Denver: We put new meaning to the word: "Flexible"

Guess what everyone?! We’re finally out of the mud and rolling to Kansas City, Missouri! For all of you Tour 40 Junkies who couldn’t join us in Denver, how about I tell you a little about it. On July 16th the tour 40 Team arrived at Barr Lake State Park where we had planting trees and seeding a grass field on the brain. Too bad those thoughts were quickly erased due to the fact our RV got stuck in the mud. In order to make room for all the volunteer’s cars the team needed to park our RV in a soggy, wet field. The sheer weight of our RV caused it to sink into the muck where it sat for the whole project (and a couple of days).

It’s all good though, for the Tour 40 Team put a new meaning to the word flexible. An RV in the mud could not stop us from completing this project with the Southwest Airlines Employees and Barr Lake State Park staff and volunteers. While the boys went to work with shovels and wooden blocks to get the RV out of the field, Becca, Diana, and Kimbo held registration down and organized our volunteers textbook style. It was a race against time to get the RV out on schedule for the service project, but only four men can’t pull an RV out. Thus it was time to call in the reserves, the reserves being Southwest Airline’s Employees! We rallied up 15 Southwest Airlines employees for an attempt to push the RV out of the mud, but that failed as well. No matter what we did that RV just would not budge.

Our fun and energetic volunteers took our minds off our RV woes. We once again had planting trees and seeding a grass field back on the brain along with some other tasks. We teamed up with Barr Lake State Park’s Lake Appreciation Day volunteers for a service day of epic proportions. With the hard work and dedication of the volunteers of Southwest Airlines and the Barr Lake State Park Staff we ended up raking and seeding 1/3 of an acre of a field, installed 12 concrete blocks for parking, planted 15 trees, and mulched around 35 trees. Talk about a productive day, right?!

In the afternoon, our superb volunteers were rewarded with enjoy canoeing, archery, face painting, a BBQ lunch, and even a bounce house for the kids! Even though our RV did not get recovered until July 18th, the Tour 40 Team had a blast and a half with everyone who came out and volunteered. Thanks a lot everyone. You made a sticky situation spectacular!

P.S. We got to shoot some arrows at the archery range…be jealous!

Marchetti
and the Tour 40 Team