A Saturday Adventure

White Pages Cause Intense Injury To Young People...

Already, i bet you're thinking that i'm insane. Well, screw you. Let me tell my story, then you can judge...

Saturday morning, i'm up at 8am, at the burnside pool car-park by 9.30 and in a car with Lauren and Maxine by 9.45. Our task: to deliver the white pages to out allocated area. Why were we doing this? To raise money for our mission trip to India in January. We were given one of the 'small' areas - the entire of Waterfall Gully Road and some bits alongside it. Well, we thought we'd caught a break and were going to have it easy - just the one road! How wrong we were. Waterfall Gully Road (WGR) may be just the one road, it may not even have all that many houses on it. But i tell you, it's a killer. Every house had an enormous driveway, generally up a massively steep hill or down a massively steep drop. We had to deliver a phone book (sometimes two) to every single house on the street, following the rules;

RULES *extract*

-You must deliver a copy of the White Pages to every house on your street/s that has a mailbox on your road.

-Should the house have locked gates or you need to be buzzed in, you must place the copy of the White Pages in a plastic bag and put it over the gate/on the mail box.

-You must always deliver the book to the hinge side of the door.

-Should the door not be undercover and in situations where it looks like rain, you must put the book in a plastic bag.

-You must not manhandle the books.

Blah, Blah, Blah... You get the picture, but they went on for quite awhile. So, seeing as it was raining, we had to keep a hefty supply of plastic bags handy. Then we'd drive a little way, look for the mailboxes for each house and deliver a book. This usually involved a looooong treck up a huge driveway and to a front door (often a trip back down again when you realised the front door wasn't undercover and you'd need to put the book in a plastic bag, which you had of course left in the car, followed by a treck back up again). Alternatively, in the case of huge canines or houses with gates like Alcatraz prison, we would wrap a book up neatly, before dropping it over the fence - hoping like hell that it wouldn't land on the dog that was fiercely yelping at you.

Sound simple? Well, it wasn't. You see, there weren't many places to park on WGR. So, we'd drive to one parking bay and do as many houses as we could, before driving to the next, etc, etc. It was veeeery stop-and-go and involved a great deal of getting in and out of the car and huge armloads of books to cart back and forth. Then you had the issues of having to match houses and letter boxes so you didn't give too many to any one house - no easy task, i assure you. You had the houses which were listed as 'special', needing random amounts of the books. Then, when you run out of plastic bags - as we, naturally, did - you have to try and wrap them in the packaging each pack of six books came in, which was no easy task. Add to that the fact that it was incredibly muddy, slippery and raining and you've got a tricky task (although, i did roll up my pants just a little to keep them from getting too muddy, creating a veeery hot look).

However, it wasn't all bad; we had nice scenery, got to see some very funky houses (i want to live there now - i love all the little bridges over creeks and stuff!), were able to get some fresh air after being cooped up studying all week - and Maxine kept us well supplied with Werther's Originals :) Yum! We got to talk to some pretty interesting people too; there was a man arguing with his water bottles, a woman who road past five times, up and down the hill, lots of joggers, friendly old people who wanted to know what on earth we were doing as we wandered around their property, looking for a front door... It was a definate experience, with the narrow roads often resulting in our near-deaths :P

We FINALLY finished our road and were back at the car park by 12.30 - we were supposed to meet at 1pm. So what happens? Lauren and i get bundled off into the car of two old men (nice, but still - complete strangers!) and are off to help them finish their area. They, very kindly, stay in the car and hand us books as we run alongside, dropping the books into the front doors. Tough work, let me tell you! We delivered over 200 books, and that was just us! There were about 10 teams, most of whom delivered many more. Our reward? A sausage sizzle! Yay! And then the terrible (:P) news... we hadn't finished...

This time, Brad, Josh, Mark, Lauren, Mr. Kroehn and I piled into their huge, white delivery van. We'd been given a big area this time, including main roads (Big? THIS was big? What was last one?! because that DEFINATELY wasn't small!?). Luckily, we had a good system; One of us would rip open packs of books and pass them to the next person who would hand them out through the open van door to the other few people who were running alongside the moving van and delivering the books (does that make sense?). Then we'd jump back into the van and hang out of the door until we got to the next area and swap jobs. We were pissing ourselves half the time because we knew it looked totally ridiculous; an enormous, white van driving along at 10kmph with various kids running up to it, getting handed books and running off again, or jumping in and collapsing onto a pile of plastic, or sticking their feet out of the door as they drive along a main road, seeing if they could touch the parked cars... no, we never did anything illegal, i swear! :P

Lol, this time, our adventures (or moments of interest/amusement) included josh getting 'bitten' by a dog, bradley and i becoming cripples because we'd forgotten to warm up and now had stuffed our hamstrings, josh and i getting dumped to deliver books to a cul-de-sac and then walking to find the van again, spotting it ahead of us and just walking a few hundred metres behind it as it drove along, not bothering to go any faster and actually catch it up (lol, i definately enjoyed this particular moment of interest, just wandering along in a rare moment of sun, with no phone books weighing me down and some decent company... :P), brad and i getting caught in the rain and running -limping- along with arms full of books, delivering them and being unable to find the van for cover, before giving up and just wandering along in the rain having a chat and our attempt at drinking orange juice from a bottle in the back of a van with no seats but rather a few hundred white pages, lots of mud, plastic packaging, five other people and an open door... all in all it was a fun afternoon. Bloody exhausting, as we did the entire area (half of Glynburn Rd, with all of the side streets in case you wanted to know) at a run, uphill and in the rain... but fun all the same. A moment of evil? Being stuck with josh and mark on a street as mark was spitting over the edge of a drop while josh was standing in it further along, taking a... uh... toilet break... there is such a thing as too much information!!!

Naturally, there was plenty of oppourtinuty for the customary 'let's-all-laugh-at-Annabel' moments; such as whenever i nearly stacked it trying to enter/leave the moving van (this happened on a number of occassions), when i stepped in what was practically a lake whilst getting into the van, soaking both feet in the process and, on return to the car park, when asked to finally shut the door to the van as we were on main roads, my tugging on it, accompanied by a yelp of 'i'm not going to get it shut unless i fall out!', which was met by Mr. Krohen telling me to 'stop trying right now!', sounding rather worried and my nearly falling out anyway, as we turned a corner and i was faced with all the oncoming traffic, all the while with josh alternately making evil comments and pissing himself laughing... you've got to love being me...

Well, that was out incredibly interesting day of deliveries! Fun and exhausting - and painful! - but all rasing money for a good cause - so we have to pay less for our trip (which i'll tell you more about later)! Then we find out that we're not quite finished - we need to do it next weekend too!!! Ohhh... But, after all of that, the day wasn't over yet...

{to be continued...}