Sigh. This is our last night at Calwood (which, just so you know, is actually Cal-Wood, but I hate typing that for some reason). I'm really pretty sad about it. But instead of being sad, I guess I could tell you what I did for my last few days.
Monday: The high on Monday was like 33 degrees, which is far warmer than it had been. That means we could work outside again! In the morning, we had to load up Angie's truck with branches from brush piles. Someone (probably Angie) had cut down a bunch of trees and left the branches in piles along the road up to Solitude Point. We had to load them in her truck so she could dump them in the burn pit by the barn. This is surprisingly hard work. The branches all get tangled up in each other, and many had been buried by snow. Heaving them out is hard sometimes, but really satisfying when you get a really hard one free. It got pretty cold and windy after we had been out for a while, which made waiting for Angie to come back when she went to dump a load pretty miserable.
In the afternoon, Tomm, Marquis, and I built bird boxes. Remember the bluebird boxes that we cleaned a week or two ago? Angie and Rick wanted a bunch more built. Some people had already worked on that before (some with pretty funny looking results), but Tomm and I hadn't. It wasn't too difficult though. Rick had cut template pieces for each of the sides, and we just had to try to repeat it. It was pretty fun. The only saw available was a jig saw, which is NOT my favorite, but I always enjoy building stuff. I'm proud to say that I think mine looked like one of the most well put-together. We also decorated them a little be burning designs and our initials into them with a soldering iron that was in the shop. I don't know how, but I somehow managed to completely forget to take pictures.
Tuesday: In the morning, there were more brush piles. These were even harder. Jess, Michala, Heather, Marquis, and I had a tough time with some of the branches. There were a few we just had to leave, they were so stuck. We were in a different area than we were on Monday, and the trees here were apparently taller. We had to saw several in half so they would fit in the truck. Let me tell you, hand sawing for long periods of time gets tiring. The first tree you cut, you get all excited because it's so easy. Then you do a few more. And a few more after that. Then you're pretty tired and never want to see another hand saw. Also, it was even windier than it was on Monday, and we were farther from the burn pit, so we had to wait a long time between loads in some crazy strong wind.
For the past several days, TK has been Rick's special helper. They've been working on getting the old barn doors (which got pretty messed up in the strong wind) off and taken apart, and new ones on.Tuesday afternoon, TK was scheduled to split wood. So I was Rick's helper. My task was to take apart the other barn door that TK hadn't gotten to yet. Taking apart is often more fun than putting together, so I had a good time. There were nails everywhere, a few random screws, and gigantic hinges. What more could you ask for? I got to know my pry bar and hammer pretty well yesterday.
After work yesterday, most of us went down to Boulder. Why, you ask? Because Tomm had an appointment to get a tattoo. He's been wanting a hand-sized tattoo of a velociraptor on the back of his shoulder for a while now, and one of the Calwood staff people has a tattoo artist brother in Boulder. So Tomm made an appointment. And we all wanted to come watch. Jess, Lindsey, TK and I were there when Mike, the artist, put the stencil on, then when he started doing the outline, then we went to go get food because no one really wanted the four of us crowding around the whole time. He got the outline and some shading done, and he'll come back sometime for the color. It actually looks pretty cool.
Wednesday: Today, in the morning, Christina and Heather were scheduled to split wood. TK and I were scheduled this afternoon. Christina fell on Monday, put her hand out to catch herself, and landed on her thumb wrong. She went to the doctor yesterday and found out her thumb was broken, and now has a cast (which we have all signed). So she couldn't split today. Angie said they were almost out of gas for the splitter, so the afternoon people might not be able to do it. I volunteered to take Christina's place, because I really kind of wanted one more turn splitting. Working the splitter is pretty fun and I didn't want to miss my last turn. Also, I had heard that everyone who wasn't splitting would be seeding an area between the barn and lodge, and splitting sounded more fun than that.
It turns out that seeding didn't happen in the morning. I don't know why. So it got moved to the afternoon. Since TK and I were actually scheduled to split in the afternoon, I decided to go ahead and take another shift. About five minutes into it, Angie came and got us and said they need everyone to seed because it was such a big job. One person sprinkles seeds, and everyone else covers the ENTIRE HUGE AREA with dirt from piles Rick had dumped with the bulldozer. Shovel, dump. Shovel, dump. Shovel, dump. Let me just say that I am very tired right now. The good news is that Angie said that if we didn't finish, we'd have to do an hour or so tomorrow. All we're supposed to do tomorrow is pack, clean up, eat lunch, and go back to campus. No one wanted to come back out and shovel tomorrow. We actually did more than Angie's goal for the day. So no shoveling tomorrow!
So there we have it. That's all the Calwood work. I still haven't quite realized that we're really leaving tomorrow. This has been such a great first project. My team is SO lucky.
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Sunday, December 13, 2009
Longest. Entry. Ever.
Wow, longest absence ever. There was a lot going on, and the internet kept going out. I hope you're nice and settled in, because the longest absence ever leads to the longest blog post ever.
Thursday, Dec. 3: In the morning, it was still too cold to work outside. Calwood has a bunch of fishing poles that had been donated, but they were all tangled up, and some of them didn’t work. We had to untangle them and try casting them, and if they didn’t work, try to fix them. So…I cast my first fishing line! It wasn’t quite as exciting as I thought it would be. It was a pretty easy morning.
That only took until about 10:30. Angie and Rick didn’t have anything for us to do, but we still had to fill our day somehow to get our hours. We decided to do some service learning (which counts as hours) by going to museums. Since the road was still pretty icy, we could only take the cargo truck down the mountain because the van couldn’t handle it. The truck only holds six people, so Christina made two trips to bring us all down. I was in the second group so I could have time to pack for
After the atmospheric place, Christina took me to the bus station so I could get to the airport. I flew to
Random story: We had to wear our uniforms to the atmospheric place because we were getting hours for it. I went straight to the airport from there, and I didn’t think it was worth it to change at the airport, so I flew in my uniform. This created the biggest airport security ordeal I have ever experienced. I took off my shoes, put my purse on the conveyor belt, took my laptop out of my backpack, and went through the metal detector. Since I never wear belts ever, I forgot that I was wearing one with my uniform. Obviously, I beeped in the metal detector. I remembered the belt and took it off, but the guard had to pat me down because I had beeped. Remember the thousand pockets in the uniform pants? Pat pat pat – “Maam, do you have something in that pocket?” “Yes.” “Can you pull it out please?” Oh look, random papers. Pat pat pat – “Do you have something in that pocket?” Oh, cash and my ID. Pat pat pat – oh, my boarding pass. Pat pat pat – chap stick. It was ridiculous.
