Choice Mindsets

Sorry guys, while your beards are impressive, we awarded our Charity Cup Longest Beard trophy to “Sir” Lewie Pickering of Jackson Center. While we appreciate your effort in “growing” this fine crop of beards, we’re pretty sure that Lewie logged a little more time to grow his!

All of this beard talk was sparked by our annual Sidney Choice One Charity Cup. This year’s theme was lumberjack-inspired, which meant there was no shortage of flannel, pine cones, and beard measuring, both real and fake. And while our beard-fakers were a little stumped as to why they didn’t win that incredible-looking Longest Beard trophy, they can’t be disappointed in the generosity of everyone who attended this year’s event. Thanks to your contributions, we were able to raise $7,538.00 for the Miami Valley Down Syndrome Assocation and Jerry and Charlie’s Helping Hands!

With a great beard comes great responsibility, and we are positive that we saw both our bearded and unbearded friends step up to the plate for this year’s event. We can’t thank everyone enough for your support and participation, and we hope you had a wood… er… good time. We’re plaid you came, and hope to see you next year!

It may look like engineer Allan Heitbrink is easily beating surveyor Wes Goubeaux in a beard growing contest, but, believe it or not, Allan’s beard is fake! You had no idea, right?

Beards have come up a lot lately here at Choice One thanks to the upcoming lumberjack-themed Sidney Charity Cup (March 27!) that includes, among other ridiculousness, a beard growing contest. Some here, like Wes, are working on the real thing, while others, like Allan, are looking for ways to make facial hair happen.  While Allan is very good at some things, like highway lighting, traffic engineering, and ignoring Matt and Mitch, he admittedly says he’s never been “skilled” at beard growth. Try harder, Allan.

Have a cool beard (real or fake)? Want to have fun? Come to the Sidney Charity Cup—no RSVP needed! We promise you won’t go hungry, thirsty, or be lacking in beard-inspired entertainment. (And we’ll do the same for the Loveland Charity Cup this upcoming November, although we’re pretty sure we know who might win that beard growing contest…)

Christmas is here and gone, as is our co-op Amanda Partika, who is back at UC this semester. When Amanda started working at Choice One, she struggled to find the fastest route from UC’s campus to our Loveland office. Turns out she was unaware of the Cincinnati bypass, Interstate-275. Once she found this handy bit of infrastructure, she dropped her daily, one-way commute from 45 minutes to about 25 minutes. As you can imagine, she may have been “gently” ribbed about her lack of infrastructure awareness. Repeatedly.

Amanda, you’re right: highways, not to mention all things infrastructure, are gifts to us at Choice One. Without traffic engineering, Craig Eley wouldn’t be even remotely famous. If there were no roundabouts, what would Dane dream about?  And without sanitary sewer, we would never get to make “effluent” jokes (c’mon, who didn’t enjoy those “Drink more coffee, build more sewers” mugs we passed out a few years back?!).

It’s time we ignore Amanda’s lack of direction and appreciate her love for infrastructure. So what if she only just learned about a major interstate just 15 miles from her hometown despite living in the Cincinnati area for 20+ years? The gift of I-275 has 84 miles to explore. Get out there and… don’t get lost!

P.S. Did you know today is the last day to register your team for the 2019 Sidney Charity Cup? Get ready to “chop til you drop” and sign up your team here!