Chapter 7: First Night Camp.

There's only one thing that you like to hear screamed at you more than "Welcome to lunch," and that is "Welcome to CAMP!" You're finally done walking for the day--at least in your sneakers, and you can eat some dinner and relax. Often, people who show up at camp early (you know, those power walkers) will eat, shower, then go back down towards the camp entrance and cheer us slowpokes in. By the time I got into camp each night, there was quite the cheering entourage waiting.

The first night's camp was at a college campus, and the road down to the camp was downhill and a bit windy. I could feel my big toes pounding into the front of my sneakers, and that was when they first began to hurt. These were my brand new sneakers, broken in well enough, but I hadn't heeded one important warning: I hadn't bought sneakers one size bigger than I normally wear. Let me tell you, I won't ever make that mistake again.

I was tired, and I went in search of my tent. I knew I was in row H, but it was a bit confusing because some tennis courts were splitting the campsite in half. I finally had to ask for directions (I am woman, hear me roar), and they told me the H row was on the other side. After finding where they had unloaded our bags, I grabbed my big military green A bag and headed towards the tents.

I had no idea who my tent-mate was going to be, but I wasn't really worried. In many cases, especially the heat like it was now, I wouldn't see my tent-mate until it was time to go to sleep. So I found the tent that looked like H1, saw that it already had someone's sleeping bag in it, threw my bag inside and pulled out my slippers, changed out of my sneakers, and headed down to dinner. I didn't really think any more about my tent. There are stakes in the ground that are supposed to demark where the tents go, and they were all a bit crooked, but oh well.

Now in slippers and feeling a tiny bit better, I headed down to dinner. We had to eat dinner before taking a shower; people had been known to go straight to the showers before and pass out from dehydration. I wasn't going to be one of them. It had become brutally muggy, and hot enough to make it unbearable. The slippers had been a good idea for the 2002 walk, which was in April; but in June, they were hot and too fluffy. I found the chow lines and hopped into one; there was about three people in front of me. The man just in front of me was a blue t-shirted crew member, a rather tall gent with a fishing-type eyelet straw hat on and... pink Converst All-Stars sneakers. "Nice shoes," I said.

"Nice slippers," he retorted with a smile, and gave me his place in line. I kind of hesitated, but when he gently pushed me forward my tummy wasn't about to argue. Dinner was spaghetti, an orange soda, and salad. Yes, that's right, you read that correctly folks, Susan ate salad while on the walk. Those of you who know me well know that this is an unheard of feat; I never eat salad. But the house vinaigrette they were serving just made it taste really good.

After dinner, it was shower time. I went back up to my tent and got a t-shirt, shampoo, conditioner and stuff for a shower. I purchased "towel service," which I would recommend to anyone on the walk. For a mere $12 it meant I didn't have to pack a towel and worry about drying it out overnight. I had a special little stamp on the event credential that I hung around my neck every day. I got my towel from the towel person and got into the shower line. The line consists of five or so plastic lawn chairs, which people scoot-down until it is their turn to get into a shower. One person comes out of the shower trailer, one person goes in. The trailer is like an 18-wheeler trailer with about six women's stalls on one side and six men's stalls on the other. (The man-to-woman ratio on the walk is about 1 to 20, and we always joke about taking over their unused showers.) Showers always felt so good, though they were so small--only just wide enough stalls to put your elbows up at each side. Hot water is hot water--I don't care. The one problem, though? I forgot my brush. Darnit. I had to go back to the tent with my hair all in tangles after changing into my jammies. Jammies, by the way, was just a t-shirt and shorts, nothing fancy. Nobody cares--after you've been walking 20 miles, everyone just wants to be comfortable! I brushed out my hair, then headed back down to the main camp tents for some entertainment. I stopped by a memorial tent and signed this banner for a friend of mine...

...then I walked towards the main tent. The main tent is where we eat our meals and watch some of the entertainment they have for us at night. Guess what the entertainment was that night...

...me!

I got up on stage and sang karaoke--"Goodbye Earl," to be exact. It was hilarious.

What happened next wasn't hilarious, though.

After having some fun and listening to a few more karaoke songs, I headed back to my tent in my fuzzy slippers. The sun had gone down, and it was twilight. At first, I couldn't find my tent... more exactly, I couldn't find my stuff, and I was kind of walking around a half dozen tents for a few minutes. Finally a girl about my age stuck her head out of her tent and said, "Are you looking for H1?" I told her I was. Then a man from another tent said, "Susan Kirkpatrick?" I turned around and walked towards his voice. He was in the tent just across from where I was standing. You put your stuff in the wrong tent, so I brought it back up front, he told me. I started welling up with tears. "You couldn't just turn around and put it in the right tent?" I said to him boldly. He said something else I don't remember, and I started walking back to the luggage drop-off area. Instead of turning around and literally putting the bag three feet away, he had walked the bag five hundred yards back to where the luggage drop-off was.

It was getting late, and the crew was getting things ready for night time. My bag was the only one out there on the grass, and my sneakers and fanny pack were strewn on top of it. By the time I got to it, I was in tears. "This is my bag," I told the crew. "Someone brought it back up here." One man asked me to let him take my bag, and I said, "No thank you, I have it." I was upset and I was in the mindset that I wasn't going to let a single person help me. While walking to my tent, another two people seeing how upset I was offered to take my huge bag for me, and each time I said, "No thank you."

I can't imagine what kind of freak my tent-mate must have thought I was. Here I was, crying, though now trying to suck it up while I unrolled my sleeping bag in the tent. I got in and just laid my head down and closed my eyes. She changed the subject and started talking to me. Come to find out, we have two children about the same age, and she also had a one-year-old. Her husband was also in the Navy, like mine was. This was her first 3-Day walk. She was very sweet, and I was thankful for her kindness.

When she picked up her phone to call her husband back, I took my own cell phone and stepped out of the tent. I climed up a small hill near where our tents were, but out of eyesight of everyone. Scott was driving down from Dallas to San Antonio to pick up our kids. They had been with Grammy and Papaw for two weeks, and I missed them very much. I told Scott everything that had happened, and I shed a few tears when I told him how much I missed him. My spirit was a little bit broken; this wasn't exactly the most wonderful way to end what had been a pretty wonderful day.

Scott's phone was cutting out a bit because he was driving in the middle of nowhere Texas, so I let him go and went back down to the tents to my tent. My tent-mate talked to me for a few more minutes, and she gave me a little pink notebook that she had gotten for free as a promotional item from New Balance. I thought that was really nice--my daughter will really like this, I told her. Shortly thereafter I drifted off to sleep.