I thought I’d share some photos from last night’s/this morning’s Relay For Life organized by the American Cancer Society and held at Hammond High School. Unfortunately, I ended up staying the Howard County Republican Club First Friday Happy Hour a little longer than I planned, so I did miss the opening ceremonies. So when I got there, there were already people out on the track starting their laps.

Here is a shot across the track from one set of bleachers to the other set with the word. You will see what they did with this in a later photo.

Outside of the track, the various teams set up on their plot of land with Hammond High School in the background.

Our tent was the blue one on the right-hand side. There were a variety of tents, from simple open sided- tents to full camping tents where people would spend the entire night. At around 9:00 after the sun had gone completely down and it was time to light up the luminaries around the track.

It was a rather impressive display. Each bag had the name of someone stricken with cancer written on it and the names would be visible even as dark as it was. Here is a shot of the camping site area.

Here is a shot looking at the track during my laps around the track.

Here is a shot of the bleachers I previously showed above along with a shot of the opposite side bleachers.

Finally, the obligatory shot of our little area in the campsite section of our tent.

I would show you the Hoard County Democrats’ tent, but they apparently did not field a team this year.

While the relay itself was the main event, they did have a deejay and band playing music all night, a silent auction in the early part of the event, and various themed events throughout the night such as a limbo event, fiesta party, and pajamas party as well as a moonbounce for the kids and even a tent that had video game challenges on a big creen going all night long. Of course, you did have a slew of somewhat rowdy teenagers (as you would expect) in the early part of the night and much more alcohol and beer being consumed in various campsites despite the fact that alcohol was supposedly prohibited. But it appear the police force on hand let a lot of that go as long as the crowds were not getting out of hand or bothering other people, which in my entire time there did not occur. The early part of the night before midnight did see quite a few people on the track. After midnight, the number of people on the track dwindled somewhat as people began to leave.

Personally, I ended up walking around the track for about two hours from Midnight until 2am shift), doing 21 laps (give or take a lap since it is hard to keep track when you are just walking in circles and seeing the same thing over and over again). I figured that is just over five miles of continuous walking. But that is nowhere near what one woman did during the event. Melissa Simmens spent the entire 12 hours of the event running on the track. She was not hard to miss as she wore a headlight on her head and the inside lane of the track was left open to allow her free pass on her laps around the track. Every hour or so, she would reverse direction on the track and some people would run with her and talk to her as she was running. I didn’t stay until the end (I did leave around 2:30am) to see if she made it the entire time, but the seven hours I was there, I never saw her off the track.

Anyway, a good time overall, managed to recruit of few Republicans to join up on our lists, good conversations and meeting new people, and most importantly helping bring awareness to an important cause.

Thanks to everyone who did donate to this event, especially those who donated on the behalf our myself and our team.