Well, the time has come for our awesome Sandbar team to take to the sidewalks in West Lawrence and walk for MS.
The annual Walk MS, a fundraiser for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, is tomorrow. Registration begins at 9 a.m. at Sunflower Elementary School and the Walk begins at 10. I haven't been able to find any information about how long the Walk is- it could be a mile, or we could be walking all day.
Our team is currently in second place among Lawrence teams with $2033 raised! We set a lofty goal of $5000, so we fell short of that- but it sounds like some of our walkers still have cash & check donations that haven't been included in our total.
The first place team is the Old West Lawrence Walkers, and holy cow! They have raised $8470 as of right now! That's truly amazing and we concede there's no way we'll overtake them.
Funny enough, there's also a Team Margaritaville in the Lawrence Walk! It's not us, but we love their name! And some of our other Sandbar friends are on Team Droopy.
Come out tomorrow to Sunflower Elementary and support our team. We'll be the ones in the bright orange Sandbar shirts. And, it's not too late to donate if you're so inclined. Head over to our Team Page and make a donation online, or contact one of our team members.
After the Walk, we'll be celebrating with an after-party at the Sandbar. Join us, or check it out on the webcam!
The Cartoon Network is planning a street party on Monday, April 19, in the block of 8th Street between Massachusetts and New Hampshire- in other words, right in front of The Sandbar. The event is part of a promotions campaign for the network's Adult Swim programming.
The event consists of a "College Carnival," which features carnival type booths and games, along with a couple of bands. The Whips, from Athens, GA, will headline the event. Games begin at 6:30 p.m., and the music lasts until 9:30 p.m.
The street will close at 9 a.m. that day to allow for event set-up and will reopen at midnight after clean-up is completed.
No alcohol will be served in the street, and we are not extending our patio service like we did for our anniversary party. The event is geared toward college students, but it's free for everyone to attend.
We are really excited about this event! Monday nights aren't always the most exciting, and we love a good block party. Be sure to mark your calendar.
On March 12, 2006, a strange weather occurrence hit our fair city- the Great Microburst of 2006. It was like a tornado (and many people today still swear it actually was)- in fact, according that knower-of-all-things Wikipedia, the main difference between the two is that microbursts produce divergent winds, while tornadoes generally have convergent damage. Whatever. It’s still freaky-scary.
It was loud, it was windy, and trees and shingles and signs went flying all over town. According to KU Info, the University of Kansas campus lost 100 trees that day- but fortunately 29,425 trees remain.
We asked some of our Twitter followers what they remembered most about that day. Here’s what they had to say:
“It sounded like a train outside my house. I seriously thought I was in a tornado and going to die.”
“I was a freshman but had left for the weekend. Ended up getting caught in an even worse storm in Missouri: 2 tornadoes met right where I was.”
“Woke me up from a dead sleep. Lost part of my roof. Best part: no one was hurt, went outside, and found my house had the least damage around.”
“My boyfriend lived in Templin. His car window got broken out. I think some sort of heating/AC unit fell off the room of the dorm.”
“My boyfriend at the time was in town for our anniversary. The alarms went off in Ellsworth and we had to sit in the dorm basement.”
“All I could see was gray out the window. It sounded like a train.”
“I was a freshman and my pledge brother was driving a random shacker home and all of his windows instantly shattered as if a sign from God.” (OK, I laughed out loud at the random shacker part!)
“Worst memory: Being woken up by shingles being ripped off. Best memory: Getting a brand new roof.”
“Waking up to an uprooted tree hitting my window- and I lived on the 10th floor of Ellsworth Hall so that was definitely not normal!”
“Classes were cancelled the next day and it was like an all-campus party!”
“Lots of broken car windows and Weavers’ awning sitting in front of Liberty Hall.”
“Lived on the 4th floor above Pepperjax; looking down at New Hampshire street and seeing trees bent over to the ground.”
“Living in Corbin and I had to drive around for hours to charge my phone. Fast food lines were so long. No hot water for a week.”
“Seeing the clouds circling the McDonald’s on 6th Street when I lived a block from there.”
“Seeing part of a street sign off 6th from a place closer to Iowa than Mass lying in front of City Hall.”
“Waking up to violently shaking windows and our chimney being ripped off. Best part was joking about the apocalypse with my mom.”
“We lost two giant windows in our living room- they’re still not quite fixed!”
Lots of memories from this storm!
The Sandbar was fortunate to not have much damage. It seems like the downtown businesses on the east-west streets fared better than those on the north-south streets.
We were in the middle of construction on our annual St. Patrick’s Day float, and it lived in the vacant lot next to Dave’s house. Amazingly, the float had absolutely no damage- not even from the wind!
But about thirty feet away, a huge old tree right next to the house was completely uprooted and fell alongside the house. It took out a few shingles on the way down, but nothing major. If it had fallen at any more of a northern angle, it would have smashed into our bedroom (and probably taken me out!). We did get a new roof out of the deal.
