Less than 24 Hours to the Mud Run

I always THINK about doing this posts, but never get around to it. Too much to do, t0o remote a location, what have you. But how sweet is it that this weekend’s event is in San Luis Obispo, our hometown, the place where our friends live, where we live, where we know the City staff by name and sight and they, us.

Yeah, pretty sweet. While the boys are out today marking the course and finishing up the obstacles for the Mud Run, I am sitting at home making loin cloths (yeah, you heard right, but I won’t tell you what for just yet) and candy bags for trick or treating and the kids’ run. I was at the fabric store today and everyone in there was planning on going and hadn’t signed up yet, even.

I enjoyed sitting in Smart and Final yesterday trying to calculate the maximum candy for the least money (per ounce, it was 17 cents), and got plenty of looks and questions:

I felt like since it was Halloween, we needed to make this into adult trick-or-treat. Buying the stuff got ME excited, that’s for sure. I miss trick-or-treating. When else do you as a kid feel cool about going door to door asking for something. It’s weird as heck, but also wonderful. Just like putting on the kinds of events we do.

I trucked it over to the site to drop off some supplies for Yishai, and there was our buddy Todd, talking to the park maintenance guy, Ken. Ken told me all about the park’s master plan and how well the Portuguese Water Dog nationals went off a few weeks ago. He admits to me that they are watching our event like a hawk – and they’re pretty nervous.

“Don’t be,” I say with full confidence: “We’ve worked with all kinds of organizations and we’re always welcome back. The place will look better than we found it.” It’s nice to say that with 100% certainty. That’s why I am involved. Not only do we do everything “all out” for the event’s most possible awesomeness, but we kill ourselves to make sure all parties involved are happy. It’s not right to use a place, trash it, and then go, “Too bad for you! See you next year!” Nah. That’s not how we roll.

When I left, Todd was rocking that little earth-mover all over the place and simply squealing over it. He took all day to build the pit. Our buddy Clint is coming by with a water truck to fill it. I’ll be over to do day of reg and packet pick up and I know the place is going to look WAY more exciting than this. That’s the part I love about my job – I do all the backend stuff, supply grabbing, working with volunteers, etc. Rarely do I help with the actual setup, so when I get to a venue we’ve been scouting for months, it’s had a magical transformation.

Anyway, cheers. This looks to be our most successful event (judging by registrations) yet. We’re out of t-shirts and day-of hasn’t started. We’ll have to do another print and then mail them out, which is a bummer, but the amount of people into this is certainly NOT.