By Ashley Lodato
I know you’ve all been worried about the stowaway chickens, so first let me reassure you that they are healthy and happy to be home. The ride back to the Methow in a cardboard box was less enjoyable than when they had the run of an entire cargo trailer, and — as they seemed a bit peckish upon being released — they had to be revived with some water, lovingly fed by Molly Patterson via medicine dropper.
Still, both hen and rooster are a bit smug at having answered — for themselves at least — the age-old question about why the chicken crossed the road. (To get to the other side of the mountains, of course.)
Now on to human debacles. Winthrop resident Dani Golden had arrived at her relay station for Saturday’s Sunflower race and was stretching and preparing to be tagged by her teammate when she was struck by a show-stopping realization: she was wearing her “around-the-house” bra, not her running bra. Many of us can sympathize with this predicament, and completely understand why Dani’s instinct was to jump in her car and return home to fetch a proper sports bra.
Looking at the time, however, Dani saw that the round-trip journey would make her hopelessly late for her leg of the relay, so she started asking around at the checkpoint, to see if anyone had a bra she could borrow. A friend from Leavenworth, having finished her leg of the run, pulled off her own sweaty bra and handed it to Dani, but after one glance Dani sized it up as insufficient for the task. Still, she stuffed it in her fanny pack in case nothing better came along.
Dani’s systematic accosting of every female who came into the transition area finally paid off, when a woman unknown to her reached into a bag and pulled out a bra that was deemed adequate, generating gratitude from Dani and good karma from the universe. Wasting no time, Dani began running as she was pulling the borrowed bra over her head, on top of her around-the-house bra. I have been unable to verify historical records, but I suspect that this makes Dani the first person in Sunflower history to run the race with three bras.
In another spontaneous gesture of Sunflower goodwill and borrowed apparel, Jill Sheley saved the day for another relay team that had lost a member due to sudden illness. Jill was at a transition zone mid-race and heard that a local relay team had an unexpected need for a runner. Jill wasn’t wearing running shoes but Brooke Lucy was, so they swapped footwear and Jill ran a leg of the relay, taking the phrase “walking in another person’s shoes” to a literal level.
