2023 Charity Circle Adventure

Seventeen enthusiastic Redwood members pulled off the first “Charity Circle Adventure” on Thursday October 5th. The primary goal of this day was to work as a team at the Redwood Empire Food Bank in Windsor, but to sweeten the pot we had a one-hour driving tour beforehand and a club-hosted post-work lunch date.

On a gorgeous day, the drive itself went smoothly out along Mark West Springs Road then shifted into the twisties as we headed east along Franz Valley and Franz Valley School Roads. Everybody stayed together quite well even with an Infiniti SUV and Essy Fariab’s BMW sedan at the end of our conga line! (Once you’ve mastered a Porsche, I think you can find the handling limits of all the other marques.) Heading north along Highway 128 took us to our return (closing “the circle”) on Chalk Hill Road, back into Windsor to our reserved parking at the Food Bank Warehouse.

Once inside, we were whisked into action in the conveyor-belted assembly line room. Our responsibility: neatly fill wine-case sized boxes with food for needy seniors in our community. We had every task from unfolding, taping, and labeling the boxes to stacking full ones on pallets. Special thanks to Rex Simmons and Eric Moeller for doing the heavy lifting at the end. Together, they stacked 440 30-pound boxes that the rest of us filled in a highly specific sequence with canned vegetables, cereal, ultrapasteurized milk, peanut butter and other items. After using up the warehouse’s supply of all of these, we had a short break (note to self: as Cheryl Lawton stated, next time we do warm-up exercises), but we weren’t done yet! After the Food Bank team rearranged the room, we took on the task of bagging apples (3 pounds per bag) for an hour, sending the bad apples to the compost bin and the good ones to families in the community.

Flush with exhilarated exhaustion, we drove to the nearby Barley & Bine Beer Café in Windsor. The cool but open air warehouse feel was perfect for the warm day, libations were fantastic, and the kitchen staff efficiently pumped out spectacular flatbreads, tater tots, and street tacos in numbers they probably aren’t used to. We got to sit at two large tables and shared stories together.

Ask someone you know in the club if they came to this event and how much they enjoyed it. Through the 12,800 pounds of food we put into the 440 “senior boxes” and the almost two tons of apples we bagged, we helped provide 12,350 meals for the disadvantaged of Sonoma, Lake, and Mendocino counties. It was very special to do this as a team and then get together afterward to say “I’ll drink to that!”. I’m extremely proud that we could have such a wonderful impact – all while having fun – as a team. It’ll happen again and I hope you can join us!