If you work at Bike Virginia as a staff or volunteer you’re going to accumulate some interesting stories. This one still has us chuckling even 4 years later.
The Case of the Missing Portable Toilets- By Kim Perry, Executive Director
It was day four of the 2009 Bike Virginia Tour in the Charlottesville, Orange, Culpepper corridor. It was my second year with the organization.
Headquarters was on it’s third location for the event, Orange Virginia. That poses enough challenges as is, moving 3 times is hard on everyone, but was deemed necessary to get enough routes for the mileage we like to offer. So, we’d moved to Orange the evening before and were settled in for a nice day of riding.
My phone rings constantly during the event, on one of my busiest days I took 200 phone calls. Each and every one of those calls is important to the safe, smooth operation of the ride so when it rings I’ve got to be ready to reply. That Tuesday morning I get a panicked phone call from one of the staff that jump started my day in a bad way. “There are no portable toilets at the first rest stop and the building does not have any bathrooms!”
YIKES. Double Yikes.
It’s just before 6:30 am and we are soon to have just over 2,000 riders pedaling vigorously heading toward the rest stop. This is a big problem.
A 2009 Rest Stop on the Bike Virginia Tour
Scheduling portable toilets for all the rest stops is a science all unto it’s self. Set-ups and pick-ups are happening continuously throughout the event at as many as 30 locations over the 6 day. It takes a good diligent planning process and a great portable toilet company to pull it off flawlessly.
Over my 6 years with the tour we’ve worked with good companies and we’ve worked with great companies. We’ve had planning errors and other little problems. Thankfully most of the time it’s little things like running out of paper or needing to get an extra cleaning service at the last minute. Missing toilets on the other hand is not the easiest thing to fix.
I immediately called the emergency number of the provider company. I got a sleepy hello and a promise to call back with more information. Not good. I was afraid how long that return call might take and I didn’t have time to wait around on a solution.
We (my husband and I) jumped in my rented pick-up and headed for town to see what we could come up with. I was making phone calls furiously as he drove. No one had answers, and that’s of the few people that answered their phones at that early hour.
I remembered seeing a bank of portable toilets at the previous evening’s festival event. We’d hosted a downtown music and food festival on that Monday evening with the town of Orange. Maybe we’d catch the portable toilet company there doing a pick up. Or wait, maybe we could move them to the rest stop?
An idea began to formulate. Could we move some toilets ourselves, just Sam and I? Maybe get a couple of them to the rest stop until we could arrange for a emergency full (4 unit) delivery?
The pick-up we were driving would hold one toilet. It had a small cargo area and putting two in the bed was not likely to happen. We could make 2 trips, but that was time we didn’t have.
If the toilet was full of fluid we’d have a heck of a time picking it up without a lift, but we decided it was worth giving it a try. I’d pushed enough units around on the grass to know it was not impossible to move them.
We just needed a second truck and a couple of strong bodies. Fast.
Okay, were to find another truck?
At that instant we passed a Hardee’s Restaurant with a couple of pick-ups setting in the parking lot. I yelled for Sam to turn around. He quickly complied but had a puzzled look on his face…you’d think he’d be used to my ways by then.
I hopped down from the truck and ran inside. “Excuse me, would that happen to be your truck in the parking lot?” When the first man I asked replied yes, I smiled. “Would you be interested in making a quick and easy $100 cash?”
Kim in her event truck, on the phone.
The man perked up. He looked down at his almost finished biscuit and then at his wife. “Sure,” he said.
I was elated. After quickly explaining the problem and our (very underdeveloped) plan we hit the parking lot. There Sam and the man headed off toward the festival site about 3/4 of a mile away to see about grabbing some toilets.
I went another way, took off on foot running for the closest bank with an ATM. Yeah, you see even though I had lured this guy into helping with cash, I didn’t have any on me. I knew I’d have to scramble to get it if the plan worked. Thank god my ATM card worked that day and the machine coughed out five 20 dollar bills on demand!!!
After my literal run to the bank and to street where the festival was held I was pretty whipped. I’m not much of a runner. Give me a bike any day!
When I arrived though I was one happy girl. Sam and this man had already picked up one toilet and had it in the back of our truck. A couple of minutes later the second was loaded into his. Thankfully the man had tie-down straps with him. We “tore off” toward the first rest stop. Time 7:00am.
When we hit the main road we realized that portable toilets do not do well at high speeds! Anything over 30MPH turned the toilet’s flimsy plastic shell into a distorted, blue, waving amoeba. Okay, we could deal with that. But I was still sweating getting there in time for the wave of riders that were sure to arrive at that first rest stop of the day in need of a toilet.
After a few more miles we arrived at the little community parking-lot. The site was nice and shady. The food was waiting. The volunteers eager to welcome the riders. With the addition of the portable toilets things would be just fine.
The guys quickly dropped the toilets into a nice shady spot. Time 7:28am. Whew. Believe it or not, the first wave of riders arrived at 7:30am.
The portable toilet company delivered 2 more by 8:00am. Disaster averted.
We still laugh about this whole crazy incident. My husband shakes his head and chuckles about the Hardee’s scene when I asked a random stranger to help haul portable toilets.
I’m both delighted and surprised we managed to pull it off.
For those of you who wonder what went wrong in the whole process that caused this to happen, in our debrief we discovered that the spreadsheet sent to the potable toilet company had a wrong address in it. The address that appeared was actually for a rest stop location from the day before, and the company had just left the toilets there from Monday’s ride assuming we were coming back to the same spot twice.
Check. Double check. Triple check. Lots of eyes on every spreadsheet searching for things just like this. I’d like to hope that that mistake won’t happen again.
This experience emphasized my notions about a few things about solving problems on the fly:
1. Always ask, you’ll be surprised what you can get accomplished when you are brave enough to just throw the question out there.
2. Cash works wonders.
3. Always drive a pick-up truck, it can save the day.
Since then these three principles have served me well at Bike Virginia and other aspects of my life too!
Cheers and happy riding!
Kim