So, did Dannon read my post about Yoplait from September 10? Or maybe they just have a brain and understand making a difference is more important than making half empty promises like Yoplait seems to make. Dannon, through its Cups of Hope program, allows you to provide them with a code from under the lid of a product, online, which will result in a donation from Dannon. For each code you enter, 10 cents goes to the National Breast Cancer Foundation. Dannon will donate a minimum of $500,000 to this organization and up to $1.5 million. Very up front details, very reasonable consumer action needed and much more commonsense than Yoplait’s program that requires one to mail the lids to Yoplait. Still drives me nuts that they make people go to that extent. Ridiculous. So, if you are buying a particular yogurt because of the donations to finding a cure for breast cancer, I’d suggest trying out Dannon.

Every time Yoplait puts on their support program for the Susan G. Komen’s Race for the Cure campaign I just get disgusted. No, I’m not against getting rid of breast cancer, quite the opposite. What drives me nuts is Yoplait’s tactics. I have no problem with a firm advertising the fact that they donate a portion of their revenues or profit to a charity. God Bless them! What I think is ridiculous is how their program works. To me it’s as if they are trying to sell yogurt and not donate to the cause.

To me it makes more sense for Yoplait to say they will donate 10 cents, or even 5 cents, for every item sold. My impression is they are banking on people not sending in lids but perhaps buying their product with that intent. I know I throw out my lids as it doesn’t make sense to collect them, put them in an envelope and then mail them. Not only is it a pain and costs me more money, but it also adds to the carbon footprint and is just wasteful. If they don’t want to donate straight out then another option would be to print a code on the inside of the lid and let folks enter the code online.

Come on Yoplait, show that you truly care more about helping cure breast cancer than selling yogurt.

Yesterday I was looking at my Plus3Network donations and saw that I could hit $50 if I did a 10 mile run.  I had planned on only doing 7.5 miles but this motivated me to do the little bit extra.  So, not only was I motivated to push myself a bit more but, on my behalf, a firm rewarded a non-profit organization with a donation based upon my effort.  I only had to spend a minute or two to log the run.  If you haven’t checked out this site yet you should.  You can get credit for most activities as you can see from the list below.

Activities Leading to $50 Worth of Donations on Plus3Networks

As I was getting ready to head out for my run I checked the thermometer.  A balmy 50 degrees.  Not real warm for me, so, I dawned my thin beanie to keep my ears warm and pulled on the arm sleeves that I had initially picked up for biking.  I still haven’t picked up any thin gloves and was quite aware of this when I headed out.  Just before hitting the roadI heard the distinctive pitter-patter of rain drops.  Fortunately, it appeared to be a stray rain cloud and passed by the time I headed out.  A couple of bottles of water fastened to my Amphipod, my iPod playlist dialed in, my Garmin Edge 405 locked on some satellites and I pushed the [Start] button and headed out.

My 10 mile run is basically an out-and-back run that is mainly on roads.  I start by picking up the Bay Area Ridge Trail for about .25 mile to the main road into our development.  Three-quarters of a mile later and I’m heading out to the Rowell Ranch Rodeo grounds on the primary artery through Castro Valley.  When I hit the main gate I’ll be exactly five miles out and ready to turn back and head home.  There was quite a stiff breeze pushing into me on the outbound leg.  Every one-in-awhile there would be something blocking it just long enough to see the water vapor from my exhales.  When I was about half a mile from the rodeo grounds the sky opened up.  Not a downpour but heavy, large raindrops.  I pushed the iPod to my back to keep the rain off of it, ducked my head and pushed on.  A short time after turning around and heading back the rain let up, or I caught back up with the edge of the rain cloud.  All-in-all I didn’t get too wet and my electronics fared well.