I flew back to
On Monday, my temporary team had to leave at 7:15am. That’s usually when I wake up at Calwood. Their project is called Learning Landscapes. When the weather was nicer, they were going around to schools and building playgrounds. Or something. But since it had been snowing for the past couple weeks, they’ve been doing inside work. They go around to schools, usually inner city elementary schools, with blank banners and paint. They go into art classes and help the kids design a banner with whatever theme the school had decided on, and they help the kids paint them. They are usually hung up on poles outside the school. The Earth team already had 14 people, so I took up the last seat in the 15-passenger van. We went to the warehouse where we were supposed to pick up the banners, but they sent us to another place. We went there, and they sent us somewhere else. The third place sent us back to the first place. We got the banners and went to the school. Susan, the person in charge of their project, told us we would be splitting up. Half the group stayed there, and the rest of us went with Susan to another school. When we got there, we found out that the school hadn’t decided what they wanted on the banners yet, so there was nothing for us to do. So we went back to the other school. We helped with a first grade class and a fourth grade class. It was really pretty fun. The kids were adorable and the people on that Earth team were awesome. I felt awkward with them at first, but they totally made me feel welcome.
At lunch time after those two classes, Christina suddenly walked in the door. I was completely surprised. She said there was a lull in the snow, so she came down to pick me up so we could be back before it started snowing again. She said Nichole had tried to call me, but my phone was on silent. (I was at work, after all.) Christina took me back to campus so I could get my stuff, then we went back up the mountain. I was back! Yay! I had fun on their project, but I had missed my mountain.
Tuesday: The temperature was in the single digits, so too cold to work outside. Again. NCCC requires everyone to turn in a resume at the end of this round, so we worked on those in the morning. In the afternoon, there was actually a school group coming to Calwood. I don’t know how a bus made it up the hill. Calwood staff said a few of us could shadow the class to get a better idea of what they do. Tomm, TK, Marquis, and I volunteered. The kids that were coming were from an 11th grade special needs class, and Calwood was going to teach them some sheltering skills, among other things. They were going outside. I wore long johns, uniform pants, and snow pants on the bottom, and two long sleeved shirts, a hoodie, and my AmeriParka on top. And a hat. And some gloves and amazingly warm boots that I borrowed from Calwood. It was extremely cold that day.
We didn’t go far from the lodge to do the activity they had planned. Mari and John, the Calwood teachers for the day, said the four of us could do the activity also. We were all supposed to build a shelter that would hold in as much heat as possible for a “creature” that would only be a couple inches tall. The guys and I built a pretty good shelter. A layer of sticks on the ground, then a layer of pine needles, then sticks to make walls, then cover everything in pine needles, then cover it all with snow for insulation. The way Mari and John had planned to test the shelters was really clever. They had film canisters with water and Jell-o mix inside. If our “Jell-o baby” stayed liquid, then our shelter was warm enough and our baby survived. If it solidified and turned to Jell-o, the shelter let in too much cold, and the baby died. Mari and John didn’t allow quite enough waiting time to let anyone’s baby completely turn to Jell-o because it was SO COLD, but ours was definitely still all liquid. Some people’s had gotten a little thicker already. We kept our Jell-o baby alive!
Later in the afternoon, I was downstairs in the lodge with a few other people, and Christina burst in all excited and said that the lake was frozen enough to play broom ball (hockey, but with no skates, brooms instead of sticks, and a soccer ball instead of a puck). Angie had showed a few people how to test the ice thickness, and it was thick enough to be safe. So we all bundled up again and went back outside. There was about a foot of snow on the frozen lake, which took about an hour with all of us working to shovel it off, then we played. Several of the Calwood staff came out to play with us. Most of you probably know that I am really not a sports person, but it was really fun. I stayed on defense the whole time and actually did pretty well, blocking a lot of people. And managed not to fall on the ice a single time. We played for probably a little over an hour, then we all got too cold. (My team won with a score of 2-1!)
Wednesday: Again, too cold to work outside, but there wasn’t anything for us to do inside. We drove to
Thursday, Dec. 10: Yet again, too cold to work outside. At the end of each project, every team has to turn in a portfolio of the project. We worked on our Calwood portfolio all morning. In the afternoon, some people went to build more of those bird boxes we cleaned, and others of us went to build new doors for the barn. The barn doors get pretty messed up with the strong winds and needed to be replaced. Rick gave us the measurements, lumber, and tools, and away we went. He told us to only build the frame of the doors, and we’ll add the plywood later. It was cool. I haven’t used a miter saw in a while, so that was nice.
Christina had recently gone over our budget, and discovered that we are WAY under our food budget. Basically, our food situation is awesome. We always have a ton of food and we have really good cooks on our team, yet we are still way under budget. We’ve talked to a few other teams about food, and most seem to be unhappy with it. Other teams run out of food a lot or have way too much spaghetti or something. None of us know how we’re doing so much better with food, but no one’s complaining. Anyway, since we have so much extra food money, we decided to go down to
Friday: Friday was a day off for us, because the team had to work last Saturday (I was in
After we hung out in
Which brings us to today (finally). I have done absolutely nothing today except watch a lot of Arrested Development with Jess and write this insanely long blog update, and its been fabulous. Everyone but Jess and Rob went down to
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
I Hate Thinking of Titles
You know, sometimes the events I'm getting ready to write about just don't lend themselves to a good title. It's really very frustrating.
Monday: All day Monday, we worked on the trail to Longview (remember the place where I burrowed into the forest to find barbed wire?). Angie and Rick had dumped a huge pile of trail mix at top of the hill to Longview, and we had to bring it out to the trail. When we were about to leave for this, Angie told us that Rafa, the director of Calwood, was out hunting elk with his son kind of in the area, so don't be scared if we hear gun shots. (This tidbit will be important later.) Anyway, while some people had more wheelbarrow action, Heather, Tomm, and I dug out water bars. You know how sometimes on trails, there's a log going across the trail to be like a step? Water bars are like that, except they have more purpose. When the trail is on a hill, you have to dig out a little trench on the uphill side of the log, so the log is raised a couple inches. Off the the side of your little trench, you have to dig a bigger trench. So the water runs down the trail, hits the log, then runs off the side of the trail into your bigger trench. This is to prevent erosion on the trail. The water bars had already been dug, but they had filled with dirt. We just had to sort of clean them up a bit. Most of them weren't too difficult, but the ground was pretty frozen for some of them.
