Desert Bus For Hope
Loading Ready Run is perhaps best known for their Annual "Desert Bus For Hope" event. On 23 November 2007, the group started a marathon game session of Desert Bus (a minigame from 'Penn & Teller's Smoke and Mirrors') called Desert Bus for Hope to raise money for the charity Child's Play. The four-man team took turns playing the game continuously, with more hours added as more donations were made. The event was broadcast live via webcam, and garnered attention both from the media, and Penn & Teller, who called in, sent pizza, and made donations. By the end of the event, $22,805 had been raised, including donations from Penn and Teller themselves.
On 18 November 2008, LoadingReadyRun officially announced that they planned a second marathon run of Desert Bus which began on 28 November. The second Desert Bus lasted slightly more than five days and raised over $70,000. The crew later produced a music video entitled Desert Bus Killed the Internet Star (a parody of Video Killed the Radio Star) describing the events of the marathon.
On 25 August 2009, the third marathon run was announced, set to start on 20 November 2009. At 18:42 GMT-0 on 26 November 2009 the marathon completed, raising over $140,000 (after all e-cheques had cleared) for Child's Play. One notable donor, going by the alias "Octopimp", donated nearly $10,000 alone, becoming a mascot of sorts in the event's live chatroom and in turn inspiring many other high-number donations and auction bids.
The fourth marathon run was announced on 4 May 2010, and began on 19 November 2010 at 6:00 p.m. PST. Penn & Teller auctioned off an "Ultimate Desert Bus Experience Pack" which included a bus ticket and sand from the Las Vegas desert, signed by Penn & Teller themselves. The fourth run concluded after 5 days and 21 hours, with $208,249.82 raised. A fifth marathon run began on 18 November 2011 and went for six days and six hours, raising a total of $383,075.10.
Desert Bus 6 began Friday, 16 November 2012, and breached One Million dollars in lifetime donations on November 19th at 6:46pm
Read more about this topic: Loading Ready Run
Famous quotes containing the words desert, bus and/or hope:
“The desert is a natural extension of the inner silence of the body. If humanity’s language, technology, and buildings are an extension of its constructive faculties, the desert alone is an extension of its capacity for absence, the ideal schema of humanity’s disappearance.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)
“There was an old man from Darjeeling
Who got on a bus bound for Ealing.
It said at the door,
“Please don’t spit on the floor,”
So he carefully spat on the ceiling.”
—Anonymous.
“Our roots are in the dark; the earth is our country. Why did we look up for blessing—instead of around, and down? What hope we have lies there. Not in the sky full of orbiting spy-eyes and weaponry, but in the earth we have looked down upon. Not from above, but from below. Not in the light that blinds, but in the dark that nourishes, where human beings grow human souls.”
—Ursula K. Le Guin (b. 1929)