I Remember that day, every hour, every moment, the awe of the creativeness, the hours, weeks and months of dedication by so many, the whole scale of things that is Relay For Life of Second Life, and I remember the buckets of tears I wept that day.
Everyone eventually talks about their "defining" moment in Relay, well one of my strongest ones, was on that day, well to be precise, in the wee hours of that dark night.
I Remember my excitement when I first saw the map of the track, having a math background quickly saw this track was HUGE. 40 sims HUGE. Only took 2 sec to see that a 10 km / 6 mile track! That got me curious of past RFLofSL tracks.
A quick search and found info like in 2010, the track was 8,670 meters long, walked by 1579 people, who did 2676 laps, covering a distance of 23,193,724 meters.
Saying that another way, in 24 hours, the people of RFLofSL traveled from Vancouver on the west coast, to Halifax on the east coast, and back, twice, or Seattle to Miami over 6 1/2 times. I had to look up Wikipedia for the circumference of the Earth: 40,075,017 metres! A quick check on the calculator and yup, in 2010 the total distance traveled was 58% of the circumference of the Earth. KEWL!
Now here's a mind blowing bit. In the 7 year history of Relay For Life of Second Life, the people of Second Life, have traveled 137,571.6 km or 85,482.6 Relay miles, that's 1/4 of the way to the Moon!
Everyone know that sometimes, the fun of excitement and anticipation of waiting for something, doesn't hold a candle to the reality of of that something. Well my Relay 2011 still affects me to this very day.
After all the buzz and sugar high of feeding off the build up to the opening wore off, and the list of things you wanted to do when you finally arrived, were getting checked off, I found myself in those wee hours and began to really look at this thing called Relay For Life of Second Life.
When I need to think, I like to walk, and so I walked.
I was just completing my 2nd silent laps and went I watched someone lite a luminary candle, track sides, and was moved. Was there, my gaze really became focused, on those endless rows of luminary candles, lining both sides of the track.
My next lap was not a pretty sight, on this side of the keyboard, as I walked and read but a small fraction of those 6 miles of luminaries.
Had the best cry of my life that night. At that particular time in my life, I was at the very bottom of my career / life crisis, living in a boarding house. My bed was next to the windows which face onto a grave yard for the church, just beyond. Interesting spot to be, at this very "defining" moment in Relay for me. I logged off for a bit and went for a real walk.
And yes I did go straight there, and started to read the head stones and cried a bit more. After a bit I found a nice spot to sit. It was still dark out, but you could begin to see the new day coming when I accidentally nodded off.
The next moment I remember, is having the sun breaking through, the one opening in the trees on the horizon, squarely in my eyes, jolting me awake. As I sat there admiring the sun rise, watching the birds and chipmunks beginning their foraging, and I remember feeling cleansed from my experience of the hours before. Was a most euphoric moment.
Wasn't until much later during that summer, I realized the weight of my real life situation, ad changed that day, and I was being fueled by a new passion.
That was one of my Relay "moments", that took me through the Remembrance of life.
Thank you Mr MarkTwain White for reminding me every detail of that day, with you're most beautiful efforts.
Bain
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