We were done with the water bars by lunch time, so after lunch we had to help the others with the trial mix. By this time, the others had gotten pretty far down the hill. This makes it VERY hard work. You have to wheel a full, heavy wheelbarrow a LONG way down a bumpy hill that has several of those log steps, many of which are pretty high. Then, you have to push the empty wheelbarrow a LONG way up a bumpy hill. Each trip with the barrow took about 10 or 15 minutes, since we had to go so far away. Even the strongest people on the team were exhausted by the time they got back up the hill. After us water bar people joined them, we had enough to have two people for each of the three barrows, and we could switch off. Having a 10 or 15 minute break between trips made it not too horrible. By the time we finished in the afternoon, I think we had gone at least a quarter of a mile down the hill. When you make several quarter mile trips with a wheelbarrow on a hill, that adds up to a pretty hard day.
Monday was also a day we had all been waiting for, because we found out our next project! My team got our first choice - Habitat for Humanity construction in New Orleans! Woo hoo! When you add that to our current project, we are seriously getting spoiled. Right now we're doing hard work, but it's usually fun. We get to have an amazing view any direction we look. We have a lodge and two cabins almost all to ourselves. Our sponsors are amazing - super nice, informative, helpful. Our next project is our absolute top choice. Want to know what the other Sun Unit teams will be doing? Jordan's team, the other team in Boulder right now, will be on Habitat construction with us, so they got lucky also. Julie's team, who is in New Orleans right now working in a Habitat warehouse, has a local project, with the Red Cross, and they have to live on campus. We're on our local project right now, and we get to live here. Scott's team, which is currently in New Orleans doing Habitat construction, has a regional project. They have to do taxes in Texas. Seriously. There are like four projects next round that are just helping people in whatever community do taxes. I think they're on the Texas coast, so at least that will be nice, but they're still doing taxes for two months. Dani's team, who is working at the Arkansas Children's Hospital right now, has what everyone calls Poop in a Bag Project. There's a project in Arizona, which a team from another unit is on right now, where they build trails and stuff in some really remote area. They have to camp out. They can only shower once a week. And you know how when you camp, you're supposed to leave no trace that you were there? Yep. Poop in a Bag Project. How did my team get so lucky?
Also on Monday afternoon, Vaughn (our Unit Leader) came to visit, along with Nichole (the Sun Unit Development Assistant) and Sarah (the Sun Support Team Leader). Sarah and Nichole work in the office. Sarah was actually my first Team Leader when I first got here. I was supposed to have Dani, but a bunch of TLs, including Dani, got sent to American Samoa soon before we all got to campus, when they had that tsunami. So Sarah had to take over Dani's team for a while. Anyway, the three of them came to visit and see how we were doing. Chirstina told us later that they were all really impressed with how we seem to be handling the work and how good our attitudes are.
Tuesday: Yesterday morning, a few of us got some experience with the wood chipper. We drove out to where Angie had cut some pine trees, and fed the branches into the chipper. It was kind of fun for a while, until we realized that this particular chipper wasn't very good. It was way too small. There were several branches that were pretty small, but the chipper wouldn't take them. We spent way too much time trying to wrestle branches in. After only an hour or two, Rick got a radio message that we were supposed to get like four or five inches of snow that day. The chipper had to be driven back into town, so Rick and Angie decided to take it early to avoid having to drive back up the snowy mountain. Plus, it was kind of a waste of time having to wrestle with the small one so much. I think at some point later, they'll get a bigger one, and we'll continue that project.
In the afternoon, we got to clean out bird boxes. Calwood has about 50 bird boxes on trees all over the property. Each of the educators here have certain boxes that they take care of and use to teach kids. They take kids to the boxes and record data about what kind of birds had been there, what kind of nests are inside, if there are any eggs inside, etc. A few different kinds of bluebirds and wrens use these boxes, but they won't use them if there's anything inside already. We got split into small groups, and each group got a bird box map with an area circled, and sent out to clean them. We also had to do a little repair on the tops of some of them, to make them latch better. Heather, TK, and I got the area we had to drive to. I think we lucked out though. All but one box was pretty close to the road, so we'd drive until we saw one. I got to drive the cargo truck. That thing is just fun. That one box that wasn't on the road required a hike up a fairly steep hill, but it was kind of fun.
We were the second group to finish and come back to the lodge, so Angie gave us another project. Someone, at some point in the past, was doing some kind of research project near the lodge. She had put metal spikes in the ground with string connecting them. I don't know what it was for. Angie said she and the kids trip on them all the time, so she sent us out to remove them. While we were doing this, the other groups came back. When we were almost done, we saw Angie, Rick, and several of our teammates come down the road, and stop and stare. We went over to see what they were looking at. On a fairly treeless part of a hill about a quarter mile away, there was a herd of elk. They kept pouring out of the trees. Rick said there were at least 80 of them. It was really pretty cool to see. Angie said something about how it was too bad Rafa wasn't there, since he was trying to let his son Brooks to shoot his first elk yesterday, and then we saw a car drive down the road. It was Rafa and his two sons. We heard a couple shots, and saw an elk go down. At the first shot, obviously the herd ran up the hill into the trees. A second later, they all came running back down, and split up. Angie said there must have been a mountain lion up there to scare them back down. We all REALLY wanted to see the lion, but it didn't come out of the trees. After they split up, they still just kind of stood around in the clearing. Rafa came on Angie's radio and said he needed help, so Angie went to get her gun. Apparently, two elk had been shot. Sometime before Rafa and his sons drove up, pretty much the entire Calwood staff had come out to see the herd. When all the shooting was over, everyone was allowed to go over to the hill. I tentatively went over, but left soon after the skinning started. That was a little too much for me. I suppose the whole thing was kind of interesting, mostly just because when will I ever have this experience again? But I really don't like the idea of hunting. I guess last night Rafa and the staff started skinning and butchering them, but it got dark and VERY cold really soon, so that was finished today.
Wednesday (today): We woke up today to about 8 inches of new snow, and a high of like 15 degrees. It was determined too cold to work outside. Calwood gets TONS of donations of outdoor gear from an REI store nearby. Apparently, you can return pretty much anything for any reason at REI, but then they can't resell it. We had to go through tents that were donated, see if anything was wrong with them and if they could be fixed, and label them with how many people would fit inside. So we had to fully assemble all the tents, and figure it out. Lots of them didn't have poles. How can you have a tent with no poles? Calwood also had a big box of spare tent parts, so at the end of the day, we had to try to match up spare poles with poleless tents. It was fun for a while, but setting up and taking down tents all day gets a little old. At least we got pretty good at it.
I think tomorrow will be another inside day. I think it's supposed to stay pretty cold for the next few days. I can't really imagine how many more indoor projects they can think of for us to do though.
