The Wheels on the Bus

With the holiday food drive season picking up, it was time to take Gus for another drive today. This time Alex and I were headed to Mason to drop of barrels to two Warren County businesses. The staff at Shared Harvest were kind enough to load the van/truck/bus with 5 posters and 5 empty barrels for us, leaving Alex and me free to spend our morning calling past donors about holding a holiday food drive this year. So by the time 11:20 A.M. rolled around, we were actually looking forward to taking Gus out for a spin. We decided that Alex would drive to the first business, I would drive home, and we would "rock, paper, scissors" to see who would drive from the first business to the second business; I lost.

As always, the first part of the trip is always the worst. The driveway leading up to Shared Harvest is steep and bumpy, and navigating it can be treacherous. With our standard amount of shrieks and squeals, we finally made it down the driveway and to the road. Whew.

Our first delivery was pretty uneventful. Alex did a great job with challenging tasks like turning and merging, and we were even able to find the place with relative ease. But by the time we unloaded the barrels, we only had 15 minutes to get to the second business before our contact person would be out to lunch. Of course by the time we located the correct driveway for the second business, we had just missed our contact. To pass the time, we did what any good VISTA team would do: we parked Gus and had a fall photo shoot, followed by a mini jam session to whatever songs came on the radio.


Half an hour later, we rolled up in front of the HUGE building and parked a second time. The receptionist found our contact person, but instead of having us drop the barrels off with her up front, she mysteriously instructed us to take the barrels to the "docks" and meet her there. So we got back in Gus, drove over a few curbs (accidentally, of course) and found one of the 22 docks on the side of the building. There was no sign of our contact, so we gave her a call on her cell phone to clarify directions. We were at dock 20, and we needed to be at dock 16. But dock 16 was located behind a locked gate. No problem...we creepily waited until someone drove up to the gate and then we just followed them in. (No, I don't think that's illegal.) Once at the dock, we unloaded the barrels and carried them through the distribution center (which resembled an adult-like Willy Wonka chocolate factory), through the offices, and then into the cafeteria area. Finally, mission accomplished!

We couldn't leave right away, though. We had to wait a couple of minutes until someone was ready to leave the docks so that we could follow them out of the gate. I think the other truck drivers enjoyed watching us amateurs navigate the docks, but hey we did it! Oh, and don't worry, Tina--we were good little ambassadors for Shared Harvest, we promise!