BY TIM

On Tuesday 6^th of September, while having a relatively slow day at work, my mind started to wander and think about The Mighty Canberra Raiders demolition jobs of Sea Eagles and Tiger and their 3 month effort to reach the 2022 finals and couldn’t help feeling something was missing.

Everyone seemed to be wound a little tight. We were in, yes, we were a better form side than the Bronx, but did we really deserve to be there? Were the pundits correct? Were we a 1^st round knock out waiting to happen?

Then while scrolling FaceBook at lunch I spotted my answers. Green Sausages. We were in the finals, where you play 80 minutes at a time and scoreboard pressure means twice as much. The Raiders were playing their best footy of the year and Melbourne were coasting.

“Get excited Tim.”

Get your arse to the ground, get in amongst the atmosphere and ride this run as far as it will go.

10 minutes of research later and it quickly dawned on me that with this being inside a week and there being 2 AFL finals at the G that this was going to cost the best part of a week’s pay and it really wasn’t going to happen. So to show my support I decided to resurrect the gold standard of the Raiders 2019 finals run. The National Hype Measurement Institute.

It was while writing this article that night that I remembered that when I went down to Melbourne for the Round 18 clash against the Storm that there was a discussion with Dan about how he had missed out on the Green Sausages in 2019. Here I am writing an article about getting into the hype an I have a chance to send Green Sausages to a Raiders fan in Melbourne.

First thing to do is double check that I can’t get to Melbourne myself for the game. Yep I’m too poor.

2^nd option, find a fan or few that are driving down to Melbourne for the game, I have plenty of eskys and frozen bricks, just need to find some wheels for it. Turns out that is difficult to find when you have very few friends with similar likes. So I would need an accomplice that knows people or that knows where to find people. Someone that wouldn’t tell me “That’s a stupid idea”. Someone like JB at The Green Machine Podcast.

Now to wait, surely there will be some willing Raiders fan out there will to do a fans duty… Surely.

I can’t be too unhappy with people. Looking at the crowd in Melbourne there just wasn’t the number of people to make the trip that were online to see the request. Late Thursday night it was getting apparent that as well meaning as I was, this just wasn’t meant to happen.

Irony would hit me at 9.30 that night as one of my indoor cricket friends would list himself as going to The Greenhouse meetup in Richmond and hadn’t left for Melbourne yet. J

But was leaving in the morning before Lindbeck’s was opening, so that still wasn’t an option.

Note to self: make sure to make sure that none of your FB contacts are going somewhere BEFORE proclaiming that “no-one you know is going”.

Hmm, courier? After doing a bit a research into refrigerated transport I made a promise to the footy gods. (Don’t do this if you aren’t prepared to back it up)

After taking Sunday to recover celebrate, it was time to put my plan into action on Monday after work. So down to Lindbeck’s I went, no time to waste, these must be on Dan’s pan by kick-off.

So now I have 1kg of of green sausages, no booked transport, no delivery address, no Plan B but I do have a courier company name. Chill (jeez that would be an awesome i’m to have on the Raiders jersey).

Calling the number for Chill I had anxious thoughts running through my head. Here I am calling a national refrigerated transport company, probably used to transporting pallets of food stuffs and medications, about transporting 1kg of green sausages to Melbourne because I dared the “footy gods”.

“2” for non account holders.

“1” for General enquiries.

“Hi, how can we help you?”

“Hi, I’m looking to try to get 1kg of sausages from Canberra to Melbourne and was wondering if you could help?”

…

…

I’m sure the pause was only about a second, but when you are waiting for “why?” it felt like 10.

“Sure, if you could email our transport team with your address, the delivery address and a delivery date, they can set you up with a quote in the morning.”

That simple, I shouldn’t be surprised dealing with professionals, but when you are used to talking to smartarses and idiots all day. The world surprises you.

I made sure to shoot the email off before bed and tucked in knowing that I had hopped another hurdle and was one step closer. Unfortunately, unbeknownst to me I had made a critical admin error.

I waited all morning Tuesday for an email, refreshing my inbox, checking my Junk folder, making sure the Hotmail servers weren’t down. Midday came and went, still no response.

I knew the timeline was getting short, to meet my Friday evening deadline. So back on the phone I went to make sure my email had actually got through.

The automatic switchboard then put me through to a Manager in Queensland, which seemed odd, but she assured me that the Sydney team had been in a meeting all morning and that’s why I had been put through to Brisbane and that I should get a response soon.

I can’t remember the exact reason she read the email address to me again. But while checking my email I realised my error.

In my after hours emailing  I had emailed “Chilled”, not “Chill”.

After sending the email to the correct address, I received a response just before the close of business that the best option would be air freight and that my best option for transport container would be some sort of a polystyrene box.

I have some access to some old polystyrene boxes, but they are all the old ones that your mum put you old baby clothes in. Ample space for 1 kilo of snags, but in an industry where I’m going to pay for shipping based on size and weight. Probably a bit overkill.

My first thought was was the cheep foam eskies that, well Esky used to make. But alas nothing like that seems to exist anymore.

 So I was going to have to do what I do best, fudge it.

A trip to Woollies for an $11 soft skin lunch box for insulation, 4 farmers market ice packs and a Steggle’s Chicken box that dad had been storing car electrical bits in.

So, now with everything packed I just need to get it to QANTAS Freight by 1300 Thursday. Let’s see, I start work at 0800, and Google says QANTAS freight opens at … 0900. Ffffffffffuuuuuuu “Dad, can I ask a favour?”

Funny bit to that is that QANTAS freight doesn’t exist at Canberra airport anymore. All freight seems to go through a group called Pak Fresh that open at 0700. But we didn’t know this until dad got out there and essentially got lost until i did the smart thing and checked QANTAS’ website.

But he did it and the snags had a boarding pass.

This was good news, because unbeknownst to Dan he was already psyching himself up.

Now, I am a aircraft fan, I love watching ops at Canberra Airport, I have the tech to listen into the radio communications and I work in Fyshwick. So this was an awesome opportunity to watch them take-off from work.

An hour later (I really hope they didn’t delay a Canberra to Melbourne flight because of Green Sausages) they were screaming across Australian skies.

I was hoping for a Thursday delivery due to Dan saying that no-one would be available for a Friday delivery, but as with all package sending it was to have an overnight hub stop. My makeshift insulated box would have to survive a day on Dan’s verandah.

Or so I thought.

Personally I was expecting “Haha, you bastard” or something to that effect.

Turns out Dan’s body knew something was up and decided to keep him home for the day.

So that was the long winded (mostly due to my own incompetence and refusal to plan anything properly) story of how one Raiders fan got Green Sausages to another Raiders fan interstate. This was one of the most fun, rewarding, frustrating and stressful things I have done.

Huge thanks goes out to JB at The Green Machine Podcast for egging me on and listening to me go mad for 2 weeks.

And also the wonderfully friendly and professional people at Chill for helping me do (for me) the impossible.

I for one cannot wait for the greatest Raiders Review of them all “Raiders Review: Green Snags in a Melbourne Tea Room”.

Peace out everyone, see you all next year.

Ps. For anyone who made it this far, Dan’s address is:

***

Epilogue:

Dan here. A couple of other bits of information for your reading pleasure.

First, the delivery guy seemed as confused as I was as to what was going on here. Then I showed my four year old and he was equally unsure of whether green sausages was a good thing or a bad thing. I think I need to read green eggs and ham to him more often.

And second, I cooked the sausages for lunch.

They look so weird, but they were delicious.

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