Tomorrow night, I'll be flying to Chicago for K-Spang's memorial service on Friday afternoon. I'm looking forward to seeing everyone, but I SO wish it were for a different reason. Apparently on Sunday, when I'm flying back to Denver, there's supposed to be a lot more snow. Which means I might not be able to come back up the mountain. There's a plan in place for if that happens: I'll stay on campus in Denver, live in my empty dorm room in my hall of other empty rooms, and eat and work with one of the teams that is living on campus this round until the roads are clear enough to get back up here. Obviously, I'm hoping for no snow this weekend.
Monday: All day Monday, we worked on the trail to Longview (remember the place where I burrowed into the forest to find barbed wire?). Angie and Rick had dumped a huge pile of trail mix at top of the hill to Longview, and we had to bring it out to the trail. When we were about to leave for this, Angie told us that Rafa, the director of Calwood, was out hunting elk with his son kind of in the area, so don't be scared if we hear gun shots. (This tidbit will be important later.) Anyway, while some people had more wheelbarrow action, Heather, Tomm, and I dug out water bars. You know how sometimes on trails, there's a log going across the trail to be like a step? Water bars are like that, except they have more purpose. When the trail is on a hill, you have to dig out a little trench on the uphill side of the log, so the log is raised a couple inches. Off the the side of your little trench, you have to dig a bigger trench. So the water runs down the trail, hits the log, then runs off the side of the trail into your bigger trench. This is to prevent erosion on the trail. The water bars had already been dug, but they had filled with dirt. We just had to sort of clean them up a bit. Most of them weren't too difficult, but the ground was pretty frozen for some of them.
We were done with the water bars by lunch time, so after lunch we had to help the others with the trial mix. By this time, the others had gotten pretty far down the hill. This makes it VERY hard work. You have to wheel a full, heavy wheelbarrow a LONG way down a bumpy hill that has several of those log steps, many of which are pretty high. Then, you have to push the empty wheelbarrow a LONG way up a bumpy hill. Each trip with the barrow took about 10 or 15 minutes, since we had to go so far away. Even the strongest people on the team were exhausted by the time they got back up the hill. After us water bar people joined them, we had enough to have two people for each of the three barrows, and we could switch off. Having a 10 or 15 minute break between trips made it not too horrible. By the time we finished in the afternoon, I think we had gone at least a quarter of a mile down the hill. When you make several quarter mile trips with a wheelbarrow on a hill, that adds up to a pretty hard day.
Monday was also a day we had all been waiting for, because we found out our next project! My team got our first choice - Habitat for Humanity construction in New Orleans! Woo hoo! When you add that to our current project, we are seriously getting spoiled. Right now we're doing hard work, but it's usually fun. We get to have an amazing view any direction we look. We have a lodge and two cabins almost all to ourselves. Our sponsors are amazing - super nice, informative, helpful. Our next project is our absolute top choice. Want to know what the other Sun Unit teams will be doing? Jordan's team, the other team in Boulder right now, will be on Habitat construction with us, so they got lucky also. Julie's team, who is in New Orleans right now working in a Habitat warehouse, has a local project, with the Red Cross, and they have to live on campus. We're on our local project right now, and we get to live here. Scott's team, which is currently in New Orleans doing Habitat construction, has a regional project. They have to do taxes in Texas. Seriously. There are like four projects next round that are just helping people in whatever community do taxes. I think they're on the Texas coast, so at least that will be nice, but they're still doing taxes for two months. Dani's team, who is working at the Arkansas Children's Hospital right now, has what everyone calls Poop in a Bag Project. There's a project in Arizona, which a team from another unit is on right now, where they build trails and stuff in some really remote area. They have to camp out. They can only shower once a week. And you know how when you camp, you're supposed to leave no trace that you were there? Yep. Poop in a Bag Project. How did my team get so lucky?
Also on Monday afternoon, Vaughn (our Unit Leader) came to visit, along with Nichole (the Sun Unit Development Assistant) and Sarah (the Sun Support Team Leader). Sarah and Nichole work in the office. Sarah was actually my first Team Leader when I first got here. I was supposed to have Dani, but a bunch of TLs, including Dani, got sent to American Samoa soon before we all got to campus, when they had that tsunami. So Sarah had to take over Dani's team for a while. Anyway, the three of them came to visit and see how we were doing. Chirstina told us later that they were all really impressed with how we seem to be handling the work and how good our attitudes are.
Tuesday: Yesterday morning, a few of us got some experience with the wood chipper. We drove out to where Angie had cut some pine trees, and fed the branches into the chipper. It was kind of fun for a while, until we realized that this particular chipper wasn't very good. It was way too small. There were several branches that were pretty small, but the chipper wouldn't take them. We spent way too much time trying to wrestle branches in. After only an hour or two, Rick got a radio message that we were supposed to get like four or five inches of snow that day. The chipper had to be driven back into town, so Rick and Angie decided to take it early to avoid having to drive back up the snowy mountain. Plus, it was kind of a waste of time having to wrestle with the small one so much. I think at some point later, they'll get a bigger one, and we'll continue that project.
In the afternoon, we got to clean out bird boxes. Calwood has about 50 bird boxes on trees all over the property. Each of the educators here have certain boxes that they take care of and use to teach kids. They take kids to the boxes and record data about what kind of birds had been there, what kind of nests are inside, if there are any eggs inside, etc. A few different kinds of bluebirds and wrens use these boxes, but they won't use them if there's anything inside already. We got split into small groups, and each group got a bird box map with an area circled, and sent out to clean them. We also had to do a little repair on the tops of some of them, to make them latch better. Heather, TK, and I got the area we had to drive to. I think we lucked out though. All but one box was pretty close to the road, so we'd drive until we saw one. I got to drive the cargo truck. That thing is just fun. That one box that wasn't on the road required a hike up a fairly steep hill, but it was kind of fun.
