By CORY MATTESON
Star-Tribune staff writer Sunday, September 10, 2006
A hot dog on the little kitchen counter, Vickie Johnson says, has been there so long it's starting to look like one of those plastic display foods at a cafeteria.
The ice cold Bud Lights warmed long ago, neglected by the volunteers who deserve them.
Underneath the din of hundreds of afternoon beer drinkers and a band playing '70s soft rock covers outside, four laptops inside a loaner RV smoke. Four women type feverishly.
There is no time to eat or drink, nor meet and greet, or even use the restroom, because the deployment of 4,000-something rubber ducks hinges on how fast they can type.
Welcome to Duck Central.
When someone buys a $20 raffle ticket for the Casper Rotary Club Great Duck Derby, he must fill out a name and address and phone number. The ticket hawkers bring the nearly $10,000 worth of tickets sold the day of the race to an RV donated by Sonny's, where the colored pieces of paper are stacked on top of approximately 90 percent of the nearly $90,000 in total sales, which all must be entered into a computer program designed specifically for duck derbies called QuackTrack.
Cheryl Olsen-Quinlan deals four ticket stubs across the bottom of her laptop and begins entering information onto a spreadsheet. She sits in a folding chair ponied up to a folding table. Sandy Widmer and Laura Bemis sit on a loveseat with computers on their laps, and tickets piled beside them. Brenda Nunez types at the two-person dinner table.
They have been typing since 9 a.m., and stayed up til 1 the night before.
Their fingers grow sore.
Their backs stiffen.
Their eyes strain and their heads ache from reading red ink written on purple paper.
"We hate people who write in red ink," says Widmer.
Despite the faux pas, they'll still get a fair shot at winning a trip to Alaska or a year's supply of cat litter or any of the 186 prizes up for grabs at the derby.
For that they can thank the women left abandoned in an RV during the city's last big party of the summer.
Each Rotary member gets two books of tickets to sell. Rick Sanders takes the tickets entered into QuackTrack and organizes them in Rubbermaid tubs. Doug McLaughlin volunteered to take charge of ticket sales and accounting, the last of which is done in the RV bedroom.
But as the clock approaches 2, the pressure falls on the four typists. The derby is supposed to start then, but the growing stacks of tickets in the to-do pile say it won't.
"We'll just do one more ticket," Robin Mundell, president of Casper Rotary, tells a last-minute duck adopter.
"Robin, you can't say no," says Johnson.
"We'll just have to lock you in the bedroom," Olsen-Quinlan vows.
They type faster, but 2 p.m. passes.
"This girl's name just became Samanta," Widmer says, shrugging off a typo. "New identities are being formed as we speak."
Even if Samantha becomes Samanta, she'll still get her cat litter if her duck places. Each entry in the system is given a corresponding number scrawled on each duck's rubber belly. The ducks that place get plucked from the water, brought to Duck Central and cross-referenced.
QuackTrack, it seems, is foolproof.
But it requires a complete registry before the ducks can be released. And that requires time. Duck Central fields calls from the dropping area, located at the new Jonah Bank by 1st and Poplar.
"Can we drop yet?" they ask.
Not yet.
Considering that Rotary members evacuated the ducks from a barn on Web Creek Road during the Jackson Canyon fire, it's been a stressful time for ducks.
Fortunately, there is a beer festival going on outside, and no one seems to care. As it begins to sprinkle outside, the stack nears its end.
"Last one!" Widmer shouts, after six-and-a-half hours of staring at the same screen.
The RV door shuts. Johnson makes the phone call at 3:24 p.m. Release the ducks.
"It's about ducking time," a Rotary member says later.
The near-plastic hot dog gets eaten. Beer cans crack open. All of a sudden, it's a party on Saturday.
"The ducks are coming!" someone outside shouts. "The ducks are coming!"
