Sunday Night in Ottawa

Hello everyone,
It is Sunday night in Ottawa and we did it! One down six more to go. As I am writing this my feet are in and out of the hotel garbage bin filled with ice. Thanks to Mark, Tony and my fellow walker Patti for getting my feet in shape before the walk and a huge thank you to my personal trainer, Dave, for just how good the knees are feeling today! All things consider....I am feeling pretty good.
Pat and I have just come back from dinner....and we even walked to the restaurant. We were quite a pair walking out though. After sitting for and hour and a half we had stiffen up....just a little. Pat was walking like a penguin 20 feet in front of me and I couldn't even catch up to her. Needless to say there were a couple of strange looks on the way out.
Ottawa was a great place to be last night. It was a lot of fun to see the fans in the streets and along the side walk cafes. We walked home from the restaurant and we knew ever time Ottawa scored because of the honking of the horns. They had the game on TV or radio at a downtown square last night and you could hear the screams with each goal. Our rooms were on the 15th, 16th and 17th floors and you could still hear the fans even in our rooms. I guess I sleep a little bit sounder because I did not hear a thing once my head hit the pillow but my friends did.
Today was another hot and humid day. We were lucky though, it did not rain and there was a breeze that made it feel cooler. We were excited because today would only be 24 kms and a difference of 12 kms was huge on the second day. We started out at 7:45 am and set a pretty good pace. Again, we were very impressed with the route of the walk and just how beautiful our capital is. The parks are jammed with cyclists, roller bladers, walkers and runners. It seems to be a city that really promotes a healthy lifestyle. We walked by the Supreme Court of Canada, Bank of Canada, Parliament Hill, embassies and through the grounds of Rideau Hall. It was a great way to see those historic buildings and think of the famous Canadians that have worked in those buildings and what they stood for.
One of the ladies I met today, Rose, from the Survivors team had a great idea. There should be a "Live Aid" type of party in each of the cities that host a walk. These would be shown in all cities simutanously and any money raised would go to the Weekend to End Breast Cancer. I thought it was a great idea. Ordinary people getting together in celebration to beat a disease that works so hard to tear us apart.
One of my good friends from university, Karen, amazes me. She does not train at all and has this "loosey goosey" walk and never has any aches and pains. Every year we ask her....Karen did you train?....and this great smile comes across her face...NO then she has the nerve to laugh! But then again so do I. However, on Sunday Karen did admit that she is starting to do a little weight training in the morning. I laughed and said..."yeah but I bet you have a cup of coffee in your hand"....she laughed harder and said..."actually it is on the table. Lift a couple of weights, take a sip". Only as Karen could.
Before lunch, I also got the chance to walk with a young lady by the name of Ameena. She is another example of what this disease inspires people to do. Here was a young lady who grew up in the Ottawa area and had never seen her city so beautiful before. She was taking picture after picture and was amazed that she had lived here and had never really SEEN her city. Today, she now knows how lucky she is to live in Ottawa. By the way, Ameena (I hope I am spelling it right) was walking for the first time. She was by herself and had raised over $3,000 and she is lucky enough to never had anyone effected by breast cancer in her family. She just felt that this was something she had to do. Thank you Ameena, I really enjoyed it.
Since we spent so much time in the parks and on the paths our fabulous crew of Linda, Maureen, Patti and Solly did not see much of us. Also, if you do not know the streets of Ottawa apparently they are pretty hard to navigate. Such an example would be our lunch on Sunday. We had made lunch around 11 and we sat in a beautiful park across the river in Quebec looking back to the Parliament buildings in Ontario. Patti called me to say they would meet us a lunch to give us some iced towels, popsicles and fruit. See why they are the best crew! Well, we finished our lunch and we were still looking for our crew. Eventually they showed up with a cooler on wheels filled with goodies for us. We asked them where they parked and they said in Ontario. They had parked on the wrong side of the bridge and had walked over to meet us. Needless to say, we kidded them about the parking and "their long walk" but those iced towels sure felt good on the back of our necks! Thanks guys! You rock!
They also got to spend the afternoon in a unique way. They pulled into a driveway and somebody came up to them and asked them to move the van but then, would they like a tour of the house and grounds. Sure they said it sounded like fun... and that is how they got a guided tour of the Vatican embassy. I am really happy they got to do something different besides catering to our every need. They said it was a great experience.
In the afternoon we walked past the front of the Parliament buildings and our Canadian flag was blowing proudly against the blue sky. We stop for a minute to look at the buildings and it hit me once again...how lucky we are to be Canadians. How proud I am to be Canadian. I will admit for that minute I did have tears in my eyes but then again, I cry every time I hear our national anthem. It was definitely a highlight of the walk for me.
The other highlight for me was to get a chance to talk to one of the volunteers who does the cross walks and intersections for us. These volunteers are from a motorcyle riding club and they are just fantastic people. One fellow in particular you will remember if you do the walk in Toronto. He has long blonde hair, a beard and wears leather chaps/pants. He is a fantastic guy. He volunteers to do this in Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal EACH year. I had the chance to ask him why he does it today and he said...."because my mother-in-law had a double mastacomy when it was actully in her spine and my mother passed away from the disease. We all have our reasons and I get to meet great people each year." He is now doing what he can to make a difference today, to honour the people he lost in the past. Me too.
We were getting a little tired after lunch and our aches and pains were getting a little worse. One of our team mates, Pat said she would have to go to the medical tent. She needed attention because she felt her hang nail might just bleed any minute. With a loud groan and a couple of slaps up the back of the head, it was the comic relief we needed and it helped to get us going a little more.
We all agreed that we loved to walk through Ottawa but we did miss the energy of the Toronto walk. Again, just because of the numbers the energy level of the Toronto walk is much higher and we had a new appreciation for it. We realized how much we really do feed off it and the miss it. Then our last 7 Km of the walk started to feel like Toronto. We were walking through the city and people were honking their horns and waving to us. Once again, the finish line was amazing. The energy the people had, more than made up for the number of people. It was an awesome finish.
This weekend was fantatic and it will be a weekend I will always treasure. To my friends who walked with me this weekend....Thank you. To the fantastic crew.....Thank you. It is exactly as the sign on our van said....

Don't walk behind me.....
Don't walk in front of me....
Walk beside me.

So look out Winnipeg here we come next weekend and to our next Canadian adventure.
With love and thanks,
M.J.
P.S. Thanks Mom and Joanne for your courage and inspiration