Philip's Memorial Bike Run 2009

Every year a memorial bike run held in Philip's name. The money raised is donated to the Young Marines..an organization that Philip was deeply involved with before he became a Marine. It's a wonderful event that allows us all to participate in keeping Philip's memory alive and to honor him for his sacrifice, while at the same time contribute to an organization he loved and that helped mold him into the dedicated and honorable Marine he became. Phil loved being a Marine. And we loved Phil for his dedication to his country. But we also loved Phil for his warm, caring, loving personality and the hell raising fun streak that was always just beneath the surface. (little scamp!)

This year I volunteered to run the registration and raffle table. It was a lot of work. There is much more to pulling off a large event than I had anticipated. And having come in on the tail end of it (I volunteered a couple of weeks before it took place) I was missing a lot of information. There are always lots of small things that go wrong at any event..hopefully they can be handled easily or you've prepared for some of them. Almost from the start we thought we had a disaster because a woman came to me to say the toilets weren't working in the ladies room. (You are kidding me, right?) An attempt was made to fix the problem but that didn't work. The ladies room was shut down. I had visions of what kind of a party this would become if you had women sneaking into the men's room all day. As it turned out there was another ladies room upstairs that was made available. Definitely dodged a bullet there!

The flow of people coming in to pay and "get banded" became very busy very quickly. Seemed like everyone got there at the same time. We were taking money; making change; slapping a band on people and pushing raffle tickets like our lives depended on it. I must say the crowd was very patient and polite, everyone waiting for their turn and we appreciated that. Until one guy showed up that really shook me up. He was dressed like a biker with a military haircut but he hadn't done the bike run with the rest of them. He seemed either somewhat drunk or slightly "out there". He got upset with me when I told him it would be $20.00 to get in..started giving me a hard time about it. He wanted to know why he was paying so much just to have a beer. I explained to him that it was a charity event, etc but it didn't impress him a bit. Then he asked to use the men's room before he left. I said fine. Several of us were waiting quite some time for him to come back out and then wondering what we should do if he refused to leave. Luckily he decided to leave when he came out. He gave me a salute and left. (Ahhhh I still got it)

We worked long and hard at that table most of the day (myself, Carol, Kim and Ann) spelling each other when we could but it was exhausting just the same. The intense heat outside didn't help either. Not every problem that came up could be handled within the building. Often we had to go in search of specific people for specific problems and that often entailed running outside to find them if a building search didn't turn them up.
Toward the end of the party I finally made time to have an over cooked hot dog and even later a glass of wine. Eventually some friends snagged me for a couple of crazy dances and I ran into other friends that I hadn't seen in a long time. And I even had a chance to speak with some others that I hadn't had contact with in a long time. That felt good. But I never really went out of "on duty" mode.

When it was time for the raffle I realized that some of the prizes were going to require multiple drawings from the same bucket and others didn't have the gift inside at all. We had decided early on that some things were too "portable" to leave out on the tables. And it wouldn't have been possible to watch the raffle table all day with such a huge crowd and everything else we were doing. So I had a number of the gifts in my possession. And I had no faith that Kathy or Carrie would understand the notes that were left on the buckets. We had used a sort of short hand that would have been a mystery to them. So I grabbed the stuff I had and helped them do all the drawings. Aside from a minor problem with the microphone it went pretty smoothly but it still took about an hour to get through it.

The bands that played were fantastic as usual....especially Quintera..but I'm not partial at all! ha ha The food (I'm told) was very good. The alcohol never seemed to stop flowing and everyone was having a great time. Overall it was a very successful event but I'm not sure at this time how much money was collected for the Young Marines. There were a couple of guest singers that took the stage. One was Jessica (Phil's sister) and the other was Jordan (Phil's best friend).

Now I know from experience that when Jess gets up on stage I'm going to end up wanting to cry. And this day was no different except for the fact that I was joined by so many other people in the crowd. I figured if I busy myself taking pictures while she sang, I'd be fine. That plan worked for all of 1 minute. Jess really knows how to belt out a tune and I don't for the life of me know how she can sing such a sad song without breaking down herself..but she does it every time. I don't know the name of the song she sang. I should know it by now but I don't. It's about a soldier going away to war and not coming back. The song itself is sad enough but when you've been a part of the heartache that inspires her to sing it, well it takes on a whole new dimension of pain to hear it. And the crowd went wild with applause when she finished. I'm so proud of her!

Jordan's turn on stage was just as gut wrenching to the crowd with a little extra twist thrown in because he wrote the song especially for Philip. It's a lovely, heart felt tribute to his best friend and the regrets he has that he's gone. It's entitled simply and beautifully..."Phil". It's a song that pays homage to the pain of losing your best friend and yet touches on the love that still remains. It reminds us that we all have pain from Philips death but we don't all have the same pain, each of us holding our own personal agony inside while keeping the love alive and carrying on with life.

Needless to say when I made my rush to the patio after listening to Jordan's song, I met quite a few people out there with wet faces and shiny eyes all trying to choke back emotions they don't want to show in public. I did manage to get some pictures of Jordan before I lost it. (Let's move on shall we?)

The pictures I took (and there were a ton of them) aren't all good ones. Some of them had to be deleted but others I kept because even if they were out of focus, or not someone's best look, (some large guy in a wife beater t-shirt kept showing up in a lot of the shots!) it still helped contribute to the "feel" of the day. So when you watch the video I made of the pictures please understand that I am by no means well versed with my camera yet but I can only get better from here...and not every red eye can be fixed. ha ha As a matter of fact I think some of the people there must have been vampires because no matter how hard I tried I just couldn't get the red out. I tried to put the video shots in some kind of order but eventually gave that up too out of complete frustration. I have a lot to learn about photo shopping pictures folks. But to be completely fair I even put pictures of myself in there that I wasn't crazy about either. No matter what I do I always seem to have that "deer in the headlights" look on my face. Do I look like that in person??

It is my belief that if Philip is watching us from somewhere beyond he would be proud of the work we did in his honor and the love we carry for him always. I hope you enjoy the video. Comments are very welcome.