Day 8: Day off in Oklahoma City
June 15, 2005
Although technically we were in Blanchard, Oklahoma City was only a thirty minute drive up the road. We all slept in until about 8 AM. The church provided breakfast for us, biscuits and eggs specifically. I could get used to having all this great food in the morning. We talked about what needed to be done then went our separate ways for the next couple of hours. I spent my time back at the piano. It never gets old for me to get lost in my little musical world. Especially when I'm spending so much time with people in such close proximity.
Around 11 AM we all piled into a large van the church provided for us and headed into town. I drove. The first stop was the post office, where some people had already received packages. I got out and walked to a Walgreens to use the men's room. Not allowed to use the trees when I'm in the city I'm told. I walked past the bookshelf and saw a "Prostate Cancer for Dummies" book. I thought it showed how mainstream cancer could be, with the general public still not getting how important it was to get a regular exam.
Headed over to the Oklahoma City Memorial for the bombing victims. My first impression was how small the building had been. I had expected something about 3 or 4 times larger. Wanted to go into the museum, but it was $7 so had to skip it. Spent a good hour walking around and reading all of the plaques and informative kiosks. There was a lot of death and destruction, which you could see in some of the remains of the building. While walking along the reflective pool I came across a mother duck and her ten little ducklings. I thought it poignant that amidst a memorial celebrating the lives of those lost in the bombing that life should continue on even within the sacred ground.
With plenty of pictures captured we headed over to lunch where we stuffed ourselves silly and passed out on the benches. Got everyone together and proceeded to hit up bike stores and Walgreens all day long. I was the driver so I had some space, but we packed in pretty tight otherwise. Fortunately, the team didn't seem to mind and there was often singing and laughing.
Headed to dinner, we got lost time and again. Fortunately, I'm pretty patient. It was really bad and later team mates told me that they were getting frustrated on my behalf with all of the miscommunication. But I took it in stride. Unfortunately, though, I could feel myself getting sick. Brett had been sick a couple days before and I had been sneezing with a runny nose all day. I was hoping it was just allergies, but I kept going downhill.
At dinner, we ate all you could eat Mexican with some delicious deserts. I put myself in quarantine and ate by myself. After eating some very tasty banana and pineapple cream pie the director of the local American Cancer Society read us "Oh, the places you'll go" by Dr. Seuss. She put in extras like saying "ride" instead of travel and all sorts of clever little things that rhymed with what was going on in the poem. You could tell she had spent some time thinking about it. It was a lot of fun and once again I was feeling like people were working too hard for us.
After the reading she had each of us introduce ourselves and explain why we decided to ride. In my introduction, I talked about how more and more my ride was being dedicated to the people I had met along the way. That I felt that people had inspired me, even more so than I had ever imagined. When the introductions were finished the husband of the director stood up and spoke.
He said that he had heard from us sentiments that we were spreading hope and such, but that maybe we felt overwhelmed by our receptions. He told us that cancer doesn't care what ethnic group you are from, or what age group you're in or whether you are rich or poor. He said that he was deeply moved that we had such a wide sampling of each of these groups who were so willing to serve. And he emphasized how much service we were performing. He said that maybe we would understand better at his age, but that, for him and his friends, to see such a young group of people sacrifice an entire summer to work so hard to raise so much money brought great joy into his life. And he said that maybe we didn't fully understand why yet, but that we deserved all of the service we were receiving and more. That when people served us they were serving the cause. And he said that donating time and effort to helping us made him feel like he was making a difference too.
The message he shared, and there was more that I won't go into, really helped answer some of the questions I've had about why people were working so hard on our behalf. Here it was a Saturday evening and people with families, who I know could have been doing many other things, were spending time with us instead. I really appreciated his sentiments and I believe there were other people on the team who felt the same.
We headed back home and there were quite a few members of the congregation who were waiting to take us to their homes to shower and do laundry. Most of the team just wanted to sleep so passed on the offer. In fact, many of the volunteers ended up going home without anyone and they seemed disappointed. I almost wanted to go when seeing their reactions, but I was so tired that I passed anyways. I went to bed around 9:30, with the light on and most of my clothes still on. Still wasn't feeling very good so I took some medicine before hitting the sack, hoping to get a good night's rest before the long ride the next day.