The Community

We’ve had the opportunity to become involved in a couple of community events in Montgomery. The first was the Dragon Boat Race & Festival down on the river. People in the community could put a team together of their co-workers, friends, or family to compete against others. The organizers brought in professional coaches for a week who taught them the basics of rowing, then on the day of the races rode with them to steer the boats.

We spent two days with them. The first was a few hours on an afternoon practicing what we would be doing as volunteers which was basically being on the dock to help load and unload the boats and then empty them of water before the next team loaded. The practice day was a breeze as there weren’t that many teams that day so it was lovely to just be on the dock and meet some new people.

The day of the race we had a shift in the middle of the day and it was plenty warm. Things were much more hectic as we had teams coming and going quickly to keep the races going. We had drinking water on the dock but Tom had to sneak away during a break to find us some food at one point. He came back with a deep-fried catfish sandwich adorned with ketchup on white bread. Southern cuisine!

It was good fun though and we met lots of great people. The coaches were terrific & funny but competitive by nature and there were other groups volunteering as well, including students from fraternities and some kids from an organization named Bridge Builders.

We worked with some more of that group again another day in helping to prep for a race for Big Brothers Big Sisters. That day we were in a vacant retail building just loading the runner's goody bags with coupons, t-shirts and runner numbers. I asked one of the members if I could snap a photo of her t-shirt as it had their mission statement on back which I loved. It was great to work side by side by with this awesome group and some of the other students from the Air Command and Staff College (ACSC).