A few weeks back on the way to the Green River I asked my buddy Paul if he had any ideas for this year’s booth at Gauley Fest. We agreed that it would be a great chance to let folks check out the new lifejacket designs and mingle with our people, but we also thought it would be sweet to offer up something good for the party. He recalled a game that he saw one time in college involving donuts. He was like, “So all you do is hang some donuts from a string. You pick out a few folks and tie their hands up, and whoever finished their donut first is the winner. It sounds kinda weird but its really funny”. The idea sounded interesting enough so we threw out some ideas that day on the Green of how to make it rowdier.

So last Thursday we loaded up the truck and trailer with an assortment of kayaks, the Astral booth, some demo jackets and camping/party supplies for the weekend and headed up to Summersville, WV for Gauley Fest. I was quite stoked to be rolling up with an awesome crew of boaters from West Asheville including Nik Haase, Gabriel Latini, Jon Crain, and Paul Bartholic. They are all big fans of Astral and most of them have worked with us at the factory or on some project in the past. We hit up the local grocery upon our arrival in Summersville and stocked up on some PBR, donuts, and string to get prepared.

The Astral booth was tons of fun on Saturday. We had a lot of folks stop by and try on the new Greenjacket samples, while telling us stories about their sick Pillow splat or the occasional Iron Ring beat down tale. We also had our boys Brendan and Jones there to help answer some questions and fit paddlers in the new Willis and Bella designs. Around 11 or so we decided to take a break from lifejacket talk and play some Gimmie that Donut!

After a short committee session we laid down a few ground rules:

1. Each round of Gimmie that Donut commences after Gabriel blows fire out of his mouth.

2. The first of the two competitors to finish their donut wins.

3. Each competitor must have a sports beverage in his or her hands at all times to play.

4. If a donut hits the ground it is still in play. (a kayak was provided as a ground cover for sanitation purposes)

5. Use of hands is not permitted and will result in immediate disqualification.

We had enough donuts for about 5 rounds of play, each round more hilarious than the one before. The winner took home one of our Organic Cotton T’s as well as the lingering taste of cake donuts and PBR. Here are a few select photos of the competition and be sure to check out the Gauley Fest Gallery for more images from the weekend.

See you next year at Gauley Fest for more Gimmie that Donut!

Bryan

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 23rd, 2008 at 10:16 pm and is filed under Paddling Events. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.