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.
