Im here to talk about the benefits of being a century volunteer. Sure there’s the reward of helping your fellow cyclist, the camaraderie with the great group of volunteers, the pride in a job well done, but more to the point, there’s the swag.
I’m sure you’ve wondered what happens to all those leftover bagels at the end of the century. Well, wonder no more. Toward the end of the day, century volunteers are hovering around them like seagulls at the dump. Actually, it’s more like trying to save all this fine food from the dumpster, and a bit of arm twisting is involved. Susan and I are not of similar minds on this. Susan’s arch enemy is clutter, and she spends a good part of her time avoiding bringing yet more junk into the house, while I never overlook the opportunity for free stuff. So, I usually try to carry away my weight in leftover bagels, then she steps in and limits us to a modest bag. This is however enough to satisfy our bagel needs for quite some time. I was appalled the other day when Susan came back from the grocery store with bagels. This is probably the first time in the last ten years when we had to actually BUY bagels. Bagels are a staple of every century. I personally don’t find them all that appealing in the middle of a long, hot ride to try to wolf down something with the consistency of a brick, and that requires a substantial caloric input of chewing to get it down (I usually need all my calories for more important things, like propelling the bike forward). But days and weeks later, a toasted bagel slathered with butter accompanied by a massive quantity of coffee is another story entirely. Susan limits me to the number that can be stored in our freezer, but this is usually ends up with enough bagels to carry me from century to century.
There are other food treasures that I’ve carted off as well. One year there was a large potato salad surplus, which I scarfed up most of. Susan was due to be out of town for some time shortly thereafter, so this was my main source of food while she was gone. Susan was sure it would go bad in a matter of days, but I subsisted on it for several weeks without any trips to the ER.
The perk from the latest century was leftover salami and provolone cheese. These were also items that Susan would have thrown out within a couple of days, but weeks later I was still feasting on these vittles. Cold salami and provolone is not all that inviting, but I found they were much better microwaved. Much of the salami grease melted out so after you extracted the solids from the resulting puddle of grease, it was practically dietetic.
Besides food, there are the giveaway items at the century. The staple is water bottles, and leftovers are used at the next event, but we’ve had some items in the past that didn’t exactly have lasting appeal.
One was the CRW sweatbands. These were white terrycloth bands with the CRW logo imprinted in black. Until the first wearing, when the sweat pretty much dissolved the lettering. These were never used again and the leftovers (of which there were a lot) distributed to the volunteers. I have a lifetime supply, or maybe not quite, since they have a tendency to get permanently twisted or stretched out, rendering them unusable.
Then there was the year of the bandannas. Red bandannas with CRW written on them, much like the Harley Davidson ones though not as well designed. Their fatal flaw was that as soon as you washed them they would bleed all over the rest of your clothes. I have many items with colorful reds patches as a result of having been washing machine companions to the bandannas.
Then the are the t-shirts. A good part of my wardrobe consists of volunteer t-shirts I’ve acquired over the years. That coupled with the vast quantity of free ones I’ve acquired in other ways means t-shirts are another item that will never require a cash outlay.
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