Dog Skeleton Next to Fire Hydrant

I’m thinking I should start keeping a log of road kills.  Is that disturbing?  Today’s tally was one poor little robin that was truly flat.  I really should have taken a pause to get a photo as it was interesting how I could easily make out what it was even though it was flatter than a pancake.  The other road kill was a skunk.  Okay, the skunk had been picked up off the parkway but the stink remained.  I had seen the unfortunate soul earlier in the day when I took Harrison to school, so, I knew it wasn’t an errant release of perfume.  On other runs I’ve seen pretty much the range of critters in the area from cats to raccoons to dogs.  I’ve seen opossum while driving but don’t think I’ve seen any while running.  Outside of skunks, the smelliest thing, which I didn’t initially see but certainly smelt, was a deer; quite nasty.  I think the most interesting, unfortunate victim was what appeared to be a dog.  What was interesting was that it hadn’t been picked up and, as such, had fully decomposed down to the bones.  The skeleton was laid out rather perfectly.  I know puppy death isn’t funny but the fact that this dog’s skeleton was juxtaposed next to a fire hydrant made it quite difficult not to laugh.

BuckeyeOutdoors.com 1,000 Mile Challenge

The other thing I took on today was signing on for a 2010, 1,000 mile challenge on BuckeyeOutdoors.com.  If I am good about getting in my 20 miles of running per week I can pull this off.  As of right now I’m about 20th out of 134 folks who have signed up.  You can get a quick look at my weekly mileage and notes over in the sidebar of this site.

So, other than my body being a bit tired from the running my knees are good and my hip doesn’t seem to get sore much anymore.  The worse thing is that my lower back has started bothering me again and doesn’t seem to be letting up.  I’ve actually got my desk in the standing position as I write this hoping that this might help.  So far it isn’t and I’ll likely shift to sitting pretty soon… after I grab some Advil.

I just read an article in the East Brunswick Sentinal that recounted an interview with Joseph Csatari.  Mr. Csatari worked with Normal Rockwell for nearly 20 years at the Boy Scouts of America.  When Norman Rockwell retired, Mr. Csatari took over as the official artist for the Boy Scouts of America.  The article was written to announce the release, this past October, of Norman Rockwell’s Boy Scouts of America book, which was created as part of the 2010 100th Anniversary celebration of the Boy Scouts of America.

The article explains that Mr. Csatari collaborated on the book with his son, Jeff.  The article goes on to recount a bit of the history of the making of the book as well as some history about Mr. Csatari’s work as the official artist with the Boy Scouts of America.  It’s a very interesting article and an indication that the book also will be a great acquisition.

I’ve always been a huge fan of Norman Rockwell and will be putting in my order for this book as soon as I finish publishing this post.  The book will be a win-win as I’m also a huge fan of the Boy Scouts of America, which I’ve been involved in for over 15 years, and where I am currently serving as Scoutmaster for Troop 708.  I’m truly looking forward to the 100th Anniversary of this great institution.  Did I also mention I’m a proud Eagle Scout?  If you are interested in more information about the Boy Scouts of America check out the National BSA website or the BSA Recruiting Zone website.

Yours in blogging and Scouting

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Alright, I know I keep stumbling across sites that allow you to manage your training logs.  There are quite a few out there and more arriving all the time.  Today, I learned of yet another site (thanks Paul), +3 Network, that works quite well at logging your training.  The twist with this site is that your activities are converted into charitable donations.  That’s right!

The way it works is you select a Cause and a Sponsor pairing when you sign up.  Then, when you go for a run, or a bike ride, or a hike… your mileage is converted to a monetary value that the Sponsor then donates to the matching Cause.  I signed up for the Leukemia Team-in-Training Cause and uploaded tracks from my Garmin Edge 305.  This was easy.  I was then able to process 19 of the 108 activities that uploaded, noting what type of activity I performed and also give it a name, description and tag it.  I wasn’t able to add more than 19 after my initial sync, and a subsequent sync appeared to be loading the remaining activities but those I could add when the sync finished were the same set I already had added.  Could be that the limit is the last 20 or so runs.  Seems reasonable to me.

The feature set on this site is not very extensive but what they do have has been well implemented.  The user profile could be extended a bit to allow specifying your FaceBook, Twitter, blog, LinkedIn or other socially networks.  The activity listing also is a bit lacking in navigating from page-to-page.  One thing you will note, is that the word “beta” appears in the header, so, one can only assume that more is yet to come.  There also is a forum where you can leave suggestions, amongst other topic comments.  The best feature is that one can spend a few minutes recording an activity that will result in a donation going to a worthy cause.  The result of my logging the 19 activities was the donation of $17.39 to the Leukemia Team-in-Training cause.

+3 Network Activity Listing Page

+3 Network Activity Detail Page

Happy running (biking, swimming, walking…)!