Moving Day-Chicago 2017: Overcoming all the obstacles
Today was the 6th Moving Day-Chicago sponsored by the National Parkinson's Foundation. It's the annual walk where the Parkinson's community meets up to bond and raise money to support local Parkinson's programs. It's my favorite charity event of the year. Moving Day is very much a feel good event and everyone leaves with good vibes.
It's not easy to put together one of these walks. Preparations takes close to a year. It's a lot of work organizing sponsors, teams, volunteers, media and getting them to all work as one on a single day. The participants take this for granted but when you think about all of that, it's a miracle anyone can pull this off. And that's if the weather cooperates. But what if it doesn't?
Saturday, in Chicago, it rained....and it rained...and it rained some more. It never stopped. Oh yeah, there was also thunder and lightening....and thunder and lightening...and more thunder and lightening. It also never stopped.
My first thought on Saturday morning was how are they going to set everything up? Not only was it wet but the metal posts on the tents had to make it dangerous. Plus the field was going to be flooded and so was the walking route path.
But then I had two thoughts: a. Us Parkies are tough. Certainly tougher than a little water. b. We have Sara O'Hare on our side.
Sara is in charge of this event and there's nobody better. NOBODY!! I go to a few of these things every year and I always think they need to hire Sara to run their event. Too bad other charities, she belongs to us!
So now it's Sunday and it's supposed to stop raining. I wake up at 6ish and it's raining...hard. I'm pretty sure I said something like "this isn't good" with a couple of not so nice words added in. But guess what...the rain stopped. Time to go for a little walk in the park.
I get to the field and it's go time. The event is on...it's been downsized but it's on. I found out some of the tents had collapsed, the walk route and field needed to be changed because of flooding but no problem. No problem because we had Sara O'Hare. I probably talked with her five times during the day and not once did she seem frazzled or out of control. She made it seem easy. But we all know it was wasn't easy.
There's a scene in "A League of Their Own" where Gena Davis tells Tom Hanks that baseball became too hard. He told her, "It's supposed to be hard. If it wasn't hard, everyone would do it. It's the hard that makes it great." Today was certainly hard. That's what made it great.
So guess what....we all survived and thrived. This was my fifth Moving Day and it's now my favorite. I loved the fact that the community overcame all the obstacles to have a successful event. It certainly fits with the Parkinson's life because we overcome obstacles to lead productive lives. Every. Single. Day!
Tomorrow: Pictures from Moving Day 2017 Related Post: We walk for Muhammad Ali and those who can't
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