Gymnastics club aims big
Northern News Services
Yellowknife (Mar 07/01) - Leave highways and roads to the weak-kneed masses.
You're not shackled by curbs, intersections and traffic because you have found freedom strapped in 2,880 kilograms of stone crunching power.
It can all be yours if you win the Yellowknife Gymnastics club's Hummer raffle to raise money for an athletic complex.
"We needed to do something big, something never done before and will never be done again for a while," said Ben Webber, club vice-president.
They hope to raise between $50,000 and $100,000 towards an $800,000 athletic facility that would be built beside the Ruth Inch Memorial Pool this summer.
The proposed facility has the support of various athletic groups throughout the city.
So far they've sold between 8,000 and 11,000 of the 20,000 tickets they need to sell. Tickets go for $20 each or three tickets for $50.
There's only a month left to get at ticket.
Driving in a Hummer is like getting a piggy back from a grown-up when you're three-years-old.
It doesn't have the most spacious interior since it was originally designed for the U.S. Army which doesn't have a mandate to create comfort in its vehicles.
But the bunker-like seats add to the Hummer's aura of invincibility and reminds you that this no ordinary sports utility vehicle.
Driving through Yellowknife's urban sprawl, heads constantly turn and other SUVs quiver when the club's white Hummer rumbles through.
Club president Elaine Keenan-Bengts admitted the raffle was quite a gamble, but "we have big dreams."