We were the second group to finish and come back to the lodge, so Angie gave us another project. Someone, at some point in the past, was doing some kind of research project near the lodge. She had put metal spikes in the ground with string connecting them. I don't know what it was for. Angie said she and the kids trip on them all the time, so she sent us out to remove them. While we were doing this, the other groups came back. When we were almost done, we saw Angie, Rick, and several of our teammates come down the road, and stop and stare. We went over to see what they were looking at. On a fairly treeless part of a hill about a quarter mile away, there was a herd of elk. They kept pouring out of the trees. Rick said there were at least 80 of them. It was really pretty cool to see. Angie said something about how it was too bad Rafa wasn't there, since he was trying to let his son Brooks to shoot his first elk yesterday, and then we saw a car drive down the road. It was Rafa and his two sons. We heard a couple shots, and saw an elk go down. At the first shot, obviously the herd ran up the hill into the trees. A second later, they all came running back down, and split up. Angie said there must have been a mountain lion up there to scare them back down. We all REALLY wanted to see the lion, but it didn't come out of the trees. After they split up, they still just kind of stood around in the clearing. Rafa came on Angie's radio and said he needed help, so Angie went to get her gun. Apparently, two elk had been shot. Sometime before Rafa and his sons drove up, pretty much the entire Calwood staff had come out to see the herd. When all the shooting was over, everyone was allowed to go over to the hill. I tentatively went over, but left soon after the skinning started. That was a little too much for me. I suppose the whole thing was kind of interesting, mostly just because when will I ever have this experience again? But I really don't like the idea of hunting. I guess last night Rafa and the staff started skinning and butchering them, but it got dark and VERY cold really soon, so that was finished today.
Wednesday (today): We woke up today to about 8 inches of new snow, and a high of like 15 degrees. It was determined too cold to work outside. Calwood gets TONS of donations of outdoor gear from an REI store nearby. Apparently, you can return pretty much anything for any reason at REI, but then they can't resell it. We had to go through tents that were donated, see if anything was wrong with them and if they could be fixed, and label them with how many people would fit inside. So we had to fully assemble all the tents, and figure it out. Lots of them didn't have poles. How can you have a tent with no poles? Calwood also had a big box of spare tent parts, so at the end of the day, we had to try to match up spare poles with poleless tents. It was fun for a while, but setting up and taking down tents all day gets a little old. At least we got pretty good at it.
I think tomorrow will be another inside day. I think it's supposed to stay pretty cold for the next few days. I can't really imagine how many more indoor projects they can think of for us to do though.
Tomorrow night, I'll be flying to Chicago for K-Spang's memorial service on Friday afternoon. I'm looking forward to seeing everyone, but I SO wish it were for a different reason. Apparently on Sunday, when I'm flying back to Denver, there's supposed to be a lot more snow. Which means I might not be able to come back up the mountain. There's a plan in place for if that happens: I'll stay on campus in Denver, live in my empty dorm room in my hall of other empty rooms, and eat and work with one of the teams that is living on campus this round until the roads are clear enough to get back up here. Obviously, I'm hoping for no snow this weekend.
Sunday, November 29, 2009
Badassery
So those of you who know me probably know that I hardly ever curse, but I think I can safely say that I'm a badass right now. Today, everyone on my team besides TK, Heather, and myself went down to Boulder to do our grocery shopping. We go every Sunday. Actually, I think some people went down just to use the phone. Anyway, TK, Heather and I went on a hike. A very long hike. Remember the Death Hike from like the second week I was in Denver? I think that should now be called the Baby Hike. (I might have to think about that name a little more.)
It started off being that TK wanted to get people together to go up to Solitude Point, which is only about 15 or 20 minutes from the lodge. And you get a little bit of cell phone service there. I had never been up there. There was a day when everyone was up there dismantling a high ropes course, but I was splitting wood that day so I didn't get to go. So I thought it would be nice to go see what it's like and maybe make a phone call or two. TK was also trying to get a group together to go on a much much longer hike up to the top of a mountain that had a big rocky ridge on it. The first plan was to go up to Solitude, then come back down and go up to those rocks. I decided to do the nice easy Solitude hike, then come back and let the hardcore hikers go up the mountain. Then the plan was changed to do the longer one first, while there was more daylight and warmth, since Solitude is so close. Then a few people who had wanted to go on the long hike decided to go to Boulder instead. So TK and Heather were going to leave soon on the long hike, and I decided to go with them. We made sandwiches, and away we went. Remember how AmeriCorps loves hiking?
There was a trail for a little bit of the way on the part toward Solitude, then we left to blaze our own trail that was more straight toward the rocks. There was a pretty steep snowy valley we didn't see at first, and we went down into it. Then back up. After coming to the top after the valley, we could see the rocks really well, but they looked really far away, and on the other side of a valley that went pretty much vertically down from where we were. We looked around a little, and TK saw a place that wasn't as steep. So off we went.
When we got to the rocks, it was much more rock climbing-esque than hiking. There was definitely a lot of climbing over boulders going on. On more than one occasion, I thought there was no way I could get past a certain spot, but then I did. There was a nice flat-ish place close to the top, where we ate and enjoyed the insane view. Don't worry, lots of pictures were taken. I just can't post them for another two and a half weeks.
Now it was time for back down. I think getting down the rocks was harder on the legs than getting up. I made good use of the squat-and-slide technique. Did I fall? No. Did I twist my ankle and get stranded on a mountain? Almost, but no. Did I even scrape my hands on the rocks I was supporting myself on while I found somewhere to put my foot? No. Basically, I'm really proud of myself right now. I am not a hardcore hiker. I don't even think I'm a mediumcore hiker. I'm from Illinois, where hills don't exist.
It took us a lot less time to get back than it did to get up there. There was a lot of stopping on the way there to take pictures and figure out which direction to go next. Also, instead of going up and over the mountain in the middle, we kind of just went around it to go back. So while everyone else went back down to Boulder yet again and got groceries, three of us made our own trail up two mountains.
It started off being that TK wanted to get people together to go up to Solitude Point, which is only about 15 or 20 minutes from the lodge. And you get a little bit of cell phone service there. I had never been up there. There was a day when everyone was up there dismantling a high ropes course, but I was splitting wood that day so I didn't get to go. So I thought it would be nice to go see what it's like and maybe make a phone call or two. TK was also trying to get a group together to go on a much much longer hike up to the top of a mountain that had a big rocky ridge on it. The first plan was to go up to Solitude, then come back down and go up to those rocks. I decided to do the nice easy Solitude hike, then come back and let the hardcore hikers go up the mountain. Then the plan was changed to do the longer one first, while there was more daylight and warmth, since Solitude is so close. Then a few people who had wanted to go on the long hike decided to go to Boulder instead. So TK and Heather were going to leave soon on the long hike, and I decided to go with them. We made sandwiches, and away we went. Remember how AmeriCorps loves hiking?
There was a trail for a little bit of the way on the part toward Solitude, then we left to blaze our own trail that was more straight toward the rocks. There was a pretty steep snowy valley we didn't see at first, and we went down into it. Then back up. After coming to the top after the valley, we could see the rocks really well, but they looked really far away, and on the other side of a valley that went pretty much vertically down from where we were. We looked around a little, and TK saw a place that wasn't as steep. So off we went.
