The Gutsy Walk 2015

Another blog about the Gutsy Walk, this time for the 2015 Gutsy Walk. And this time I didn't walk alone.

Let's first give a bit of background story. I had a job at this point in time, at Pier 8 that I had mistakenly walked to the previous year. I was a fry cook and ice cream scoop at The Hamilton Waterfront Trust. It's a great place to work, honestly. The coworkers are friendly and cool. The ice cream is amazing, as stated before. I've eaten enough grill food and ice cream to say that the food there is good. Who doesn't love hamburgers on a hot summer day? Especially with banana peppers and mustard. I definitely recommend swinging by there and getting fries with mayonnaise (really good I swear), a burger, and a coconut/orange pineapple milkshake. Calorific but heavenly.

I worked that day after the Gutsy Walk, and I worked with two of the people walking with me; my boyfriend who worked as a skate boy, and his sister who worked as a grill girl with me. However, from the previous year I was confident in my ability to work after the 5km walk, I had put in 8km the previous year and I would routinely walk from my house near Inch Park to Pier 8, about a 6km walk, before my shift. My dad was also joining us on the walk because a) his daughter was sick with a gross disease, b) the walk was through a beautiful part of Hamilton, and c) he wanted the free pizza at the end.

It was a nice walk, and I had won the Mother's Day draw so I had received two necklaces and a ring from a sponsoring company. It was a perfect day. The walk itself was uneventful, no funny stories to tell and no new friends made. The weather network had promised gorgeous weather and delivered. The four of us walked at a nice pace, quickly finishing the walk. Afterwards, after my dad had eaten pizza and some other snacks, he gave me my lunch for work and went home. That left my boyfriend, Ryan, and his sister Alyssa, to bum around for an hour or so before work. We walked around Bayfront Park and then headed off to work early. They wanted to roller skate before work, but I was an awkward and clumsy person in general. I can ice skate, but roller skating is very different. I fall a lot, and I fall badly. So roller skating before work? Not a good idea. Oh well.

So I hung around at work for a bit. I felt a little funny but didn't think much of it. I was a rough and tough kid, maybe I got a little too much sun. When it was time for work I started my shift.

Now the grill is hot in general to work in. We have air conditioning and the fan, it works well. But I love cooking and the grill is extremely hot. In the winter that just passed, people looked at me like I was crazy for wearing a t-shirt in the grill, except the heat from cooking kicked the air conditioning on and I would sweat like crazy in a t-shirt.

Throw that heat from work on top of about 4 hours in the sun and black jeans and a band shirt. Throw all that together with a wickedly hot summer, hotter than the year before. I got a little heat sickness, which would have been fine if I had gone home like I did the year before and relaxed on the couch. Except this year I worked and decided to be my usual hardworking and stubborn self and worked for the next few hours on my feet, feeling worse and worse. Up until I suddenly felt like I had to puke.

Needless to say I called a friend for a ride home, you can't work around food if you're sick. When my friend picked me up, she noticed how incredibly sunburned I was. Despite liberally applying sunscreen before getting a ride down to Bayfront Park, my time in the sun turned pasty pale me into lobster girl. Boiled lobster girl.

However, I went back into work for my next shift, after taking that night and the next day to rest and taking cold cold showers and apply aloe Vera cream. I would still routinely walk to work before my shift, but only on days were it was cloudy or my shift started early in the day. If I walked to work on a later shift I would drink plenty of water and stop by Starbucks to get a cold frappe and enjoy a little break of AC and icy cold, sugary drinks while en route to work.