Let me start this blog by saying the picture shows the truck only about half loaded. There was twice as much in the end as what is shown here.
The DiveBuddy.com team arrived at the Trashfest 2010 registration area at around 8 am. Dr. Mike had already set up the DiveBuddy banner so we could all find each other. The team captains were selected and everyone signed waivers and filled out registration papers as required by the event organizer. While we all visited and became acquainted, or reacquainted as the case may be, the captains took our information in and got our teams registered. Then we all caravaned over to the area of the river we were assigned, which was under the railroad bridge by Landa RV park. After gearing up and hiking down the hill we started scouring our area looking for the trash. With high hopes of getting the highest aggregate weight for the second year in a row, we were looking for the big stuff. After pulling a couple of medium sized cement blocks out of the river we hit on the big one. I found a cylindrical shaped cement chunk with metal sticking out of one end. I could barely lift one end of it. I surfaced and marked my position. A call to Becky got the ball in motion as she searched for Greg. Greg, Jacob, and Matt came over bringing lift bags and rope. Then Dr. Mike came over with a couple of buoys. I tied off the cement and connected 2 lift bags. Inflating them seemed to only make the cement block laugh at us. Dr. Mike shoved the buoys down to me and I connected them to the caribener, but still no joy. I could barely stand on bottom and drag the block. At this point we hooked my spare BC to the block and fully inflated it. That did the trick. The block finally floated free of the bottom as Angie and Domingo came over. Together we swam the cement across the river to the take out point. After a few moments of huffing and puffing we caught our breath and 5 of us lifted the block on to the shore. Whew. Break time. But not for Greg. LOL Greg hit the mud along the edge of the river looking for more treasures. He came across a retaining wall that had collapsed into the river with rebar sticking out of it in all directions. A hazard just waiting to impale an unsuspecting swimmer. We tied them off to ropes and a team of about 6 of us on the shore pulled them out of the water. The we came across a collapsed staircase. We took out the steps that were removable by hand but had to leave some sections that were just too heavy to lift with man power. Time flew by and too soon it was time to load our treasures and head for weigh in. Jacobs truck was the unlucky one chosen to haul the load. His 3/4 ton pickup was loaded and as we hefted the final piece in, which was the 400+ lb. cement block, his springs bottomed out completely. We bumped our way over to the park for weigh in. The first piece on the scale was the big cement block. The scales only tipped to 350 pounds. ??? We all looked at each other with dismay. 5 BIG guys can barely lift it and they say only 350? Well what can you do? We continued with the weighing and each time it just seemed off. Everything was weighing much lighter than we anticipated. It seemed the more we weighed, the lighter it got. Enough already! We suggested checking the scales. Greg stepped on the scales and they showed his weight as 100 pounds too light! Aha! It wasn’t our imagination. Removing the top cover of the scale revealed that it was indeed broken. The organizer estimated the weight of our last two pieces, but how much of the previous junk had been mis-weighed? We can only guess. Our final total was 2170 pounds. Over a ton of trash taken out of the the Comal river by only the DiveBuddy.com divers. I am not sure what our final diver count was. To crunch the numbers and put it into perspective:
430 Divers were at Trashfest 2010.
A total of 8,700 pounds +/- was collected by 430 divers.
DiveBuddy.com team collected over 2000 pounds by them selves.
So, DiveBuddy.com collected about 1/4th of all of the trash collected.
Keep in mind that the total was collected by 430 divers, and we by ourselves, DiveBuddy.com collected a fourth of all of it.
KUDOS to everyone who helped make our team the success that is was.
For the second year in a row, DiveBuddy takes FIRST PLACE in total aggregate weight!
PS Edit: After reading my blog again and reading CanAnEggFloats comment, I got to thinking. Please don’t take my blog the wrong way! I was pointing out the great job that team DiveBuddy did but didn’t mean to put down the work that everyone else did. I hope it didn’t come off that way. Thanks for mentioning what you did Lori.
KUDOS to EVERY single person, diving, surface support, organizers, et. al, who helped make TrashFest a success. We win, the environment wins, the river wins, New Braunfels wins. It is a win, win, win, win situation. My heart goes out to each and everyone who put their time and effort into TrashFest 2010. Thanks for listening.
Randy Ashley
McAllen, Tx.