Guest Griller night canceled

Uh, oh. I'm in trouble, aren't I? I haven't been good about updating this blog for the past few weeks so I'll try to provide some worthy updates over the course of the next few posts.

When I left you last, I was planning on having a guest griller night at a nearby BD's Mongolian 

Grill. The plan was to sell tickets to friends and family with a certain number of dollars over the cost of what BD's charged for the meals. This was a new fund raising method from previous years, whereby the group doing the fund raising instead would get the tips from the tip jar at the grill counter. This year's method proved to be a hard sell. I was able to get a decent commitment from friends and family who hadn't donated yet (approximately 13-15), but the other team mates of mine who were doing it with me could not for the life of them sell tickets for various reasons.

Firstly, BD's prices are not cheap to begin with, so adding extra cost on top of their base prices makes it harder for people to justify the expense, even if it's for a good meal and the extra money goes to a good cause. As a contrast, several other restaurants in the area simply have you give away vouchers whereby a certain percent of that night's profits (usually 20%) go to the cause (i.e. it comes out of the normal price, not added to the price, of the meals). 

Secondly, most of the people they were approaching would prefer to give a direct donation so as to be able to include it with their itemized deductions in their taxes. 

Thirdly, many of the people they had approached had already donated in that manner. 

And lastly, my team mates participating in the event are pretty well spread out and didn't know many people near the actual restaurant who might be interested in buying tickets.

In the end, because of the poor overall ticket sales, we decided it was going to be too much work to justify the effort so we canceled the event to focus our efforts on other fund raising opportunities.

In retrospect, I think the guest griller night would be appropriate for a local group near the restaurant (e.g. church, campus group, parents of school groups, etc.) who's sole fund raising efforts were targeted at others in the area and no other methods were planned (such as direct letters asking for donations). But for our situation, BD's new fund raising model just didn't work out well.

Thank you to all of you who said they'd make it out to support me. I'm truly fortunate to have friends and family as generous as you.

Quick Update

It's been a long weekend. I'll post more later this week, but suffice to say, my training is starting to catch up with me. We had a really good 3 hour 20 minute hike (including rests) on Saturday at Stoney Creek Metro Park. We hiked about 7 miles across the most consistently hilly terrain yet. It didn't feel like much when we were done, but a few hours later the fatigue snuck up on me and I dozed off on the couch while playing with my oldest daughter.

This morning I worked a bucket drive outside a local grocery store. Rather than simply accost people at the door, I got dressed up in my hiking boots and hat, backpacking pack and trekking poles. I then proceeded to spend 1 1/2 hours "hiking" on a home elliptical machine that my team mentor had dropped off while another teammate solicited for donations. I think it worked pretty well to get people's attention. We got a number of comments from people saying they could would have problems doing that for 5 minutes. When my teammate told them I'd be hiking 18 miles in one day, many would reply they'd be happy to do be able to a mile. Sometimes I wonder if I take my good health for granted. Regardless how healthy I am, I was beat by the end of my shift. I was --><-- this close to dozing off again shortly after I got home -- darn those parental responsibilities!

I'm really looking forward to tomorrow's rest day.

P.S. I stopped in to find out more about being a guest griller at BD's Mongolian BBQ. I'm discussing possible dates and locations with my fellow HFD teammates. Stay tuned.

Week 4 update

Thank you all for your generosity so far. It's been less than two weeks and as of this writing, a dozen of you have donated over $961. That's fantastic! Keep it coming! I plan to do a bucket drive at a local grocery store a few weekends from now. I'm also looking into setting up a Guest Griller night at a local BD's Mongolian BBQ. A certain percentage of the proceeds go toward my fundraising goal. I'll be sure to post an update when I have more details.

Anil continues to update his blog with notes on the various check-ups and tests he is going through. It's amazing how many he'll have to have before his chemo treatments start. If you haven't checked it out, I suggest you do so.

The training continues to go well. I ran intervals on the treadmill this week and plan to do slower inclines next week.  The group hike this week was at Pontiac Lake Recreation Area. We received several inches of snow this week, so the trail was quite powdery and the hills a bit slippery with loose snow.

Dressing for these winter hikes has been an interesting challenge. I've done pretty well gauging the appropriate attire for the hikes on the whole: a synthetic base layer of various thicknesses based on the temperature, a wind-stopper vest and a thin waterproof-breathable shell has worked out well. On the lower half of my body I generally wear long johns (synthetic or wool) under my convertible hiking pants. I've been wearing my normal hiking boots with various thicknesses of socks, though

Though I'm generally fine once we've been on the trail for about 15 minutes, I'm generally a little colder than what I'd consider comfortable until then. Today was particularly uncomfortable, with temperatures in the 20's and gusty. As much as I've loved hiking through the snowy woods, I have to admit I am looking forward to the approaching springtime weather.