· Date: Tuesday June 25, 2019
· Service Event: The American Cancer Society Hope Lodge in Salt Lake City, Utah
Today, we volunteered at the American Cancer Society Hope Lodge in Salt Lake City. We had been up late because of our “why” meeting and the knockout game and I think the whole team appreciated being able to sleep in. I had been up much later though as I sat up in the bleachers trying to gather my thoughts last night. I was appreciative that we had no windows in the locker rooms since the sun never woke us up and I slept much later than most everyone else. Instead of waking up at four-thirty in the morning, we were able to sleep in five or six hours. It was incredible. I’m realizing that sleeping in is becoming a valuable aspect of rest days.
What is more valuable though was the impact we made in the community. Much like the Ronald McDonald House, Hope Lodges are throughout the United States and offer living amenities for free to cancer patients and their families. The difference is that Ronald McDonald Houses are for pediatric patients, while Hope Lodges are for adult patients. This Lodge was also much larger than the Ronald McDonald House in Reno, Nevada. In Salt Lake City, the Hope Lodge had forty different rooms and bathrooms for patients and their families. Cancer patients can qualify to live at the lodge for one day to one hundred days with or without their family. Services are provided to those who live a certain distance from the hospital, have consecutive appointments, and or have a cancer diagnosis. The Lodge is cognizant of the fact that its residents are immunocompromised, and visitors are typically restricted to one visiting area. However, we were able to split up into four groups to make lunch for the families, clean and organize their pantry, and organize clean laundry and toiletry items. I was in the group that organized the pantry which had to have been a closet twenty feet deep and five feet wide, filled with food. After we organized it, it looked like an aisle in a supermarket! The food, laundry, and toiletries are all donated to the Lodge so that families can utilize them at their leisure. The kitchen area was fully equipped, and each family was assigned one of eight to ten individual cooking areas. Each area was exactly like a kitchen you would see in a house with a sink, counter, fridge, stove, and oven. There were even dishwashers. Each kitchen area was used by the same family for as long as their stay. It was truly incredible what this facility had to offer to patients. Volunteering our time to organize areas of the facility and talk with various patients made for a great start to the day. Everyone present, the staff, the patients, and their families were all so appreciative of our help as well as our journey across the country. Visiting the Hope Lodge was rejuvenating and helped to see a lot of good that is in the cancer world. This was especially important to me since I had been stuck in my thoughts last night. It felt like we were doing something important.
The Hope Lodge was only a few miles from the Utah Jazz Stadium so a group of us decided to walk back when the service event was over. We wanted to explore the city and take advantage of some of the free time we had. Having only been to Boston and New York City, Salt Lake City was extremely different from what I expected. It was clean, it had countless options for people to explore, and was surrounded by mountains. We stopped at a souvenir shop and looked around but had to meet back at the stadium soon for our next event and didn’t want to take too long.
The next event on the schedule is bizarre, strange, and still, has all of us surprised that it even happened. Even in May 2020, we were talking about this part of the trip and were still taken aback by what happened. I still don’t know what to make of it.
Aspen, who had left 4K for a couple of days to fly home to attend her sister’s wedding, was back with us. On the way back from the Airport to the Host, her Uber driver began talking with her. Soon, the topic of 4K came up and the topic of food donations came up as well. The generosity of this lady and her husband soon shone through. You would expect that food donations would be easier in a larger city, but now we were talking with large corporations and chains, who said they needed days or even weeks in advance to make a food donation. The pair in the host van had trouble obtaining food for us yesterday as well as today. Hearing this, the Uber driver offered to make us lunch. At her house.
Now originally, we were all a little skeptical, but when we realized that Aspen was serious about her story and the offer the Uber driver had made was wholeheartedly sincere, we consulted as a team. I think we concluded that even if this had the potential to be sketchy, there were twenty-eight of us. We all had cell service and it was only the Uber driver and her husband. We decided to go for it.
On the way over though, one of our vans began having trouble. It was about a twenty-minute drive from the stadium to this person’s house and when the van broke down, it left half of the group stranded. The van had been giving us trouble throughout the past few days and had finally decided to quit. This would be the first of many times where we had van trouble throughout the summer.
The van that was working dropped off everyone but two people at the house, and then went back to pick up the rest of the group. I was part of the van that got to the house first and if I am honest, it was a little awkward. Aspen was in the van that broke down and none of us had been introduced to the uber driver or were even sure if we were at the right house. We knocked on the door and when she saw us all in Ulman shirts and started talking, we knew we were at the right place. I felt bad, by the time the entire team showed up at the house, it was later than the lady had planned. But the generosity of her and her husband was out of this world. We played with their dogs, sat on their couches and in their backyard, and ate multiple servings of the food they had prepared. As strange of a situation that this was and as awkward as it was until Aspen was able to get there and help break the ice, it showed what the 4K for Cancer was all about. The good in people was shown through our journey across the country and we were all so appreciative of everything that everyone did for us. Some instances such as this, I knew my family would be nervous for us, and I am pretty sure this is the first time that they will be hearing this story. But the important thing is that the true compassion, spirit, and goodwill of strangers are never known until you talk to them. Although I have forgotten the names of this lady and her husband, what they did for the entire team during a time of need was spectacular. Throughout the whole trip, this one memory is something that is frequently talked about among our team.
After lunch, Ally, Tyler, and I did some laundry and continued exploring Salt Lake City while our laundry was cycling. It was nice to finally have clean jerseys as we only had three and had to re-wear a few during the past few days. Cleaning clothes in the shower can only get them so clean, especially the socks. This time together brought us closer and I think it is what made us closer friends throughout the summer. For some reason, we were the only ones on the team who needed to laundry and we were able to have a lot of great conversations together.
Later, Abby, Justin, and Bea asked to go on the Limes with me, which were motorized scooters. Like the Citi bikes in New York City, you paid for these by the minute and could dock them anywhere in the city for the next rider to use. They were an absolute blast to ride on. We zoomed around the city and tried to max out the speed. I think I got up to 15.7 miles per hour but slowed down because I got nervous. I could see why so many cities had banned these! I hope that when I go back to Salt Lake City someday, these motorized scooters are still available! We agreed if the opportunity ever came again in any of the other cities coming up on the trip, we would be taking advantage of them again.
That night, I worked on my blog for a little bit, hung out with a few people on the team, and called it an early night. I was exhausted from a jam-packed day. It seemed that these rest days were beginning to be more exhausting than they should have been.
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