GLWD Final Words

April 4th
On this day, I had the opportunity to ride on the van doing delivery through the lower, mid and upper west side. I had the pleasure of riding with Fred—our route was packed with traffic, but nonetheless, Fred was able to efficiently navigate through the streets and organized the deliveries so that we were never jetting up and downtown. We began at 8:30/9 and ended at 2:30. There were three testing times.
At 8:45: HOT MEAL: 115F; FROZEN MEAL: 22F
11AM: HOT MEAL: 130F (Due to the heat of the van, the heating device ranges from 173-180F and can heat up the meals as the van remains running. As soon as the van is turned off, Fred said he notices that the temperature of the vessel will drop).
FROZEN MEAL: 38F
2:15PM: HOT MEAL: 140F
FROZEN MEAL: 40F

A MAJOR problem that I saw was that the soups at the very bottom of the insulated tub had to be tossed. Fred says that the bottom line of soups always have their tops crushed. You lose about 10 soups per 40 soup tub, and so 10 people are not getting soup. All in all, it was a very good run. I enjoyed getting to know Fred—it seems like he really cares for this organization and has been enjoying his position. He only started one month ago but has the intentions of staying with the organization since the people are so nice. He mentioned that he thought it was odd that a Brooklyn boy like himself (who “…knows the borough like the back of his hand”) was placed in Manhattan and a “Bronx-guy” was placed in Bklyn. He also thought that if a driver had longer hours and wanted to cut them, while another driver wanted to extend his/hers, then perhaps hours can be dispersed more equally so that one person does not have a 10 hr shift while another only gets six.

Additionally, it seems that drivers are wary of getting a ticket. It seems that it would be VERY EASY to get a ticket since those streets are always very crowded, and since there is always lots of running out of the van, leaving it running, and double-parked. But there is really no other option, unless the vans have a GLWD emblem on the side, whereby Policemen may be more lenient. Fred never received a ticket but he seemed nervous about it throughout our journey together.

April 13th, 2008
GLWD ORIENTATION: What was interesting to me was that I had the orientation later on versus earlier in my practicum—and I must say that it was nice to go through it, knowing so much already about GLWD. The video was very motivational and inspiring. It was also nice to get the history without reading about it on the website. It seems that even the other volunteers are all very willing to help and have very selfless mindsets. This is essential for this organization to survive, so I see why the volunteers are lauded so.

April 21st, 2008
I did delivery at the Aurora Food Delivery Building on this day. Although I did not get a test meal; I noticed that the soups were close to exploding, and I had to clean the bottom of a couple in order to place them neatly inside of the bags. Also, the desserts for this particular day included famous amos oatmeal raisin cookies, which seemed atypical, being that the point of GLWD is to nourish people not to kill them.