There's a lot of ways you can spend any given Saturday morning. Sleeping in, visiting family and binge watching my TV show du jour are the usual suspects. However, this Saturday morning was different; I was going to pull a UPS airplane.
You may be thinking: "Why in the world would you do that?"
My response: "Why wouldn't I!?"
For the same reason I rappelled down one of the tallest buildings in Des Moines last September, the Plane Pull was also to raise awareness and funds for Special Olympics Iowa. This was the inaugural plane pull. My employer, Two Rivers Marketing, loves to support different non-profits in our community, including Special Olympics. Over the past two months, our agency raised more than $1,000 in order for our team of 20 to pull this massive plane a whoppin' 12 feet.
We weren't the biggest, baddest team in the world - or all of Iowa for that matter. We figured we'd give it our best shot, and just appreciate the experience. Well, we didn't do half bad. We had one long rope to grab a hold of (think tug of war). We didn't have much of a strategy in terms of positioning, except to put the strongest people in the back. It took us about two seconds just to get the thing moving. Once we did, I was able to speed up to a backwards jog to keep it moving. Our total time was 8.5 seconds. The winning team - which included law enforcement officers and Iowa State football players - pulled it in 6.6 seconds. Like I said, not bad.
The event had 36 teams participate and raised $90,000! I would consider that a success. Apart from helping out SOI, it was also a cool event to do with co-workers, their spouses (including mine) and their kids. Our agency has about 100 employees, so this was a great way to get to know each other more outside the confines of 8:00am - 5:00pm.
If my assumptions are correct that this event will return next year, and someone asks you to pull a plane, how will you respond?