Kudos to Vicky Bardo, The Resource Center, the TRC Foundation and their entire staff, along with volunteers for another great basketball event downtown.
It is exciting to see this type of an event downtown - seeing spectators and players all having a great time. It simply makes everyone attending the event feel good. The weather was not the best but it still was a great event. As soon as we get more details we will report those to you.
Last week I promised I would give you the low down on the Fireball Run. First of all, while this is a car/vehicle event, it is not a speed event. In fact, the cars are timed to make sure they are not speeding. They must drive the speed limit. The best way to describe it is a giant board game and the actual roadway is the board. There are 40 teams. The race is 2,500 miles. It starts in Independence, Ohio, then proceeds to Jamestown, Wellsboro, Pa., Watertown, Oguncuit, Maine, and finally Bangor, Maine. The teams stop in each of these cities. At each of these cities the teams must visit appointed attractions and be provided with a life-changing activity. They are given clues as to activities at each attraction. For each of these visits they are awarded points - and, of course, the team with the most points wins. I do want to point out that the very bottom line is this race supports the search for America's missing children.
Each team is assigned a missing child from the area of the country they represent. The pictures of the children are placed on each car. The teams pass out posters and information on these missing children at each stop - and if you think this does not work the race has managed to return 38 children to their families - some of these children have been found across the country from their actual families.
OK, so what happens when they are in Jamestown? They will arrive here on Sept. 23, a Sunday. They will be staying at the Best Western downtown. Last week their executive producer, along with their production staff, was here to see all the attractions and location where the teams would be visiting. While I am not sure the exact agenda they will be visiting Panama Rocks on their way to Jamestown. The other locations tentatively will be Roger Tory Peterson, Robert Jackson Center, Lucy-Desi Center, Cummins Engine, Audubon, Fenton History Center, Infinity, 10,000 Maniacs and Jamestown Savings Bank Arena. This could change, however. Each team will have a task at all of theses locations and a picture must be taken. As I said they are awarded points for each of these activities. The production staff went to each of these locations, got a tour, got an idea of what was there and took preliminary pictures.
The production team was very nice. They wanted to get a flavor of Jamestown. They did not want to go to places like New York or Chicago as those places always get attention. They want to go to "out of the way" places people are not likely to see - "undiscovered gems" as they describe it. They wanted to visit locations where the local people hang out so they have the ability to get the flavor of what Jamestown is truly like. They visited and ate at place like Liscisandro's, The Pub, Fenton Grill and Tastee Corners. They interviewed people at each of these locations and took actual pictures. They loved our local people.
I asked them how they happened to pick Jamestown. They simply had a route change and Jamestown came into the picture. They looked up Jamestown on the Internet and our website came up, they got our name and called me. Now I see I am going to run out of space, so I will finish this next week and give you their impression of Jamestown and the area.
Oh yes - they thought it would be great if we could have a team and vehicle from Jamestown enter the race. They have even saved a space. If you would be interested, or know of anyone who would be interested please give me a call at 664-2477.