Post 1761 - Exile Island Day

First of all, I have added a new widget to the blog which shows you the most popular posts I have done.  It' s no surprise to me that they're all interviews.

I'm home from Exile Island.  I spent hours and hours there today involved in interesting challenges with other teams.  We did win for the most enthusiastic team.

Of course, we were all there to raise money for the Children's Wish Foundation.  We met our miracle child, Jordan.  I gave her, her mother, and her sister all a Bevboy's Blog business card.

I'll tell you about the challenges.  The first one we did involved putting our feet in slats and walk in groups of five.  We had to assemble a styrofoam wishing well and then raise money from people in downtown Halifax and return those funds to the "bank".  We raised about $125.  Five bucks of that came from a guy I work with who was having lunch with a friend of his.

The second challenge was about bungee cable and our attempts to throw a sponge ball into a basket. It all looks very easy, until you do it.  The cable was tied around our waists.  I was snapped back several times, falling flat on my rear each time and struggling to get back up again.  The 45 seconds seemed like 10 minutes.  Very happy when it was done.  The 4 balls I landed in the basket were  hard earned.

In between each challenge we were given time to do additional fund raising via our smart phones.

We also had to dress like a firefighter, run a maze and then roll up a fire hose and unroll it afterward.  Sounds easy.  It wasn't.

In between we had to do additional fund raising.   I think I said that already.  I'm too tired to check an earlier paragraph to see.

The final challenge?  We had to use dixie cups or wine cups to fill a water jug.  Another team cheated by filling their shoes with water.

After that was all over, we had a lobster dinner in the tent.  I hadn't had lobster in years.

I have heard this story before and told it in places other than this blog, but now I'll tell it here.  There was once a man named Charles Keating.  He eventually became a very wealthy man in Nova Scotia, but grew up exceptionally poor.  The time was, lobster was the type of seafood only consumed by poor people.  They were bottom dwellers, scavengers, and it was unsightly to eat them.  Keating once told the story of how he was so poor growing up, he would take lobster sandwiches to school.  The rich kids had baloney sandiches.

Keating, as I stated, eventually became very wealthy indeed.  He reached the point where he would go to parties which served, among other things, lobster sandwiches!  He'd come full circle, but not really.

I'm old enough to remember when lobster was a very cheap seafood, when chicken wings were parts of the bird nobody wanted, and when seafood chowder was something that poorer folk prepared and ate.

So, I had my first lobster tonight in many years.  I liked it.  I'll take out a second mortgage on my house and get some more sometime.

I had a great time.  Brad Dryden, my friend, you have been nicer to me than I deserve.  I thank you for thinking of me and inviting me to be on your team.  I enjoyed my day very much.  And I particularly enjoyed meeting Jordan, our miracle child.

I am tired tonight.  I am sore.  I can hardly walk.  And I broke the holster on my BlackBerry when the bungee cable decided to take me for a ride.  But I feel good that we raised as much money as we did, and I hope that I will have a chance to do this again sometime.

You all have a good night.

Bevboy