A Week in the Life of a Demo Driver
Well, not just any week. A crazy week. A week so full of activities (I love activities!!) that it was impossible to fit all the details into a blog post that would hold someone’s attention. So here is an incredibly condensed, photo-centered version of my last seven days. (If you’re interested enough to want the details, you can check out my personal blog about it here.)
On Thursday I had to do some last minute preparation for the Ragnar Relay. At 6am on Friday my team, TBD (Tired, Broken, and Damp), set off from New Haven, CT. This picture is of the second half of the team. (From left: Kristen, Brian, Mark, Joanna, Matt, and me.) We crossed the finish line in Boston just after 1pm Saturday afternoon, after 31 hours and 2 minutes of running through CT and MA.
After the race, I had to get down to NJ to meet up with Tim for our Bridgewater demo. My dad and his girlfriend gave me a ride, and before I finally passed out in the back of the car, I got to see this! IT WAS SO BEAUTIFUL.
On Sunday I finally got to experience my first demo! I had to cover for Tim at his store while he and Ben had fun at the first two demos, and I missed the one on Saturday while I was racing. The Bridgewater demo was a blast, though; the Bridgewater and Princeton EMS employees were great to work with. It was awesome to see people get out in boats or on SUP boards, and it was really cool to see the staff turn this little pond into an interactive sales floor.
One of the Bridgewater guys, Joe, was super nice and invited Tim and I to stay at his place Sunday night. I was pretty excited for this opportunity, not only because sleeping on a couch sounded much more appealing than the muddy back of the truck (still a disaster from the Gunks trip), but also because I had mangled my foot during Ragnar -- and then proceeded to stick it in questionably safe NJ water -- and couldn't wait to try to fix it. Joe fed me a giant burrito, shared his delicious gin with me, and fixed me a delightful foot soak with tea tree oil and some other oil that made my foot feel a million times better. (I should note that it looks much worse in this picture than it really was...I promise you, it did not really look like a dead foot.)
Fun fact: Ashley REALLY wants a dog and Tim won't let her have one. So she likes to be friends with people who have dogs. Joe and his wife have two dogs, and they were very friendly and snuggly. Their snuggles made it incredibly hard to get motivated to do work Monday morning.
On Tuesday we had beautiful weather and took the boats and boards back out with the Bridgewater and Princeton staffs. We went to Carnegie Lake in Princeton and spent all day paddling around. Here you can see Dan, Brian, and Zoe from the Princeton store.
On Wednesday, Tim and I dropped the trailer off in CT and headed home to rest. On Thursday we convinced our friends Doug (from the climbing school) and Mike (from the Foxboro store) to climb with us at Farley. It was a really fun day, despite sticking to the easy climbs and watching/kinda-sorta assisting in the rescue of another climber who had broken his ankle in a fall.
The funny thing is that this past week will most likely prove to be one of the easier weeks. Starting Monday, our schedule gets pretty tight…between the demos on the weekends and staff demos during the week, Tim and I have filled our plates and gone back for seconds!
-Ashley
