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Tuesday, August 25, 2015

A Royal BM Thank You

My WeatherBug app is saying about a 30% chance of rain for the afternoon and with temperatures in the mid 70s. Come on out and you may even spot one of the rarest TRY-ers...me!

It's going to be impossible to get all of the usual suspects together for "TRY night at the Fair" so I'm just going to go with what I've heard from a couple people on the side and pick Monday, August 31st as the night. The concert just happens to be Cole Swindell and his couple of fringe national hits on the county music chart. While it's more fun when the concert is an event to seek out, it actually does make it easier to enjoy the fair if the music is only optional. Think more time for deep fried things, shukkers, beef sundaes, and ice cream. If anyone wants in, let me know so that we can all coordinate with each other.

There was a bit of a "kerfuffle" over a Facebook comment I made late last Monday night. There are several paths I could take to explain the timing and the unlikelihood of it all, but I'll take the shortest route. Hopefully I can clear this up for everyone, once and for all: If my [first] wife blatantly breaks our longstanding rule about not posting certain things on Facebook...and keep in mind it is HER rule that we implemented as our rule...and the rule has cost me HOURS AND HOURS of my life in order to work around it and still share things with family and friends...

Well, at that point I feel I can make whatever the heck comments I feel like making. (I'm not saying that's why I did it, but as Rambo would say in my simplest defense: "She drew first blood.")

Thank you for always taking her side on things though, I really appreciate it! ;-)

About last Tuesday:
The thank you dinner to recognize top fundraisers for the Boilermaker Charity Bib program was very nice. It was held at their new corporate office building - which is a refurbished old building near the finish line area. They had some fun displays up, including race posters and race brochures over the years. Plus the race glasses and race pins. I took pictures of those in the years I've been active (since 2004) but now wish I had taken a picture of the first few years worth of glasses - they actually had a handle and were a mug for a handful of years before switching to the glass look that they still use now.




 

For the night, they invited every person who raised $1000 or more and a representative from each organization that did the bibs this year. There was a generous buffet dinner, drinks (given in 2015 BM glasses that were yours to keep), and an overly generous goodie bag. I believe there was over $50 in retail value in there - including fitting items such as a Boilermaker flag and video (from 2 years ago) to random things such as olive oil. Olive oil?! After dinner they had a representative from each organization get up and give a quick talk discussing what program the money was supporting. The star fundraising group was "Make-A-Wish" with our Food Bank of CNY (with some help from Team Beef) coming in second highest with over $10,000 raised. There was quite the variety - from arthritis to a specific library to a school district.

The information is probably available if you read the online articles about it, but since I've never paid full attention, this was somewhat new to me how it all works. The highlights:
This is the third year.
Not for profits apply to be selected with a request for number of bibs and their program it will support.
Could request as few as 3 (maybe 5?) or as many as 25 for this year.
If you are selected, the bibs are yours. You find the runners for either length race. You keep the money for your programs.
This year the total program raised over $150,000.
They want to keep growing this with a long term goal of raising 1 million in a single year.


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