Toys For Tots and Fun For Us
- Jake E
- Dec 6, 2015
- 2 min read
It was chilly that morning so we were all bundled up, most of us looking pretty ready for our bike ride. Sayrd and Jillian, true to fashion, wore their finest ugly Christmas sweaters. Meanwhile I’m thinking, “dang, I didn’t mean for this to be a formal event,” but whatever, let’s get this party started! And no Christmas ride would be complete without some bicycle decorations. Susan snagged the Official Unofficial 2015 Champion of Bike Decorations award for her tinseled Trek topped with reindeer ears!
At the first stop of the ride, two different employees at Toys and Co. tried showing me how to spin a disc on top of a plastic stick but after nearly hitting several people, I gave it up for good. It was for the best. Looking back, I really couldn’t tell you if it was us or the kids having more fun at the store and after I told the manager we rode our bikes there to buy toys for Toys for Tots, he offered us a 20% discount on whatever we bought! We must have looked like ballers to them at checkout thanks to an additional $75 in donations from people who couldn’t make the ride. Our group ended up with 14 toys totaling more than $200.
After the obligatory shot of all the toys we scored, we packed our bags to the brim with toys and headed out. It wasn’t long after we started riding that we spotted a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to get a picture of us and our bikes with Santa and The Deac from Wake Forest University; we were not going to miss that chance! Santa was helping spread holiday cheer at a Salvation Army Penny Drive, so we made a small donation before rolling out.
We broke up our return trip to Marketplace Mall with a stop at New Winston Museum for their “Fun On Two Wheels” event. We would’ve stayed longer but everyone was getting hungry and it was about to get messy. When someone threatened to eat someone else’s arm I knew I had to get us out of there! We decided to take our gifts back to our collection box and ship the party to Bib’s for lunch. Overall, it was another great adventure in Camel City with friends. I’m looking forward to the next one!
Super big thanks to everyone that participated! The people who came out on a chilly morning in December to ride bicycles. Thanks to Toys and Co. for entertaining us and hooking us up with a sweet discount. Thanks to Salvation Army for randomly having a fundraiser on our route with Santa and The Deac. I know it wasn’t actually random, it probably took a lot of planning and time from volunteers, but it was random for us because we didn’t plan on it being there, that’s all I’m saying. Thanks to New Winston Museum just for being awesome. It’s a pretty cool museum, you should go. And of course, thanks to Toys for Tots for getting toys to the kids!
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