Take That Batman and Robin; The Caped Crusader and The Boy Wonder; Del Boy and Rodney and now, Gary and George Barlow…
‘Kapow!’ It gives ‘Take That!’ a whole new dimension. The Dynamic Duo from DGB Refrigeration took to their Batmobiles – a couple of pushbikes to be precise – to cover the miles between Nottingham and Skegness. ‘We just wanted to get the ball rolling in donations before we do The Big One next year’, Gary told us. The Big One? The father and son team are planning to ride from London to Amsterdam.
So this little outing was a doddle, right? Er, wrong… There was a costume malfunction’, Gary begins. ‘For starters, we had to chop the arms off my outfit.
‘Holy Lost Deposit, Batman!’
Everything was going well until the brave brace reached Lincoln. ‘A river had burst its banks and flooded the road’, Gary said. ‘The rain was torrential for a while and to make matters worse, we had a side wind against us. Then Sat Nav took us the wrong way. It should have been a journey of 87 miles and seven hours, but it turned into a ride of over 100 miles that had us in the saddle for ten-and-a-half hours.’ Boom!. And on top of that, Gary mentioned in passing that the pair had been forced to endure ‘toilet difficulties.’ I didn’t ask, I just imagined; which was probably worse than the reality…
Take That !
You won’t be surprised to learn – if you haven’t already guessed – that the reason for all this undiluted mayhem was to raise money for charity and in this case, as in so many others undertaken by members of the vending community, it was for a cause that is close to home…
Dad / Granddad, Doug Barlow, who founded DGB Refrigeration 25 years ago, was taken from us prematurely with pancreatic cancer. I never met him, but by all accounts, he was the kind of bloke who encountered ‘opportunities’ rather than ‘problems’, who was determined to succeed and who never gave up. Much of that same stuff was required to finish this challenge and more of the same will be required next year.
‘We hope it’s a fitting tribute to him, as well as a successful fund-raiser’, Gary said. ‘We’ve made a good start, but we’d like to do much more. So far, we’ve raised £330 for Pancreatic Cancer in dad’s name and £160 for Cancer Research.’ Take That, and that!
I wonder what characters will be taken on next year? Batman and Robin again, maybe? Or Laurel and Hardy, The Two Rons; The Blues Brothers…? My money’s on Hinge and Bracket. (Not.)
Take That: If you’d like to support the fellas in their quest, you can do so HERE
Planet Vending & OCS has more on DGB Refrigeration, HERE
IR-Y
