There are few good reasons to get out of bed at 6 a.m. on a Saturday morning. One of them, at least in my opinion, is to volunteer for a good cause. This Saturday, I woke with the sun so that I could help the organizers of the Annapolis Kidney Walk set up for their event in Quiet Waters Park. Although it is a smaller event than something like the Race For the Cure, it still had 200 or so attendees, and it was quite an undertaking to put together.
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When I arrived in the morning, I was first put to work pulling a myriad number of tables out of a truck and setting them up on the stage. Once they were dressed up with colorful tablecloths, they were prepared to be the staging areas for registration as well as the points where walkers could get food and drink before and after they walked.
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While I and several others were working on this project, others were trekking the half mile and two mile circuits of the course marking the trails with arrows and putting up signs noting the beneficiaries and sponsors of the event. (I had no idea how hard those signs were to assemble, BTW.)
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Yet another group was setting up a photo area and a table with information about kidney disease. I spoke with one of the Kidney Foundation volunteers and learned a lot more about what it is like to be on dialysis and how it is a life altering experience.I also learned that a core group had been having meetings about the event for months, both in Columbia and in Towson.
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Since I was headed to D.C. for the Post Hunt, I had to leave the walk just as registration was beginning. It was amazing to see how we had transformed an empty stage into an exciting event that was about to unfold, with just a few dedicated individuals and a little elbow grease. And, luckily, it didn't rain.
