping to keep the mosquitoes off of them - along with stir-crazy knotters who took turns making and eating hot dogs, and who couldn't help but make more wiener jokes than there are dick jokes in Supernatural season 7.
At midnight, Sharon showed us her secret stash of silly hats, and so, naturally, we had a silly-hat conga line to the Hillywood version of "Shake It Off." We were only going slightly crazy by then.
Being true divas, when we did sleep, it was on stage and never for more than three hours. The room we were using as our E4KHQ, you see, was part gym, part auditorium, and part cafeteria. The heavy stage curtains were perfect for darkening an area for cat naps.
The hours wore on. We exhausted practically every topic of conversation, and things got a little crazy with pipe cleaners. Delirium set in. And then the sun rose and suddenly we realized that our knotting pace had slowed down, and we were taking WAAAAY too long to finish the blankets; we needed to up our game ASAP. How much caffeine did we imbibe then? So many.
We rocketed towards our noon finish line, dancing instead of walking, cackling as we snagged and broke our fingernails on the blanket knots. And then suddenly, it was noon, and we had eight blankets, a long-ass paper chain link, and more blisters on our feet than we could count. Pictures were taken, hugs grudgingly given (we kind of stank a little) and we sat back. For our first year, we didn't do too badly.
Epilogue - The day after E4K, someone - BRITTANY - decided we should all sign up for a mud run. All hopped up on our E4K victory, we had 10 members sign up the first day. So now we're doing a Dirty Girl mud run in June. Damn it, Misha.
Aww, thanks fearless leader for the baked good! I'm half-tempted to risk the food poisoning just to be able to say I tried mine. Brightened my Monday, tenfold!