When we got to the rocks, it was much more rock climbing-esque than hiking. There was definitely a lot of climbing over boulders going on. On more than one occasion, I thought there was no way I could get past a certain spot, but then I did. There was a nice flat-ish place close to the top, where we ate and enjoyed the insane view. Don't worry, lots of pictures were taken. I just can't post them for another two and a half weeks.
Now it was time for back down. I think getting down the rocks was harder on the legs than getting up. I made good use of the squat-and-slide technique. Did I fall? No. Did I twist my ankle and get stranded on a mountain? Almost, but no. Did I even scrape my hands on the rocks I was supporting myself on while I found somewhere to put my foot? No. Basically, I'm really proud of myself right now. I am not a hardcore hiker. I don't even think I'm a mediumcore hiker. I'm from Illinois, where hills don't exist.
It took us a lot less time to get back than it did to get up there. There was a lot of stopping on the way there to take pictures and figure out which direction to go next. Also, instead of going up and over the mountain in the middle, we kind of just went around it to go back. So while everyone else went back down to Boulder yet again and got groceries, three of us made our own trail up two mountains.
Saturday, November 28, 2009
Thanksgiving
Let's pick up where we left off, shall we?
Wednesday night: Half of the other team in Boulder came up to Calwood to spend the night. I don't know if I had mentioned it, but we were planning on having Thanksgiving with the other team at their house, the AmeriMansion. That was before we all saw our living sites and discovered that Calwood has about 4 times as much space and an industrial kitchen. So we decided to have it here. Half of their team came up Wednesday night, and we took them to the Merc. The tiny little 200-person town at the bottom of the mountain is called Jamestown, and the Jamestown Mercantile Cafe is the local restaurant/bar/general store. They have free live music every Thursday and Saturday, and a few of us went down on Thursday of last week. It was pretty fun. The music was a husband and wife who said they were from "a few canyons over." The locals all stared at us when we walked in because we were obviously new. The bar had no liquor, only wine and beer. When the music was over and we were thinking about leaving because we had to be up early to work the next day, the dreadlocked waiter came over and said "The gentleman in the cowboy hat over there would like to buy you guys a pitcher if you want it." (Yes, we were over 21.) It's just a cute little place. Anyway, we took the other team there on Wednesday night because there was another band. This band was really pretty good. They did a lot of really good covers, and a lot of people were dancing in the tiny space available. Angie and Rick, our Calwood site supervisors, were there, and they said that even without the 18 (or however many) of us, that was still the most people they've ever seen at the Merc before. Jamestown was a pretty exciting place to be on Wednesday.
Thursday: The rest of the other team was coming on Thursday. Their project sponsors had decided to be awesome and buy them two turkeys, a ham, several pies, and a bunch of ingredients for them to make other food, so the team was bringing it all here. A few people on my team wanted to make things also, so we got that done before they got here. (I made oatmeal cookies, which turned out better than I've ever made them.) After they got here, they finished making their stuff, I made mashed potatoes since apparently no one else was, and we ate. There were 21 of us around 4 tables pushed together, which a few people had set and decorated. It was pretty much an amazing Thanksgiving.
After we ate (and sat around for a while), the other team left. Several people on my team wanted to call our families, so we decided to drive down the mountain. There's a Target near the bottom, which someone wanted to go to anyway, so we were going to go there to make our calls. Turns out Target is closed on Thanksgiving, along with pretty much everywhere else. We ended up finding a Wal-Mart that was open like 10 miles away. I called my house, and no one answered. How sad is that? I make a special trip down the stupid mountain to call my parents, and they're not home. I called my mom's cell phone, and she answered! I asked where they were, and she said in Louisiana at my brother's apartment. I had no idea they were doing that. It ended up being nice though, since I got to talk to both parents and Carl all at once.
Friday: A few of us went down to Boulder again to walk around and try to get some shopping done. I managed to find two Christmas presents! I don't think I've ever done any Christmas shopping this early before. And no, I didn't do any of that scary Black Friday type shopping. We were there in the afternoon, and not at a mall or anything.
We went back up to Calwood to eat some Thanksgiving leftovers (the other team had left almost all the food with us - I think it was because they just have a regular size refrigerator and didn't have the space for a lot of extra food), then we went back to Boulder to hang out that night.
Saturday (today): Again, back to Boulder. A couple people needed to go there today (one to meet up with her cousin, another to pick up his car from the AmeriMansion and take it back to Denver), and most of the rest of my team came down just for something to do. We went to the Boulder library and got library cards. When this project is over and I don't have internet restrictions, I think I'll probably post a picture of the card. It's actually pretty amusing. Anyway, more walking around, then back up to Calwood for more leftovers.
It wasn't a terribly eventful weekend, but it's been nice and relaxing. It's weird to have this much time off. This coming week is our only full week of work. The first week was 4 days, and this past week was only 3. Since we're supposed to work this Saturday for a fundraiser Calwood is having, we get next Monday off. So next week will only be 4 days again. It's weird to think that this project is already almost half over.
Oh! And we find out on Monday what exactly our next project will be. We know we're in the Gulf next round. Out of the 8 Gulf projects next round, 7 are in New Orleans, and 1 is in Lafayette, Louisiana. They mostly all seem like good projects, but some are definitely better than others. I think we have a good chance of getting one of our top few project choices. We'll see!
Wednesday night: Half of the other team in Boulder came up to Calwood to spend the night. I don't know if I had mentioned it, but we were planning on having Thanksgiving with the other team at their house, the AmeriMansion. That was before we all saw our living sites and discovered that Calwood has about 4 times as much space and an industrial kitchen. So we decided to have it here. Half of their team came up Wednesday night, and we took them to the Merc. The tiny little 200-person town at the bottom of the mountain is called Jamestown, and the Jamestown Mercantile Cafe is the local restaurant/bar/general store. They have free live music every Thursday and Saturday, and a few of us went down on Thursday of last week. It was pretty fun. The music was a husband and wife who said they were from "a few canyons over." The locals all stared at us when we walked in because we were obviously new. The bar had no liquor, only wine and beer. When the music was over and we were thinking about leaving because we had to be up early to work the next day, the dreadlocked waiter came over and said "The gentleman in the cowboy hat over there would like to buy you guys a pitcher if you want it." (Yes, we were over 21.) It's just a cute little place. Anyway, we took the other team there on Wednesday night because there was another band. This band was really pretty good. They did a lot of really good covers, and a lot of people were dancing in the tiny space available. Angie and Rick, our Calwood site supervisors, were there, and they said that even without the 18 (or however many) of us, that was still the most people they've ever seen at the Merc before. Jamestown was a pretty exciting place to be on Wednesday.