We're very excited to announce that construction of our 2010 St. Patrick's Day Parade float has officially begun! It actually started last weekend, when the longer-than-usual trailer was delivered to our rented garage space, and some of the usual suspects hauled out their power tools and lumber.
This is at least our 14th or 15th year in a row to have a float in the annual parade. Our float, like the parade itself and the crowd that watches it, has grown bigger and better every year. Except maybe for 2008, the year of the Soggy Sandbarn– the torrential downpour that day kept lots of people away from the parade and made our dancers cranky.
Every float is our favorite one at that particular time, but the 2007 Showboat stands out as perhaps our largest undertaking ever (two levels of people!), and the 2003 Love Shack was a crowd favorite that featured a palm tree falling off the float and nearly crashing into the judge's table. Fortunately, no small children or animals were injured.
We're officially behind schedule since Mother Nature has been particularly uncooperative this year. But as long as it's sunny and somewhat warm on the big day, we're not complaining.
The Parade is held on Wednesday, March 17, at 1 p.m. It begins at South Park and travels north on Massachusetts Street and across the bridge, and then from there it's anyone's guess. The Flamingo Club is still the destination, but due to never-ending construction in North Lawrence, we don't know what the actual route will be yet. (We're just hoping that our enormous float will be able to make the trip through North Lawrence, actually.)
Last month we announced plans for a Sandbar-sponsored team in the upcoming Walk MS, a fundraiser for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society and MS research. We're hoping to bring together fans & friends from all over the area to not only raise funds, but to walk together on April 10.
Here's an update on our progress:
Our team now has 15 members! Thanks to everyone who has joined.
We've raised $590! Thanks to everyone who has donated.
Our target goal is $5000. We have 45 days left until the Walk.
Remember:
The Sandbar will match all donations up to $500.
All walkers will get a free Sandbar t-shirt to wear at the Walk!
All walkers/donors are invited to a team party at the Sandbar after the Walk.
We've added prizes! We awarded our first prizes this week: a couple of iTunes gift cards. Everyone who either signed up to walk, or donated money (or both, if you like to double-dip) was entered into a random drawing. Congratulations to Jenny and Louise, this week's winners!
We'll have some more prizes coming up the week of March 7-14, which is MS Awareness Week. Be sure to sign up to walk, donate, or both before that week! Everyone who's already donated/signed up is still eligible to win.
Be a Virtual Member!
We know many of you don't live in the area, but still want to
participate. Thanks to our friend Gina for this idea: become a virtual
team member! If you don't live here, or can't make it to the Walk on
April 10, you can still sign up to walk.
Register online and one of the team captains will contact you.
Raise at least $50 and we'll mail you a free Sandbar t-shirt and some drink toys.
Watch the team party on the Sandbar webcam and pretend you're there! (We'll even wave!)
The Sandbar sponsored a team at the 8th annual St. Patrick's Day Pub Quiz Trivia event last night. This event has traditionally opened the St. Patrick's Day season in Lawrence, although this year some other events have actually taken place already. We've had at least one team in this event every year since it started.
Our buddy/regular/go-to web guy Frank's business also sponsored a team this year. Between us, we originally had about 12 people committed to play, but one by one they started flaking claiming headaches and school work as excuses, so we ended up with eight. Which caused us to pool our brains and collapse our two teams into one. Good thing, too.
Art director Brother Pants named our team Frank's Dirty Banana. (You can take that however you want. We did.) Our category of choice was Train Songs. Our team members skewed heavily to the old-school crying country fan base, so we figured we'd own those questions. And we did, for awhile.
Our first important missed question: some long-winded diatribe about Johnny Cash and prison and we answered too quickly with the seemingly obvious "Folsom." Uh, no. The song title might have Folsom in it, but it was actually written about San Quentin, which practically every other team in the room knew.
Perhaps our more embarrassing miss of the night involved a question about The Sandbar's muse, Jimmy Buffett. Did you know that Bono, lead singer of U2, was on Jimmy's plane with him when they were shot at by Jamaican authorities who thought the plane was smuggling drugs? Yeah, neither did we. We've all heard the story behind the song "Jamaica Mistaica," (from the Banana Wind album), but we don't even have a U2 song on the jukebox and would've never guessed who the passenger on the plane was.
Andy, the announcer, was happy to point out that The Sandbar missed a Jimmy Buffett question. We like to say that we were Scottie-Mack'd. Twice.
We redeemed ourselves somewhat by answering the final question correctly:
(image borrowed from Sandbar friend & fellow trivia player, Chris Pumpelly, who posted this on his Twitter stream.)
It wasn't enough to land us in the top three, but we managed to end up with a respectable score.
Congrats to the team from The World Company, who knocked off the consistent winners from Tabula Rasa to take first place this year!
Do you know the answer to the final question? Leave it in the comments.
