Color Run!

I've always wanted to do this.
So I did.... I volunteered.
It's a little bit (very) different.
But here it is.

I was with the NHS/Key Club Bonanza volunteer team.
Some people started out like this

In a word? White.

And ended up... colored.


Whereas WE started.... yellow (ironic...because we're from Bonanza)

We had to get there at 6:30 to help set up. Divyed up into colors (I was pushing for orange of course, but we didn't actually get to choose), put up signs and flags, the big arch thing, laid out plastic to protect... some of the street, opened the barrels of powder paint, put it into ketchup/mustard things, and waited.
And then... we went to work.

We were on the 3rd K or the run (whatever that means).

This is what it looked like once things got started. Powder paint creates a toxic haze and... you just keep throwing it.

They passed out face-masks and gloves. We thought we were too cool for the masks... until the thing started. Then they were on/off... trying to find a good way to breathe. But there was no escaping the yellow. In your mouth, up your nose, hair, eyelashes, lips, ear canal... it was EVERYWHERE.

I was surprised by how many pregnant ladies and stroller-toting parents there were (one dad had a thick plastic covering over the stroller to protect the kid. Father of the year). This run attracts people of all types. There were racers running in the middle of the road who (how dare they) kept their shirts perfectly white the throughout the entire race because they were too darn fast and to darn far away for you to nab them in time. There were the racers who would literally stop in front of you until you spattered them sufficiently. There were racers who would thank you for squirting them, and others that would ask you to squirt a certain part ("Can you get my headband?"). And of course there were some who would try to sneak handfuls of paint or even rip the bottle out of your hand and run off with it (Ya, that happened to me. I ran after him for a minute... but there you go.). 

And then there were the REAL freaks. Running in a wedding dress/tux or toga, filming with an iPhone or camera (usually in a ziplock bag, or something). My personal favorite was a guy with a go-pro camera at the end of a long stick that he held behind him, running along asking people to squirt or hug him (yes, I did).

We had to be super spirited too. Sometimes it was a chore, shouting through the dust when you've been standing there for the past 3 hours doing the same thing over and over again. But most of the time it was fun.

And in the end... we had to sweep the street. We thought it was a cruel joke.  It turns out we just had to get enough of it off so that the sweepers could come through.

This is what yellow looks like.

Taking the yellow off of the streets... and pumping it into the air. Makes perfect sense.
As we were walking back to the car, we saw some of the other volunteers. It was pretty obvious which stations they had come from. The smurfs/cookie monsters were from the blue station. Oompa Loompas/Jersey Shore tans were from the orange station.


And here we are. Just ... YELLOW.
The best "minions" a girl could ask for.


*I stole a lot of these pictures from Facebook. I don't think they'll notice or care.