Hey all, Bianca here to blog about volunteering as Route Monitors in the local Bikes Battling Cancer race, organized by the American Cancer Society. Olivia had discovered this volunteer opportunity, but quite inconveniently I might add, she found out she got scheduled to work at CVS all day today. Hmmmmm...anyways.....Mom, Sophia and I were placed at mile 83 in the 100 mile bike ride. It was quite a tricky intersection to direct traffic... there was no stop light and cars would come from 4 different directions. There was a little triangle "island" in which we were rotating corner to corner in order to control traffic. Being on crutches, I was mostly just a cheer squad member, while Sophia held the orange flag directing the riders and mom attempted to direct traffic (don't worry, she only almost got hit 3 times or so and I tried to help her with anger management). We were required to wear big orange vests and even though we looked like construction workers, some speedy drivers didn't even see us until Mom was flagging them down before they sped into the riders. Since there was no parking lot at our little station, we had to park off the side of the road, totally pulled up on the grass of someone's side/front lawn. The woman ended up driving home as we were setting up, looking a little confused as to why there was a random van on her property. She ended up being very nice, bringing us all hot chocolate and even let us use her bathroom!
Now is where they story takes a crazy turn. The race went on for about 5 hours. The bikers were pretty sporadic; there were only about 150 participants that came through in the 5 hour span. Sophia enertained us with songs and dance routines, and we brought some playing cards to kill time with, but heck, it was a l-o-n-g- day. We sensed that it was almost the end of the race, but no one was really coming by to tell us that we could leave, or to return our vests and flag. Mom suggested that I drive up to the high school a half a mile away (the next rest stop) to ask what was going on and how much longer we should anticipate being at our stop. I finally hobbled across the street to the car only to find that it wouldn't start! I guess a light was left on and ran down the battery. Luckily, Mom asked another random neighbor for jumper cables. I threw my crutches and phone in the car and left the keys on the front seat while I went to open the hood of the car and hook the cables. Mom happened to be putting the chairs in the trunk at the same time, and for some reason when she shut the trunk, the car automatically locked (which it never does by itself! ; we are all still wondering how that happened?). Now, we were locked out of the car, keys in ignition, so we couldn't even start it up again with the jump. Plus, Mom's phone had died hours before and now my phone, the only working phone, was locked in the car along with my crutches. Talk about convenient. (Oh, and did I mention that Dad was at his coaching Special Olympics Training Day from 11-5 and was unreachable to ask for help.?) The man all set up to help with the jumper cables was nice enough to offer to drive mom all the way home (hmmmmm...she gets into the car with a total stranger, but he did seem really nice) to get the spare car key, which she wasn't even sure she would find because four household drivers now have the few various car keys hidden at any given moment. Meanwhile, I hopped back across the street with Sophia to keep directing traffic, minus crutches. While mom and her new best-friend-the-neighbor were gone, the coordinators of the race finally stopped by saying that the last bikers had passed. Then Sophia and I ended up sitting outside of the car on the grass in the middle of the intersection waiting for mom to come back! Sophia suggested, (insisted?) that we sit behind the car so no one could see us. Mom and the nice man finally came back about 20 minutes later and we got the car up and running! (He'll defintely be getting one of her coffee cakes) It was a very long day but overall full of laughs (and crazy drivers). It was clear that the bikers appreciated us as almost every cyclist that passed us shouted out "thanks" as we directed and cheered them on . Overall, volunteering our Sunday to help the race run smoothly was worth the extended effort it required. And supporting anyone who wants to do anything to help find a cure for a cancer is good enough reason for us Cutlers to get involved!
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