The call from my friend, JaNae, came at an unusual hour: 10:30 PM. Wondering if it was some dire situation she was in and needed my help I asked her what I could do for her. With the 'puppy dog' voice (the one I KNOW I use when I need a last minute babysitter) she asked what I was doing the next morning. With no plans as of yet, I offered my services for whatever she needed. She proceeded to tell me about how her husband, Steven, called in to a radio show and won the chance to win some concert tickets. The only problem was they needed two other people. They had called around to family and friends, but everyone was working and couldn't go on a Friday morning at 8:30. I asked JaNae what the competition entailed. I was excited to hear it was something as childish and playful as it was. We would be given an extra large roll of bubble wrap to wrap one teammate. The other three would have to roll that person through an out door course outside the radio studio. The fastest time wins the tickets. "We're in!"
Friday morning, Jason and the boys came in bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at 6:30am. (They had done an early Father/son campout in the back yard.) We all got ready and down to the radio station by 8:15am. We decided to have JaNae be the one wrapped. We signed away our lives (our waivers) and waited to hear the order we would be going in. Going first would be a complete disadvantage, so we were ok with the decision to go third. The marked course was about 100 meters long on some slight hills and trees surrounding. As we watched the two teams before us, we calculated different things that would be to our benefit: put her head this way instead of that, use more bubble wrap for a tighter fit, wrap tighter so its easier to roll her, ways to roll, who rolls from where.
The first team struggled through the finish line in about 4 minutes. The second team was 3 minutes and 15 seconds. Being the guys of competitive sorts, Jason and Steven wanted to blow everyone out of the water with a time of 2 minutes. (This is us being totally pumped!). The timer starts when the air horn (which was just about out of air and sounded like a sad excuse for a fog horn) blows. Jason and Steven wrapped as fast as they could while I got JaNae's helmet on. We tipped her over and lay her down. (Lucky girl! Some of the other bubble-wrappees got slammed to the ground). Around the first curve was fairly easy and then rolling her along the hill while trying to keep her within the borders got a lot harder. My legs had already been sore from working out this week, so my legs were screaming at me. Jason and Steven were rolling JaNae so fast that I could hardly touch her, let alone roll her. I tried to pick up the slack when Jason got more tired. About 3/4 of the way through the race I hear JaNae moaning, " I need to vomit..." Yeah RIGHT! Like we're about to stop so she can spill her breakfast! All I could say was, " Hang in there, we're almost there!" Continuing down the home stretch I barely touched the roll. I figured I would just slow things down if I got in the way. We finally crossed the finish line at 3 minutes 5 seconds. The next team slid in there with a finish time of 3 minutes 6 seconds! One second slower than us! One more team to go. They started out really well and at the half way mark had the fastest time......until they fubbed something up. They finished in over 4 minutes.
We won the tickets by ONE second! So come August 11th, Jason and I are going to the Michael Buble' concert!
Looking in hind sight, Steven and JaNae are really glad they asked us to help them out. With both of us being so short, it was easier to roll JaNae so close to the ground. Also, Steven has been deployed for 2 of their anniversaries since they've been married-one of them was last year. The concert happens to fall the day before their anniversary. So Happy Anniversary Steven and JaNae!
