Carla's Avon Walk
As regular readers know, few months ago, I went to San Francisco to get concert tickets and visit the San Francisco Fire Department Museum, on what happened to be the final match of the World Cup. What I didn't mention was that I was driving along California Street (and along other major routes along the way), I saw scores of women dressed in pink (with a few in purple) walking along. Drivers around me honked and cheered them on, but I had no idea what cause they were walking for. It wasn't the heavily advertised AIDS Bike Ride, which anyways, was the next week, but it was obviously something big and important.
I put it out of my mind until I was talking to Carla at one of my pool parties and she mentioned seeing all the people in blue wigs (World Cup fans) while she was doing her Avon Walk in San Francisco that day. So she was one of pink ladies!
Apparently, doing the Avon Walk is something you have to earn. Carla and her team had to raise at least $1,800 for breast cancer research to participate in the walk. Furthermore, since the walk covers 39 miles over many of San Francisco's myriad hills, she trained for it by doing hilly hikes for months beforehand. Even so, she was sore afterwards, but she had lots of funny stories to tell about it.
Here she is at the beginning of the hike. Carla is the one on the far right with the pink fannypack. Most of the walkers wore pink, but if you had survived breast cancer and were walking, you wore purple. They walked up and down lots of hills: San Francisco has a hill for every square mile, and she wasn't going along the beach, so she probably walked up and down 39 hills.
Besides the ongoing encouragement from passers by, some flamboyant supporters came by to add more color to all the pink. One of them were the Hookers for Hooters, who as outrageous as they were, were also incredibly endearing and encouraging. At least I hope the picture Carla sent me is them: if it's another set of supporters, er, well, Hookers for Hooters were there, too.
More sedate supporters included both the San Francisco and the San Jose police, who wore pink shirts as they biked alongside, and people with pink pompoms in Golden Gate Park. Why San Jose police? Carla said it used to be a three day walk, originating in San Jose, and walking all the way up to San Francisco, but the organizers realized it would be just as difficult, and less time consuming, to have a two day walk in San Francisco alone.
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And yes, whenever they ran into people with World Cup Fever, the pink outfits of the Avon Walkers looked sedate compared to the outfits of soccer fans. I'm still not sure who these guys were supporting, but they're coming out of an Italian restaurant, and if you look closely, there's an Italian flag just behind the first guy. But there is no blue in the Italian flag (and there is the French one), and the only World Cup Fever I understand is the English one (big red cross on a white background.)
Carla has her own page for the Avon Walk, explaining her reasons. If you wish, you can make a donation to support her cause and fight breast cancer there.