Weightlifting

With winter months (and our wedding!) fast approaching, we recently decided to join our local YMCA. Taylor and I try to go at least 3-4 times a week, with our exercise activities including swimming, water aerobics, biking, elipitcal-ing, and weightlifting.

But today I realized that the Y isn't the only place to go to lift weights. I can also just go to work.

The mission today was to pick up food collected at 3 local businesses. To do this, Alex and I would need a two-wheel dolly, a couple of boxes, and of course, Gus. We started on our mission a little before 9:00 this morning with a trip to Ohio Casualty/Liberty Mutual in Fairfield. Upon arrival, we were instructed to go to the dock area, which would ultimately mean backing into the dock. Sensing our nervousness, one of the dock workers offered to back the truck up to the dock for us. We eagerly accepted his offer, thus keeping Gus scrape-free and in tact. (You're welcome, Tina.)

To our pleasant surprise, we discovered that the dock also had a hydraulic lift, which would allow the dock workers to wheel the barrels directly into the truck. And that's exactly what they did!

Before we knew it, the workers had loaded all 6 of their barrels into the truck and we were on our way back to Shared Harvest to weigh the food. So how many pounds of food did the folks at Ohio Casualty/Liberty Mutual in Fairfield collect? Drum roll please...938 pounds of food!

Once we unloaded those barrels at the foodbank, we were back on the road to our second stop: a Staples manufacturing/ordering center (or something like that) in West Chester. We were picking up 8 barrels there, but only 3 of them were full of food. Actually, one barrel was full of a very essential personal hygiene item: toilet paper! Unfortunately, there was no loading dock and hydraulic lift at this site, so we had to manually lift all of the barrels (and their contents) into the truck.

So exactly how many pounds of food did we lift at Staples? About 246 pounds of food (and toilet paper)!

After a quick lunch back at Shared Harvest, we set out on our last stop of the day: Ohio Casualty/Liberty Mutual in Hamilton. We were picking up 5 barrels here, but when we arrived, the barrels were still scattered throughout the building. Two workers in the office took off with our dolly to retrieve the barrels, and as they brought the barrels out to us at the truck, we worked to load the food.
By this point, Alex and I had developed a great strategy. First, we unloaded about 2/3 of the barrel's contents into a couple of boxes that we lifted into the truck. Then we lifted the barrel with its remaining 1/3 of food into the truck, and transferred the contents of the boxes back into the barrel. We did that same procedure for the rest of the barrels--transferring enough food out of the barrels on the ground into boxes and barrels inside of the truck to then lift the barrels into the truck. It was a tiring process, but it was all worth it. The final count back at Shared Harvest: 422 pounds of food!

That brings us to a grand total of 1606 pounds of food today, November 3rd! We have two months to go in the holiday food drive, and I can't wait to see how much food comes through Shared Harvest's doors.

With these food drive pick ups also came a new game for Alex and me. At each stop, we guess how many pounds of food have been collected at the site. Then, once we're back at Shared Harvest, we have the food weighed. The person who guesses closest to the actual weight without going over is considered the "winner" and doesn't have to drive to the next stop. Today we even added another wager to the game--the winner of 2 out of 3 rounds also won 2 mini Reese's Cups.

So who won today? Well, let's just say estimation has never been my strong suit.