Feeding America Despite Technical Difficulties

I started a new group called "Grow With Me" on Meetup in an effort to try to meet parents with children close in age to Ramsey. I posted an event for this morning to stroll the mall with our babies. I wanted to get exercise with Ramsey and Cliff that would be out of the heat and at a relatively easy pace. There were forces conspiring against my third reason of strolling to benefit Feeding America.

First, I had scheduled my stroll for 10:30 a.m. No one signed up for my event, but I still wanted to get to the mall around that time should anyone just show up despite the lack of RSVPs. At almost the exact moment we stepped out of our house to travel to the mall, there was torrential rain. But we hurried to the car and travelled onward to the mall.

When we got to the mall, both Cliff and I started our Charity Miles app on our separate phones so we could try to get as much benefit as possible to Feeding America. We opted for the "Indoor Walk" option which uses our accelerometer in the phones to gauge the distance. Once I set it, I placed the phone on the stroller and we started off. That was the second force. I didn't realize that the smooth ride of the stroller was interfering with the accelerometer. After about 15 minutes, the app had only logged 0.04 miles for me, so I thought it would take forever to get to a mile at that rate. I asked Cliff what his phone read, and it said 0.35 miles. We both figured it was because of the smooth ride on the stroller, so I shoved the phone in my pocket. This fixed that issue.

While we were walking, I noticed that the mall had free WiFi. I was so excited I quickly connected with my phone. Little did I know this would be the app's undoing. I finally managed to get to 1 mile on my phone after an hour of walking (although there were some stops and at one point I paused the app to take a picture and forgot to resume immediately). So, I stopped the app and went through the motions of saving the data. Then I tried to go to my history to see my results. I couldn't get the app to load the history. I rebooted my phone and kept quitting and restarting the app. Finally, Cliff suggested I get off the WiFi, and once I did the app restarted with no problems. But alas, my results had not saved. I blame it all on the stupid WiFi because I'm sure they would have saved if I had just stayed on my 3G.

Luckily, Cliff's phone accurately logged our stroll, so I at least have something to show for it, but it could have been more. At any rate, we did 1.4 miles in 60 minutes and provided nearly 3 meals to hungry people. And look at the picture of me and Ramsey by the sign in the mall. We were destined to help Feeding America today.