Cranking it out!

Today's adventure was the first non-group GoodGym mission for Joaquin 👏 and it started with a little bit of suspense.

During the lunch break, Kash glanced at her phone which displayed a call to action: a 6 pm mission in Southwark required a second volunteer as one GoodGymer had to cancel. The first problem was: Kash was already booked for a 6 pm mission that day, and the second: she signed up for exactly the same mission. Could she double up? Don't think so. It was Joaquin who stepped up and responded without hesitation. The mission was back on! 🙌

Joaquin cycled to the task and Kash ran from the nearest tube station which seemed like the only reasonable option to cross the river in the area. With GoodGym-style running and cycling covered, we needed a walker. Unexpectedly, the walker was Ms M who just came back from the shops. When she opened the door, she had to calm a fierce beast that emerged from the depth of the house. Ms M transported her anxious chihuahua upstairs and then came back to us to explain the task. It was pretty straightforward: shredding lots of confidential documents.

For Health & Safety reasons we didn't even ask about an automatic shredder as it could have been interpreted as a power tool. It would have been lots of fun to destroy the documents using a lawn mower or a strimmer but the garden was off-limits. It was dominated by a fox that guarded the entrance to the shed. Ms M didn't want to disturb the animal, so the status quo remained unchallenged. When we were leaving the house after the mission, the fox still reclined in the same spot.

How did we go about the shredding business then? We had to go manual but we didn't settle for tearing the papers apart. Ms M had some machinery for us: an old-school Wilko shredder with a crank. When we first tried that steampunk-style contraption, we overestimated its capacity. It couldn't handle three pages at the time, so we scaled down. A single piece of paper at the time still felt like a challenge and the output pieces didn't want to come apart. After some manipulation, it turned out that the device works when not overwhelmed by the load. We worked out a good technique and got into a steady rhythm with Kash serving as the feeder device and Joaquin turning the crank.

Throughout the mission, Ms M accompanied the GoodGymers and additionally cut the documents with scissors. Doing the shredding task all by herself was too overwhelming for a lady who recently lost her mum for whom she was a carer. She was very grateful for every support she received during that difficult time, including GoodGymers' help. Joaquin and Kash managed to finish the shredding of all the documents selected for obliteration. Well, there was one exception: Ms M wanted to destroy the papers that contained her name, and that involved a souvenir print with her name written in Arabic. We convinced her to keep that card as it was a positive memory for her.

After the mission, Joaquin hopped on his bike and Kash chose to extend her route back home by a riverside run recommended by Joaquin.