This past Tuesday I joined some awesome colleagues to pull a bus! Now why did I do that you might ask? Well it was the 6th Annual Campaign Bus Pull Kick Off Event for United Way Oakville.
This year the United Way Oakville had two challenges for us…
The first one’s easy; you’ve got to team up with seven other people to pull an Oakville Transit bus 20 feet across the finish line. No big deal, right?
The second challenge: help put an end to poverty, senior isolation and improve mental health support systems in our community. Create possibility for our neighbourhoods by raising pledges on behalf of your team.
Getting the roped connected to the buses… and a quick selfie with a colleague that started at Sheridan with me last year…but we actually met years ago at the summer camp we worked at in our early 20s… it’s been so nice to be able to reconnect with you over the past year. (She was also the one that recruited me to join the team!) From the photo below you can get a feeling of how far we had to pull that bus…. 20 feet from red line to red line!
Going through the demonstration of how to hold the rope… then the first two teams started. After seeing them struggle…I was kind of glad we could watch a few other teams go—so we could get our strategy down! But also realized quite quickly how this wasn’t going to be a walk in the park…
Getting ready to go…our team was called the “Shernados”. (We were thankful for two members from the other Sheridan IT team that joined our team to help us pull the bus—we had two people not show up!) SOmething that was a wee bit surprising to me was that at the beginning the bus didn’t really didn’t move at all–which you’d think it has wheels with 8 people pulling it it should move?! But it didn’t.
Our strategy was for us to start in a ‘tug-of-war’ position…and then once it started to roll to turn around–and flip the rope onto our shoulder…and it worked!
Photo by: Nancy Heath
Photo by: Nancy Heath
Photo by: Nancy Heath
Our team ended up winning our heat…with a time of 29:47 seconds…that might have been the longest 29 seconds of my life!
Side Note: I decided that our team should have ‘superhero’ capes to help us with our pulling! So managed to sew up 8 for everyone to wear…
The Oakville PFFA(Professional Fire Fighters Association) and the 2 District Halton Police had the fastest pulls all day! The Oakville PFFA won the first heat…and the 2 District Halton Police won the final heat with a time of 21.8 seconds!
United Way Oakville unveiled their target for this fall’s campaign… $4.5 million! The Bus Pull raised over $30,000 towards the larger goal!
“With the amazing turnout this year, I believe we can make an impressive impact in the fight against inequality,” commented Terry Smith, 2016 Campaign Chair; “the lives of our neighbours, friends and co-workers, all connected and supported through our community.” (Source)
What a fabulous morning…so glad I decided to join the team…can’t wait for next year!
Last Monday I had him checked out a garage here in Brampton… they gave him an oil change and again…everything checked out a-OK. Even though all last week he continued not to start…and started to stop making attempt noises—just the lights would come on. But usually after a few tries he’d turn over.
Fast forward today… I was visiting a friend and it didn’t start. Luckily I have CAA…so called them and got towed back to Brampton. Tomorrow I’ll talk to the garage again, and hopefully I’ll have some answers. (But I’m almost 99% sure it’s a starter problem…. that’s just intermittent and hard to diagnose.)
