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Post by cougarman on Aug 27, 2006 17:42:00 GMT
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Post by cougarman on Aug 28, 2006 9:06:32 GMT
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Post by Steve Gardener on Aug 28, 2006 10:42:58 GMT
From Faisal @ Gymnation:
Steve,
Just a quick BIG thank you for all or your efforts in making the
Gym-Nation and Friendship Cafe such a memorable event. The centre piece had to be both the Fire Engine attempt and the actual pull. All the guys including Scooter, Malcom, Alfie and other strong men who's names I don't know, but who took the time out to make it a really fun community event.
We have counted about £550 collected on the day itself towards the incubator charity - bearing in mind this was raised only from donation buckets, BBQ and 20p and 50p entrance fees only. It does appear the children's sponsorship wasn't followed up properly due to time
commitments so we might not expect much more from that department!
Considering there were up to 500 people there from a real mix of
nationalities and religions of all ages enjoying themselves and
volunteering - that would be in my books the real achievement.
We will be writing to as many people who we can to thank them in a formal sense a bit later on as well, but I would appreciate it if you
could pass this on to who ever you think fit on behalf of myself and
Gymnation.
It would be worth comparing the best pictures of the day and printing them at a4 size and placing them around the Gym and Friendship Café. We will do a formal cheque handing over with the Charity and would like for yourself and a couple of others to be involved in that. Once again thank you very much.
Kind regards
Faisal
Secretary - Gymnation
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Post by Steve Gardener on Aug 28, 2006 17:19:23 GMT
A longer write up.
So many dropped out or changed their minds or found some other excuse to not attend that it was not funny. I am so tempted to put up names but cannot be arsed. We ended up with Mike 'Cougarman' Betty, Lawrence 'TT' Shelabi and his brother Harry 'H' Shelabi, Tony 'Scooter' Smith from Gymnation, Malcolm from Gymnation as well as big Alf from Gymnation and finally myself.
We set off from the house with wifes, girlfriends, mothers and daughters in tow at about 1240-ish and arrived at about 1pm as promised. We paid and signed in and met and greeted those there. I had a quick chat with the fire lady - whose name I never asked for (d'uh) about what we hoped to do, how and so on.
We found the spot for the block to be affixed and took turns hammering it into quite hard ground. While this seemed like work we thought it meant a good pull - regardless of the grass - as the tender would ride high. However....
Come the time, having played around and repositioned the vehicles a few inches either way and so on, we set the IM harness and the first man in had a go - nothing, so the second stepped up - nowt, followed by the third and so on. Now we had what we assume were photographer / reporters from the newspaper who got what will hopefully be great shots of us straining BUT NOT MOVING the tender.
So we stood around scracthing our heads and I made comments like 'I said it would be hard on grass' and spoke to the organizers who said 'it's for fun' so I said 'how about a few of us then?'. So three of us (Mike, TT and myself) took up the slack and did a very slow and painful looking (as per the video) start. You'll see Scooter adds his weight and even the addition of what appears to be 10 kids at the back helping hardly speeds things up.
Cont:
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Post by Steve Gardener on Aug 28, 2006 17:30:31 GMT
Cont: To say that it was hard would be an understatement and I know that myself and others complained of cramping calves and more. I knew that it had been, relatively speaking, easy on the concrete and tarmac of the HQ and so we managed to get the engine around the other side and persuaded about 40-50 of the 200 or so strong crowd to join us. Poor Alf, who I had joshed as being too doubtful, had been waiting some time for us to turn up but turn up we did. Having had loads of practise setting up we very quickly found a spot, I remember Alf speaking to the driver and getting her to line it up, and within a few minutes we were set. This time, as per the videos and many photos, we were set and Mike went away first pulling strongly and setting a good pace. He was followed in quick succession by all of the earlier lads plus one or two others (Malcolm et al) and we even had a new 'member' to our team in the form of a young lad called Gavin. You'll see from my earlier quick jottings that I thought it was our best pull. I'm pretty sure he felt he'd done most of the work (my cramping hands last night had other ideas) and so it was both a good geasture and a crowd pleaser. The lads and lasses organizing the event had laid on some food for us and I think I knocked out several of the jubbly style juice drinks in very quick succession. Shortly after that we started taking items down (the block with it's 3-foot pins firmly affixed to the ground proved harder to get up than it was to put down) but we did and off home for rest. I knocked out a 1ltr tub of ice cream and a 200g bar of choc before feeling normal and added a expensive coffee and a 6-inch sub during a trip into town with my daughter. They all helped  |
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Post by Steve Gardener on Aug 29, 2006 9:59:34 GMT
Another photo: Today is Malcolm from Gymnation. Malcolm is one of the guys who works part time on reception and also, under another guise, at GL1 the local sports centre. Mal has recently done a little grip work with me (wrist roller mostly) and shows promise as per my log.  |
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Post by Steve Gardener on Aug 29, 2006 16:54:45 GMT
Next up is Alf. Alf isn't so much as a pessimist as doubtful. I have reminded him on occasion for someone that's not to sure of his abilities squatting 250 and benching 195 - kilos mind - isn't to be sniffed at.  |
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Post by justinhurley on Sept 1, 2006 20:14:15 GMT
Looked like a great day.
Sorry I couldn't make it, had major domestic problems, it was one of the sh*ttest weeks I have had for a long time.
I was coming up with Dean Bolt, so I was gutted I let him down also.
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Post by cougarman on Sept 1, 2006 20:59:00 GMT
That's the way it goes somtimes mybe next year .
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Post by Steve Gardener on Sept 2, 2006 6:13:45 GMT
Looked like a great day. Sorry I couldn't make it, had major domestic problems, it was one of the sh*ttest weeks I have had for a long time. I was coming up with Dean Bolt, so I was gutted I let him down also. Thanks for letting us know. I'm hoping to be able to start training with Dean on the grip later in the year. What with him and apparantly Nick McKinless and a couple of local lads I doubt that there will be anyone to touch a Gloucester Grip team. |
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Post by Steve Gardener on Oct 26, 2006 12:49:22 GMT
The cheque handover today:  |
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Post by bigloz on Oct 26, 2006 19:33:23 GMT
nice one steve. looking cool there bud  |
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