Thursday: The rest of the other team was coming on Thursday. Their project sponsors had decided to be awesome and buy them two turkeys, a ham, several pies, and a bunch of ingredients for them to make other food, so the team was bringing it all here. A few people on my team wanted to make things also, so we got that done before they got here. (I made oatmeal cookies, which turned out better than I've ever made them.) After they got here, they finished making their stuff, I made mashed potatoes since apparently no one else was, and we ate. There were 21 of us around 4 tables pushed together, which a few people had set and decorated. It was pretty much an amazing Thanksgiving.
After we ate (and sat around for a while), the other team left. Several people on my team wanted to call our families, so we decided to drive down the mountain. There's a Target near the bottom, which someone wanted to go to anyway, so we were going to go there to make our calls. Turns out Target is closed on Thanksgiving, along with pretty much everywhere else. We ended up finding a Wal-Mart that was open like 10 miles away. I called my house, and no one answered. How sad is that? I make a special trip down the stupid mountain to call my parents, and they're not home. I called my mom's cell phone, and she answered! I asked where they were, and she said in Louisiana at my brother's apartment. I had no idea they were doing that. It ended up being nice though, since I got to talk to both parents and Carl all at once.
Friday: A few of us went down to Boulder again to walk around and try to get some shopping done. I managed to find two Christmas presents! I don't think I've ever done any Christmas shopping this early before. And no, I didn't do any of that scary Black Friday type shopping. We were there in the afternoon, and not at a mall or anything.
We went back up to Calwood to eat some Thanksgiving leftovers (the other team had left almost all the food with us - I think it was because they just have a regular size refrigerator and didn't have the space for a lot of extra food), then we went back to Boulder to hang out that night.
Saturday (today): Again, back to Boulder. A couple people needed to go there today (one to meet up with her cousin, another to pick up his car from the AmeriMansion and take it back to Denver), and most of the rest of my team came down just for something to do. We went to the Boulder library and got library cards. When this project is over and I don't have internet restrictions, I think I'll probably post a picture of the card. It's actually pretty amusing. Anyway, more walking around, then back up to Calwood for more leftovers.
It wasn't a terribly eventful weekend, but it's been nice and relaxing. It's weird to have this much time off. This coming week is our only full week of work. The first week was 4 days, and this past week was only 3. Since we're supposed to work this Saturday for a fundraiser Calwood is having, we get next Monday off. So next week will only be 4 days again. It's weird to think that this project is already almost half over.
Oh! And we find out on Monday what exactly our next project will be. We know we're in the Gulf next round. Out of the 8 Gulf projects next round, 7 are in New Orleans, and 1 is in Lafayette, Louisiana. They mostly all seem like good projects, but some are definitely better than others. I think we have a good chance of getting one of our top few project choices. We'll see!
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Yep, Still Tired
Wow, I haven't been on a computer since Friday. Internet here goes out a lot. So here's what we've been up to this week:
Saturday: All day Saturday, my team did an ISP in Denver. The county was giving away free H1N1 vaccines at a local high school for anyone, not just people in the "risk groups." My team went down to help run it. My job was to stand for hours in the auditorium, where people were sent to fill out their forms. At the end of the form, it said "STOP! Do not write below this line." Under that line, the date needed to be filled in, but obviously no one did it because they were following directions. So I had to check over the forms, make sure it was all filled in, then I would just write the date for them because it was easier than asking them to do it and having them be confused. 11/21/09. 11/21/09. 11/21/09. 11/21/09. 11/21/09. Over and over and over. In case you were wondering, the date last Saturday was 11/21/09.
After we were done there, we drove over to the AmeriMansion in Boulder, where that other Sun Unit team is living. It's much less mansion-like than we were expecting, but still pretty nice. My team had all brought a change of clothes (we have to wear uniforms to do ISPs), then both teams hopped back in our vans to go out in Boulder. It was pretty fun to get to hang out with people from another team. Even though it had only been a week, it seemed like it had been forever since we've seen anyone outside of our team. We weren't there for very long, because the rule with the AmeriVans is that they have to be parked at our housing site from midnight till 6am every night. Since it takes so long to get up the mountain, we had to leave Boulder at about 11 to get back in time. It was still pretty fun though.
Sunday: Nick, a guy from the other Boulder team, had set up a tour for us at the Celestial Seasonings Tea factory. Did you know that ALL Celestial Seasonings tea in the entire world is made here in Boulder, CO? I didn't either. The tour wasn't until 2:30, so some of us went to Boulder early to have more time in civilization. A few of us went to a place called Foolish Craig's for lunch, and it was really cool. I think it's mainly a crepe place, but they had really good sandwiches and stuff too. There was also a lot of really good art all over the walls. After lunch, I got in some phone time, which was really nice.
*Begin tangent*
So I found out why we don't get cell phone reception up here on the snowy, icy, potentially very dangerous mountain. The rich people who live down in Boulder decided that putting cell phone towers around here would mess up their view of the mountains, so they voted not to have them. Who cares about the people who live in the mountains, and could possibly get hurt on the drive up and not be able to call anyone?
*End tangent*
Monday: The high on Monday was only like 18 degrees, so the morning was all inside projects. A few people painted the classroom in the lodge, while the rest of us oiled more logs in the lodge. There were a few rooms we hadn't gotten to when we did it last week. In the afternoon, Tomm and I were scheduled to split wood. It usually starts getting cold at about 3pm, so Christina had told us to only go till 2:30 at the latest then come inside. It seems to be warmer down by the wood splitter, because it's in a valley surrounded by tall things (barn, giant wood pile, etc.). It was 2:30 before we even realized it, but then we were told to come inside anyway.
Monday night was the invention of a new game. A few of us have been playing chess at night sometimes, which I really enjoy. We spend all day doing hard physical work that's usually really mindless. It's kind of nice to do something after that where you sit still and think a lot. Anyway, we invented 4-person chess. Two dark chess sets and two light sets. You set up the back row just like normal on all four sides, but everyone only gets one rook and two pawns. You're only playing against the person across from you, so your pieces can't be taken by the people on the sides, but they can get in the way. Which happened a lot. I lost a lot of pieces by mixing up Lindsey's pieces, who was my opponent, and TK's pieces, who was on the side. Their sets looked really similar. TK beat Heather, who was across from him, then I beat Lindsey. It was really difficult with so many pieces on the board. We're thinking of trying again with the same idea, but with teams. Should be interesting.
