Spindletop Spin 2008

Saturday was the 3rd Annual Spindletop Spin which raises money for the Jefferson County Bar Association Pro Bono Program. Each year, our law firm mans a rest stop and directs traffic at several intersections.

The first year, I was an intersection person. However, last year I was given the task of organizing the rest stop. We shall all assume that my management of the previously mentioned intersection (click the links above) had nothing at all to do with my being moved to the position of Rest Stop Czar. This year we had a winter wonderland theme with a snow cone machine and everything. Several people have told me we were a hit which makes me very happy.

With the exception of trying to remove the snowman decoration from one of the portable potty doors WHILE SOMEONE WAS STILL IN THERE, I think I did a pretty good job as Czar-ina. As I was noisily tearing tape and pulling on the potty's door, I felt something pull from the other side. The guy told me, as he carefully opened the door to leave the porta-outhouse, "I thought Santa Clause was coming to town."

Here's a slideshow...

Notes to Friends:

• My friend Dick played at Antone's for the free spaghetti dinner and we got there so late, we only got to hear a couple of songs. Here's a link to Dick's band's MySpace page.
• Jen and Becca! Sorry I missed you guys Saturday night. I kept falling asleep on the couch. Next time, for sure.

Second Annual Spindletop Spin 2007

Saturday was the Second Annual Spindletop Spin benefiting the Jefferson County Bar Association Pro Bono Program. Above is pictured our firm rest stop committee. For some reason, Shannon isn't in the picture. In the red t-shirts are Donna's husband Dennis and her granddaughter Tia. We couldn't have done it without them.

After the ride, everyone was treated to a spaghetti dinner at Antone's with music provided by the acoustic duo of Rodgers & LeMasters, one of whom is an attorney at our office. Our firm also had a lot of riders and workers who aren't pictured above.

Here's a link to more pictures.

Spindletop Spin 2006

I don't like to get up early, especially on Saturday, I don't do nice things for the community and I'm not a big fan of nature. Yet, somehow, I found myself at the corner of Africa hot (yes, it is Africa hot even at 9:00 a.m. in Southeast Texas), mosquito infested, Martin Luther King Parkway and East Virginia at 7:30 a.m. as a volunteer traffic director for the first annual Spindletop Spin.

I was on the return path of the bikers and my job was to stop cross traffic at my intersection so the cyclists could make it safely home to live another day. I decided I would stand in the middle of the overpass above the parkway and watch for the riders as they made their exit onto the access road which runs beside the parkway. When bikers finally came into view, I quickly learned I had another job. A young boy, about thirteen or fourteen years old, missed the exit for the access road and was riding his bike down the busy parkway.

I had two fears. The first, and most important, was that the boy would be squashed. The second was that all of the cyclists behind him would follow him onto the parkway and I would be responsible for all of them getting squashed. Oh, the humanity. So, I started yelling at him from the overpass. Luckily, he heard me. He turned around, now going the wrong way up the parkway, and safely made it to the access road.

My friend Darlene, whose spot was on the outgoing leg of the bicycle route, joined me after the last cyclists passed her post. As we stood in the middle of the overpass I was gesturing like a good Cajun as I told her about the boy missing the exit and suddenly realized that the drivers below could see me wildly waving my orange flag above them. I can't imagine what kind of dangers they thought the girl in the Ramones cowboy hat and orange safety vest was trying to warn them about.

At one point a policeman came by and asked if we needed anything and Darlene said she needed to go to the bathroom. He told her to get in and off they went. Darlene looked oddly natural in the backseat of that patrol car and I told her so. After she went 10-20, she came back and helped me direct traffic. She was much better at it than me using crisp flag signals rather than my hesitant little hand motions and half-hearted flag wiggling. At one point, she even waved a patrol car, which had it's lights flashing (!), to stop. The girl has balls.