Whew. Relay for Life 2009 is finally over up here in Fairbanks, Alaska! I stayed up for over 30 hours for it - but wound up being booted out by my relief at around 2:00pm today. I had a looooooooooooooooooooooong shower after I got home, and took a quick nap, but wasn't able to get a ride back in time for closing ceremonies. Darn! Oh well. My team raised around $4,000 with a goal of $2,500 - so next year we'll aim for even higher.

Relay for Life set-up actually started on Thursday, at around 4:00pm for me. Went to West Valley Track and set up the main tent, purchased sodas, snacks, and water bottles for Friday night, and gathered together the supplies needed to get our booth running. That took a couple of hours, and on Friday at about 4:00pm I went and purchased the last of the booth supplies and finished off set-up of our tent area. We had to find a way to suitably display about 15 pillowcases, a quilt, a fleece tie blanket, some painted items, a large painting by Nick Chavez, and the raffle tins while still leaving room for massage lotions and cupcakes. It was an interesting set-up process. All the cloth items went on the smaller table, arranged with just small panels of their cloth and design showing, with the massage lotions directly behind that for ease of use by my best friend, who showed up at about 9:40pm to help me out. Once set-up was complete, we stood for the national anthem and clapped for the survivor, caretaker, and corporate laps before getting back to work. Since it was wet and chilly out, most of my team did a lap and then took off. You're supposed to have at least one person walking the track at all times, but somehow this year...we failed at that. No one from Denali Center wanted to show up and show their support. We had five residents from Denali Center show up for the Survivor BBQ and Lap, but they left shortly after, so it was really just me alone at the tent. So for about 3 hours and 40 minutes, I sat and waved, smiled, and chatted with people and sold maybe $25 worth of raffle tickets.

By about 8:30pm, I got on MSN and chatted with my sister. I was cold (I had forgotten some light gloves, but had everything else from sweaters, windbreakers, heavier coats, sleeping bags, a comforter, hoodies, band-aids, bug repellent, sun block, Visine, Neosporin to start with...) and miserable, so my sister brought me a hot chocolate from Starbucks and a spicy chicken sandwich with fries from Wendy's. She was on the phone with our Mom, though, so she didn't get to stick around for too long. But that was enough to warm me up and keep me satiated for another few hours.

At 9:40pm my friend Sam showed up, she had just gotten off work about 20 minutes prior, realized what the weather was like, and stopped off at her house to get changed into some denim jeans, a sweater over her shirt, and grab a sweatshirt. Since one of my team members had since come by and taken the spare hoodies and sweaters, I was VERY happy to see the sweatshirt when Sam arrived. We sat and hung out at the booth for a while, I got her a Survivor's shirt from in the tent and she happily changed into that before we began greeting the walkers on the track and trying once again to get people interested in what we had to offer. Not many people were, and by about 1:20am we concluded to run to the store and get some good ol' junk food to keep us going. So we made a thirty minute run to the store after hiding all our items in the tent under things so that people were less likely to 'borrow' them and drove to the Safeway nearest West Valley. Lots of cookies and 2 Amp drinks for me later, we returned to the track, set everything back up, and Sam agreed to watch the booth so I could make a few rounds. I walked a lap, watched the booth for a while, then walked another lap and repeated that process till about 4:30am...at which point in time the impatient countdown to 7:00am and FOOD began. The junk food was great and all, but we were starving for some real food and some sleep. The rain was almost constant, though it varied in degree of severity for several hours, and so we were damp and frozen at about 34F for most of the night.

To stave off the cold (we were so cold we had given up on eating our snacks that we'd bought and couldn't even drink our sodas because they were so cold from the air that they just made us shiver even more), we put our two camping chairs as close to each other as we could, laid a sleeping bag over us after unzipping it, laid the comforter on top of that, and put our hoods up to help keep the heat in. Sam put on her gloves and I put on a windbreaker and a fleece jacket that I threw over my legs to help. We sat like that from probably 3:00am till about 8:30 or 9:00am. Unfortunately, though, the more tired you are - the colder you get - so we both have a bit of a cold now from that weather. Sam did manage to do two massages during that time, though, so that cheered her up a bit. She got a $10 donation for each foot massage, so she was a very happy camper. The cupcakes, however, didn't really sell. Nor did the pillowcases. So we gave cupcakes away for penny donations, and lowered the price on the pillowcases - which still hardly worked. They wound up giving away the cupcakes at the end of Relay. The woman had baked 150 of them!

Our 'relief' finally showed up at 9:30am...and forgot our breakfast! So we sent him back out to get us food from the nearby McDonald's, and sat there grumping about how absolutely ridiculous my team really was. Not only did only FIVE people show up to walk, when we had almost all the time slots booked, but no one showed up to work the booth and relieve Sam and I so we could nap for two hours! Talk about lack of teamwork! Once the 'relief' did arrive and with our food, we chowed down. Now warm and with full bellies, our mood changed for the better and we both took a few laps around the track to stretch our cramped legs. Sitting in one spot for twelve hours without hardly moving makes you very antsy and sore, as it would turn out.

By eleven, about five members of the Fairbanks Grizzlies were getting their hair 'done' by one of Sam's hair stylist friends who was there for Locks of Love and Funky Hair. Since it was Sam's birthday and she REALLY wanted to do something silly, we both went and got 'funky hair'. It was for donation only and it was amusing...so I didn't mind too much. Two of the Grizzlies walked by during that time, and Sam told one of them who had hair JUST barely long enough to put into these itty bitty puffball pony tails all over his head that he should totally get his hair done. His buddy agreed and before we knew it, Sam had FIVE members of the Grizzlies with hair that was full of crazy colors and sticking out at odd angles. Needless to say, I took a few pictures of that. It was just too funny. These guys are huge, but they were just big teddy bears once Sam started pouting and batting her eyes...

And finally by about 12:30 the birthday cake arrived and we got some people to sing Happy Birthday to Sam. Today was her 21st birthday! Shortly after that, we did some more laps, and by about 1:30 we were packing up to leave as my relief was finally willing to actually properly man the booth.

It was a freezing cold, very wet, frustrating, annoying, and aggravating time at Relay for Life, but I can't say I would have missed it for the world. I got to be one of the first to wish my friend happy birthday, got to celebrate her survivor-ship with her, got to raise some money for cancer research, awareness, and patient services - and got to meet lots of great people. And I'm already thinking about how to do better next year.

Now to go through the few pictures I managed to get today, and see what I can upload for you guys.