Richard Gibney's 365 Days of Fitness: Day 174

Day 174 For my workout today I got a little dirty:

This afternoon I decided to stop by some of my client's homes that had been affected by the flooding. I had seen a lot of the devastation on TV but seeing it in person was completely different. The amount of mud everywhere was astonishing. I wasn't wearing appropriate footwear so I left and headed over to Mark's Work Wearhouse and bought some rubber boots.  When I came back I went to my client Adam's house to help him and his family rescue some items from their house.

It was really sad to see the damage that had been done to their home but it was really inspiring to see how many people had come out to help. Adam had rounded up quite a few friends who were eager to get to work and get dirty. We spent a good chunk of the afternoon moving couches, cabinets and soggy pieces of carpet out of the house and into their front yard.

The most difficult piece of furniture being this antique piano, that I'm guessing was pretty close to 700lbs. It took about 8 of us slipping and sliding in the mud to get this thing outside. Luckily no one lost any toes and we got the piano outside. It was a beautiful piece of furniture. I'm hoping that Adam and his family will be able to restore it. Some things are much harder to replace than others.

After helping Adam, I went home to get some lunch and met up with Nicole. After having a bite to eat we went to the Glencoe to see how things were around there. Fortunately the club had sustained very little damage. We'll still be out of sorts for a few days but that's a lot better than a few weeks.

We  walked around the block over to my friend Steve's house to give him and his family a hand. The Smiths have always been very good to me. I spent a lot of time at their house growing up and I felt the least I could do was help them clean up their home. By the time we got there they had already pumped most of the water out of their basement and had moved a great deal of their belongings outside. We chipped in and headed down into their basement to help move what was left. My heart ached as I pulled muddy photo albums and badminton trophies out of soggy boxes. After a couple hrs we were covered in mud but had pretty much emptied the basement.

We told the Smith's we'd be back tomorrow to help move the rest of their things into bins so they could be picked up and discarded. Later when we got home I was checking facebook and found out from Steve's sister that his mom was able to salvage almost all of their family photos. This made me really happy, because in the end it's the memories you create inside a house that make it a home.

I know this wasn't a structured workout but it was a physically challenging day and it served a much more valuable purpose than just making me run faster or my biceps bigger. On Monday's I usually have my conditioning class but instead tomorrow I'm organizing a group clean-up. I think it will be a great way to get together with some friends and help out for a worthy cause.