Monthly Archive for November, 2008

So this weekend I did something that I had never done before. I stood between two lanes of moving traffic with a bucket in my hand collecting money for a charity. It was a very eye opening experience. We were raising money for the Metro food basket charity. Between our 5 roadblocks around the city, in 4 hours we raised 20,758 dollars, and that was in cash and does not include all of the change. They take it to a bank and have it counted and then add that to the total.

It was a great time. The weather was perfect. We had 35 or so people covering the four corners of our intersection, and a little base camp of sorts where people brought food and drinks. That is where Santa was as well which drew people into the parking lot to get their picture with Santa, and most of them also donated to the charity as well.

I found it very eye opening that overall, the people who looked like they should be giving, were the ones who tried to not make eye contact with you. You know the nice brand new BMV, Vette or Hummer, who kept looking off in another direction as not to make eye contact. Then there were the old cars, some of which their window wouldn’t work, who would be giving 10 – 20 dollars to help out such a worthy cause. There were some people cursing at you and telling you to get out of the road, and one Hummer who drove the entire intersection blaring their horn. The big rule of thumb for these types of events is, never turn your back to traffic. I only had one near running over incident when someone was trying to change lanes, and almost hit me. I had almost turned to a car to get a donation, but for some reason, something made me keep looking forward, and that is what let me know that a car was about to swerve into me. Good times.

The local HOG chapters helped pretty much start this charity along with the Metro Police Department. Metro officers submit families that they think need help that they encounter in their daily work to a committee who narrows down the submissions. The families are then checked to make sure that they are not receiving aide from another group like Angel Tree etc, so that the assistance is not duplicated for one family. This year, if memory serves, it will be 75 families/elderly individuals who will receive assistance from the program, all of which live in Davidson County.

On Christmas eve day, the staging area is the Prison that I went to a couple of weeks ago. People gather around 3 in the morning and load up trucks that will go out and deliver all of the stuff to the families. Since I am working on Christmas day and will be in town, I am pretty sure that I am going to go and volunteer that morning, and probably ride in one of the trucks to deliver the items to the families, as others who have their families in town probably won’t be able to be tied up all day.

I love that the charity work that I end up doing is very non traditional. Between the HOG group and the costuming work, I am glad to be able to help out and have fun at the same time.

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