My View from the Porch

When you load and unload your vehicle 14 times in 3-plus days, you are a little too busy

By CARLA OFFENBURGER
June 8, 2009
COOPER, IOWA

My two-hour nap on Saturday should have told me all I needed to know – I’m too busy.

But it was Drake University pharmacy student Ryan Ruggles, who is staying with us Offenburgers as he does a “rotation” or internship at the pharmacy at Greene County Medical Center here in Jefferson, who made it perfectly clear to me on Sunday afternoon. I was telling both Ryan and my husband Chuck Offenburger that I had loaded and unloaded my Ford Escape at least 10 times since Friday morning. Ryan, quickly responded, “That shows how busy you are.” It tells me why I’m so tired!

It was a whirlwind of a week and weekend that’s for sure. And yet, it’s just more of the same for us Offenburgers – wrapped up in too many projects and commitments.

On Friday, June 5, I oversaw the Greene County Medical Center Foundation’s golf tournament as part of my duties as the administrative assistant at the hospital. It’s a fun day – especially when the weather is as good as it was on Friday.

But it’s a lot of hauling. Friday morning. I loaded my vehicle, along with another vehicle with all the golf tournament supplies – the player gifts, the prizes, the sponsor signs and everything else you can imagine one might need in the course of the day - and headed to the golf course.

We hold the tournament – a fun “best ball” nine-hole match – at the beautiful Raccoon Valley Golf Course, owned by Jay and Nikki Goughner in Jefferson. The afternoon includes two tee times with a steak dinner in the early evening. I ask the Greene County Cattlemen to grill the steaks we receive from the hospital’s food vendor, Martin Brothers. The steaks are fabulous and the Cattlemen do them up just right for the crowd of nearly 80 or so that enjoy them.

The rest of the dinner is supplied by the hospital, which means late in the afternoon I head back to the hospital and load up roasters, coolers and beverage jugs and head back to the golf course to set up dinner.

Once the golfing actually starts, it’s pretty relaxing for me, a non-golfer. Usually I tour the course in a golf cart and take photos of all the different teams.

After the last golfer leaves the clubhouse, we load several vehicles up (it took three this year) and return a mountain of things to the hospital. Luckily, I have a lot of good volunteer help – including Ryan Ruggles this year, along with Chuck.

When we arrived home Friday night, we unloaded what I didn’t get back to the hospital on Friday. And started loading the car again for the bike ride Chuck and I oversee each year in Jefferson, “Trails & Trills,” which was scheduled for Saturday morning at 10 a.m.

Trails & Trills is in its fifth year and it’s a great opener to the biking season around Jefferson. It’s a simple ride from Jefferson to our little community of Cooper, just eight miles south. And it’s all on the Raccoon River Valley Trail. That’s the “trails” part of the ride. The “trills” part is the fun part, though. That’s for all the musicians we place along the trail playing and singing for the riders as they pass by.

When they all arrive in Cooper, the Committee for a Super Cooper serves lunch to the riders – and then they all return to Jefferson. It’s a fun-filled 16-mile family-friendly ride. And we usually draw around 100 or so riders.

The musical line-up gets better and better every year. As they’ve done for the last four years, the 20-piece Town & Country Band always plays in Cooper as the riders eat their lunch. Other musicians being featured this year included a brass quintet with some members coming from the High Society Big Band, which has performed at the Cooper Proms. And we had a new duet, “Ordinary Cowboys” featuring Curt Nelson from Jamaica and Dave Harding from West Des Moines on vocals, guitar, harmonica and drums.

Others in the musical line-up include several top instrumentalists at Jefferson-Scranton High School. These young musicians have so much fun that some are in their third year of performing for Trails & Trills. Our Jefferson newspaper editor & publisher Rick Morain plays the piano for us at some fun location – this year he was scheduled at the Depot, but in years past he’s been right smack in the middle of the North Raccoon River trestle bridge. And Larry Dowd of Jefferson jumps in along the trail, with guitars and vocals.

Anyway, Friday night we finished up the Trails & Trills rider packets and loaded them, along with extra boxes of T-shirts for those who always choose to register the morning of the ride. Those items, and some of the food items we Offenburgers were responsible for in helping with the luncy by the Committee for a Super Cooper, were also loaded into my car. We loaded Chuck’s car up with signs identifying all the musicians.

Saturday morning we woke to terrible thunderstorms and bad weather. So bad that we ultimately had to postpone the Trails & Trills ride this year. Bad weather and musicians just don’t mix. It’s hard to move a perfectly good piano out to the trail to get rained on. And those musicians with strings, frown on what can happen to them in the rain. It was a pretty easy decision early in the morning.

After dozens of phone calls, and e-mails sent to as many of the musicians and riders we had contact information for, Chuck and I went into Jefferson to be at the Jefferson Depot to greet any riders who didn’t get the message. There were a good dozen or so, which made it so I unloaded the rider packets and distributed those that I could. Then I loaded them back into the car.

When we got home, we unloaded the car.

Sunday morning I loaded the car with all of our recycling – newspapers, plastics, soda cans, paper products. And Ryan and I unloaded those after church.

And when we got home Sunday afternoon – about the time I was commenting on how many times my car had been loaded and unloaded in the past three days – we loaded it back up with all the golf tournament items that I need to get back to the hospital on Monday.

By my count, that’s seven loads and six unloads. When I get to work and remove the items currently in it, that will make an even seven loads and seven unloads.

The two-hour nap on Saturday and the one-hour nap on Sunday were well-earned. And I don’t plan on loading my car with another thing all week.

Ryan is right, busy indeed. And tired.


You can write the columnist at carla@Offenburger.com.