My first night in the “Tardis Tent” (small on the outside, big on the inside) on the “Questmobile” was interesting.
Setup was 15 minutes and I had no problem climbing up the seven steps into the living space. There are a number of pockets inside, including one for bear spray. I quickly settled into my down sleeping bag and started to doze off before I was awoken by a strange sound; trees creaking? Bears on the prowl? No, it was the truck and car noise from the Whitemud over pass. In the end, I dozed off and had a good night’s sleep on my three-inch foam mattress.
I’ve been trying to keep up my running, so I headed out along the trails beside Whitemud Creek. Soon I was heading up the ski trails on Snow Valley ski hill. The run became a lot harder than I had planned and I was happy to get back to the truck after 10km. The plan was that I would meet a group of students for a coffee at McDonald’s at 11 a.m. I went a little early and grabbed some oatmeal. The manager had put a ‘reserved’ sign on a large table and a lot of the regulars were complaining.
I waited for a while but no one showed up so I headed over to the University of Alberta Quad, the location for the tunnel ball Guinness World Record attempt. I met Anuvir and the rest of his Right To Play club team. They were well organized. T-shirts had been printed, the Canada Quest for Kids Buffs were available and pizza was coming later on. Now all we needed was participants. The current record was 120 and Anuvir told me they had 135 signed up. Excellent.
The record was scheduled to start at 3 p.m. CTV and Global TV were there. The only problem was only 84 people had turned up. Anuvir decided to wait 30 minutes. By 3:30 p.m. the number had grown to 97, still 23 short. Anuvir decided to start a demo game. We all lined up and a game of tunnel ball began. The ball was passed over the head of one person then between the legs of the next and so on.
People who saw this started to come in one by one and, by 4:15 p.m., we had hit the 120 mark. The final figure was 129. The game was on and the record broken. Well done, Anuvir, the RTP Club and students of U of A.
