Not Penny's Boat
It happened. Again.
Last year, I attended my first optimism walk in scenic Dunwoody, GA (just outside of Atlanta) to raise money to fight #ThePark. My parents flew down to walk with me. We arrived at the park on time, registered, and started walking with the big group. Then, my dad decided to stop so he could check into his flight exactly 24 hours before departure, hoping to get on the upgrade list for first class. Then I got distracted when I noticed that the park had a disc golf course, and I had to explore a couple of holes on the course. By the time we were done with all that, the group had moved on. We continued walking, but without the group to follow, we went the wrong way and ended up in an entirely different park than where we started. We eventually realized our mistake, retraced our steps, and finally made it back to the correct park long after the walk had finished. I finished last—even though it isn't a race—in a group of mostly elderly people with a movement disorder.
But this year would be different. The weather was cold—probably below 50 degrees—and raining. My parents brought an umbrella and rain jackets, while I only had my Adidas hooded sweatshirt to protect me. But the weather wasn’t going to stop us. We were ready to walk. We knew the park. We knew where to go. Or so we thought.
The Uber driver dropped us off at a baseball field. Realizing this wasn't the right place, we noticed a cluster of white pop-up tents across the road. Registration. Just like last year. No big deal, we just walk across the way and… It was actually the weekly farmers market, selling peaches, boiled peanuts, pecans, things of that nature. This was not the right place. Looking up the hill, I saw another group of pop-up tent. Finally, the registration tents.
When I got up the hill, the pop-up tents were sheltering a pack of young dudes. All dudes. Polos. Khaki shorts. Dudes. Was this some sort of Dudes Against Parkinson’s group that was walking in the walk. No, reader, it was not. It was a meetup of Phi Kappa Alpha (or something like that) frat boys. These dudes were useless. I left and continued my search.
While I was on my little excursion up the hill, my dad had found a police officer and asked her where the Parkinson's Walk was. She explained that the group would come along a certain path and then walk up the hill to the pavilion at the top. So, we walked up the hill to the pavilion and finally met up with the group as they were finishing their walk. So this year I didn’t finish last. Because I technically never started. We arrived just as they were starting to serve lunch.
Fortunately, the registration table was still set up, so I was able to register after the walk had finished and get my T-shirt, insulated cooler bag, and certificate for raising money for being the #13 fundraiser at the event. So I attended the 2025 Georgia Optimism Walk but the only walking I did was trying to find the event.
Thanks to generous donations, I raised twice as much money as I did last year and would have been on stage in the circle of hope, or circle of optimism, or circle of friendship—whatever it's called—but I missed out on that because I was too busy wandering around the wrong end of the park. Again. Next year, my goal is to raise twice as much money and to not get lost at all. I’ll buy a damn handheld satellite GPS, if I have to. Mark my words: I will (eventually, one day) start AND finish this walk.