Dinhternet

Now that I think about it, I’m still pretty far behind. Should have writ­ten more yes­ter­day, but Saturday’s post was so long, and I had to do it twice because Fire­fox crashed the first time. Oh well… here’s Sunday…

Izzy P got a call in the mid­dle of the night and I woke her up for it since I was lying next to her. She didn’t sound very appre­ci­ata­tive, though… les­son learned: don’t wake up Izzy P.

Woke up at 5 and got ready in min­utes. Took a lit­tle longer to get every­one else ready. We left Peggy S’s place at 6, which was a lit­tle behind sched­ule, since we told Hanh D we would be pick­ing her up by then, and she lives on the other side of San Jose. For some rea­son, I was lead car to both Hanh D’s place and to the actual project. Maybe Peggy S and Ian R think I’m respon­si­ble, and/or know my way around Frisco. Hehehe. But I did keep us going at a rea­son­ably good clip (aver­ag­ing 75), and we got there in time. And before the chair.

After we signed in, found that they weren’t very well orga­nized, and job assign­ments were almost a free-for-all. Most of us were doing Check­point 4. Doing what, I couldn’t even tell you. Then Will F announced that they needed another Delin­eator, so I went over to that crowd. Found out that what Delin­eators do is put down the cones that mark the course route, and pick them up again after every­one has passed. Not too com­pli­cated. I was in group D3 with Deb­bie P, Jackie H, Kevin P, and Thu H. And there were three non–APhiO peo­ple and David, our super­vi­sor and driver.

The first thing we had to do was put on our day-glo orange hats and vests. (I think it’s a step up from the hot pink one I got last year. )

Putting down the cones was easy. We assem­bled them on the truck, and dropped them strate­gi­cally spaced out along our sec­tion of the route. Then one of us had to run along with cau­tion tape and con­nect all the cones. We also had to set up a cou­ple of bar­ri­cades to stop cars from turn­ing onto the course, and to mark some course haz­ards, like a big pile of dirt on the side of the road.

After we fin­ished mark­ing up our sec­tion, went to a big bend in the course between Check­points 1 and 2 and stopped there. Helped Energy 92.7 set up there, and Cheer SF was there, too. Spent the next four hours cheer­ing on every­one that went by. David was very inspired, he made pom-poms out of extra cau­tion tape (one of the non–APhiO peo­ple told us last year he made skirts with it) and had a bunch of cheer signs ready. They included, “Your boots were made for walk­ing,” “You go _____ (Fill in the blank),” “Thanks Gold Crown Walk­ers,” and “You walk­ers are bananas! B-A-N-A-N-A-S.” Oh, and he took one of the many “No Stop­ping” traf­fic signs from around the park and wrote under it, “You’re halfway there!” He also told us to think of some­thing, and he would put it on a sign for us, but none of us could come up with anything.

So we stood around for hours. Well, Kevin P and I stood around. Deb­bie P, Jackie H, and Thu H did a lot of danc­ing to the music. Thu H even requested songs. Saw Amy K, Diana Pai, Kitty K, and Carol S in the crowds. Also saw this scary old man who had a hot pink wig, neon orange bikini (com­plete with male camel-toe), and tall black heels on. It was like the sun… I didn’t to look directly at him, for fear of per­ma­nent dam­age to the retinas.

Got sack lunches again. They were sit­ting in a cooler on the truck the whole time, but we didn’t really bust into them until the walk was almost over. Partly due to that one guy. It’s a good thing we did wait, though, because we def­i­nitely needed the energy for pick­ing up the cones. The process was a lot more involved than putting them down. We had two peo­ple run­ning slightly ahead tak­ing the cau­tion tape off the cones and wind­ing it up to throw away. Two more peo­ple ran along out­side and handed cones into the truck as it drove by. One per­son on the plat­form on the back of the truck to take the cones being handed in. And finally two peo­ple in the truck tak­ing the cones apart and stack­ing them up nice and neat.

That took a while. And I was stu­pid and stepped in a pot­hole and rolled my ankle, mak­ing me take a pretty embar­rass­ing fall and scrape my knee. And my ankle swelled up. That was fun.

After we fin­ished up, headed back to the other side of the park, where the fin­ish line was. Along the way we passed Jimmy P and Jane L’s Delin­eator crew, who were still hard at work. And their sys­tem wasn’t as good as ours. Oh, and ran­dom peo­ple we passed would shout, “We love you, Cone­heads!” as we passed. That was nice.

So we got back to the fin­ish line, where every­one else was. First thing Peggy S says to me when she sees me is to demand my hat, so that she could have the full set. Nhi K seemed to have every­thing under con­trol as chair, and told every­one we were all free to do what­ever, the project was now offi­cially over.

Ian R, Izzy P, Peggy S, Thu H, and I walk back to the cars, only to get stopped every cou­ple of yards by some­one who wants to buy one of Peggy S’s hats off of her. Got back to the cars and the plan was to fol­low Ian, who was going to Star­bucks, a gas sta­tion, Costco, and then back to Davis. Tried to fol­low him out of the city, but I lost him right before get­ting on the ramp to get onto the Bay Bridge, so I decided to just lead Peggy S back home. (Well, still stop­ping at Costco, by for­go­ing the Starbucks.)

Found out that Ian R some­how ended up pretty close behind us, so I was once again lead car. Took us most of the way, and then Peggy S (or maybe it was Ian R, I wouldn’t know because both Thu H’s cell phone and mine died, but she was the one who moved and had me fol­low) decided we weren’t going to the Vacav­ille one. We stopped at the one between Vallejo and Fair­field. I for­got the name of the town. Ian R and Peggy S got Harry Pot­ter there, and then I bor­rowed Peggy S’s card to get some gas.

Made it back home after long last, and I passed out almost imme­di­ately. Woke up a cou­ple hours later and went online for a bit. Peggy S woke up and we went out to din­ner. Were gonna eat at Thai Bistro, but they closed a lit­tle early, so ended up at Old Tea­house, where we ran into Ian R, Alice C, Becca Y, and David Y. Oh, and Deb­bie AY, Jenny D, Ling K, and Randy L were at a dif­fer­ent table, too. Peggy S got her Seafood Udon and I wanted the Seafood Bake, but they told me the oven was bro­ken, so no bakes pos­si­ble. I doubted it was actu­ally bro­ken, but what­ever… got the yin-yang rice instead. Quote comes from din­ner talk.

After that, Peggy S needed to study, and I offered to keep her com­pany by read­ing with her. Only we didn’t have a place, because she can’t con­cen­trate at her place, and my place was super hot. So we invited our­selves to Sophia C’s. But she wouldn’t let us bring Harry Pot­ter into her apart­ment, so I started to re-read Crypto­nom­i­con instead.

After a while, Sophia C got tired and kicked us out, so I dropped Peggy S off, went home, and passed out.