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Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Relay for life cancer fund raiser





Last week a co worker asked me if I could bring R2 to a fundraiser that was being held in St. Petersburg. It was the Cancer Society's relay for life where people walk all night long to raise money from pledges. They wanted to know if R2 could run a few laps with the teams.

I checked out the track ahead of time and it was a fairly smooth surface so last Friday evening we brought R2 to the event. It was a pretty nice turnout and a beautiful evening. Once they announced it was time for the event to begin they also announced R2D2 would lead the way. Well that certainly didn't work as R2 was immediately swarmed by dozens of kids. And of course .... wouldn't you know it. The first kid to him was a completely wild eyed crazy kid who acted like he wanted to kill R2. He was screaming at him and blocking his way and threatening to destroy the little droid piece by piece. Even after calming that kid down R2 was swarmed so he couldn't participate in the beginning. Once he started walking kids figured out that they could get him to stop by "jumping" out in front of him. That's why you can't take your eyes of the droid for even a second when there's people around. And sure enough once we started walking, a kid jumped in front of R2 and I had to slam on the brakes to keep from plowing her down. And unfortunately a little one who was following R2 too closely bumped his head and fell down until his dad scooped him up. I apologized to the Dad and explained I had to stop to keep from hitting the girl.

So finally I broke away from the mob of kids and was able to do a couple laps with R2. And afterwards we hung out at the entrance where R2 interacted with people coming into the track area. It was a lot of fun and for a good cause.

6 comments:

Calvin Thomas said...

I kinda know what you mean about kids jumping in the path.
At our last 501st event, Kids were doing the samething.
I had to start telling them to move and kept R2 close to me.

AWESOME event!!!!!
I can't wait till we all get together again.
SeeYa
Calvin

Jim said...

Yeah Calvin, we're looking forward to another get together with you guys soon. Possibly SWW at MGM studios in June.

Too bad we can't take our droids ! But talk about being mobbed.
Jim

Calvin Thomas said...

I'm not sure we will be able to make the trip.
I was in the hospital again and my heartrate is still messed up.
I sure miss everyone though :o(
Maybe, Hopefully we may make it.
Calvin

Jim said...

WHAT !!!!!!!! I can't believe it Calvin. You must be really getting tired of hospitals or else you have something going on with one of the nurses at the hospital. And I know it isn't the latter or that would be an event that would certainly PUT you in the hospital by your lovely wife : )

Hope that they can figure this out and you get better. Drop me an email if you find anything out.
Jim

fordfun said...

Jim, I'm really hoping youre gonna post again someday. Its been a long dry spell...

Gary

Jim said...

Hey Sorry about that Gary but I'm taking a little time off from working in the garage. Doing landscaping and working around the house until around August. Then I'll finish R2 as I still have a million things to do on the little droid.

BTW, How's your R2 coming along?