Tuesday: My Tuesday morning was spent at Urgent Care. On Saturday during our ISP, my left middle finger was hurting over by the nail, but I didn't know why. It hurt a lot less on Sunday, so I didn't even think about it. Monday when I woke up, it was red with a little yellowish spot by the nail and it hurt much more. Tuesday when I woke up, it was more red, swollen, the yellowish spot was bigger and more yellow, and it hurt A LOT. So I told Christina, and she took me to the doctor. After lots of waiting at Urgent Care (there was really nothing urgent about this place), I finally got in to a room. After more waiting, in walks my doctor who had to be at least 70 years old. She looked at my finger and told me it was infected (which I knew). She said she would go get a scalpel to drain the pus. She came back with one of those contraptions that I think surgeons use, with the magnifying glasses that go over your head. This concerned me, because the yellow spot seemed plenty large enough that it could be seen with regular eyes. Then, she took the scalpel out of the package and didn't know how to get the cap off. She had to go ask a nurse how to do it. Now I was really concerned. But she cut the spot open, and I barely even felt it. It was actually pretty gross, with all that pus coming out. Then she glopped some antibacterial stuff on it and put a band-aid about half an inch lower than where the scalpel cut was. I said "Um, the band-aid isn't actually covering the cut," and she said "Oh, I'll go get another one." She came back with an ENORMOUS band-aid. I'm pretty sure I could have just poked it myself without a trip to the doctor, but at least it didn't hurt as much anymore.
Christina and I got back up the mountain pretty much right at lunch time. After lunch, I helped continue what everyone else had been doing all morning. Rick, the maintenance guy, had dumped a bunch of trail mix, and there were a lot of trails around the lodge and cabins that needed filling in. Some people shovel the mix (which is a lot like gravel, but it absorbs water better) into buckets and wheelbarrows, some people haul the buckets and barrows to the trail and dump it, and some people rake the mix evenly across the trail. I spent some time with a shovel, barrow, and rake.
Today (Wednesday): This morning, we finished the trail we had been working on yesterday. After lunch, two people went to go attack more barbed wire somewhere, and the rest of us went with Angie to build a bridge. We took Angie's truck and our cargo truck, which I drove. We had to drive close to where we were on that first day, when we fixed the burn piles and hauled logs down the slippery slippery hill. It was actually pretty fun driving the truck through the woods on a (mostly) dirt road. We parked the trucks, grabbed our shovel, ax, 2x6 boards, drills, and screws, and hiked about half a mile across rugged terrain, most of which was covered by about a foot of snow. It was pretty difficult. When we got there, Angie chainsawed a tree down and cut it in half to be the supports to put the boards across. The bridge went across a frozen stream. I got to screw half the boards down, which was fun. I haven't used a drill since May in the Elmhurst theatre - I'd been missing them. By the time we got back to the lodge, it was about 2:45, and Angie let us be done for the day.
So the plan used to be that we were going to go down to the AmeriMansion tonight for Thanksgiving, but after seeing their house, it was decided that it was much more practical to do Thanksgiving here. We have much more space for sleeping, and an industrial size kitchen. They'll be here sometime tonight, then leave...sometime.
Oh! And yesterday we found out that for our next project, we'll be in the Gulf! Projects are split up into categories of local, regional, and Gulf. Since we had a local project this time, we get to go to the Gulf next! The next step is that our team ranked the available Gulf projects by our preferences, then which preference we get depends on a lottery system. We're number 8 out of the 20 teams in the whole Corps, so I think we'll get one of our top choices. All Gulf projects are in Louisiana. 7 projects in New Orleans, one in Lafayette. I'm not sure when we'll find out our exact project, but we know we'll be in Louisiana.
Saturday: All day Saturday, my team did an ISP in Denver. The county was giving away free H1N1 vaccines at a local high school for anyone, not just people in the "risk groups." My team went down to help run it. My job was to stand for hours in the auditorium, where people were sent to fill out their forms. At the end of the form, it said "STOP! Do not write below this line." Under that line, the date needed to be filled in, but obviously no one did it because they were following directions. So I had to check over the forms, make sure it was all filled in, then I would just write the date for them because it was easier than asking them to do it and having them be confused. 11/21/09. 11/21/09. 11/21/09. 11/21/09. 11/21/09. Over and over and over. In case you were wondering, the date last Saturday was 11/21/09.
After we were done there, we drove over to the AmeriMansion in Boulder, where that other Sun Unit team is living. It's much less mansion-like than we were expecting, but still pretty nice. My team had all brought a change of clothes (we have to wear uniforms to do ISPs), then both teams hopped back in our vans to go out in Boulder. It was pretty fun to get to hang out with people from another team. Even though it had only been a week, it seemed like it had been forever since we've seen anyone outside of our team. We weren't there for very long, because the rule with the AmeriVans is that they have to be parked at our housing site from midnight till 6am every night. Since it takes so long to get up the mountain, we had to leave Boulder at about 11 to get back in time. It was still pretty fun though.
Sunday: Nick, a guy from the other Boulder team, had set up a tour for us at the Celestial Seasonings Tea factory. Did you know that ALL Celestial Seasonings tea in the entire world is made here in Boulder, CO? I didn't either. The tour wasn't until 2:30, so some of us went to Boulder early to have more time in civilization. A few of us went to a place called Foolish Craig's for lunch, and it was really cool. I think it's mainly a crepe place, but they had really good sandwiches and stuff too. There was also a lot of really good art all over the walls. After lunch, I got in some phone time, which was really nice.
*Begin tangent*
So I found out why we don't get cell phone reception up here on the snowy, icy, potentially very dangerous mountain. The rich people who live down in Boulder decided that putting cell phone towers around here would mess up their view of the mountains, so they voted not to have them. Who cares about the people who live in the mountains, and could possibly get hurt on the drive up and not be able to call anyone?
*End tangent*
Monday: The high on Monday was only like 18 degrees, so the morning was all inside projects. A few people painted the classroom in the lodge, while the rest of us oiled more logs in the lodge. There were a few rooms we hadn't gotten to when we did it last week. In the afternoon, Tomm and I were scheduled to split wood. It usually starts getting cold at about 3pm, so Christina had told us to only go till 2:30 at the latest then come inside. It seems to be warmer down by the wood splitter, because it's in a valley surrounded by tall things (barn, giant wood pile, etc.). It was 2:30 before we even realized it, but then we were told to come inside anyway.
Monday night was the invention of a new game. A few of us have been playing chess at night sometimes, which I really enjoy. We spend all day doing hard physical work that's usually really mindless. It's kind of nice to do something after that where you sit still and think a lot. Anyway, we invented 4-person chess. Two dark chess sets and two light sets. You set up the back row just like normal on all four sides, but everyone only gets one rook and two pawns. You're only playing against the person across from you, so your pieces can't be taken by the people on the sides, but they can get in the way. Which happened a lot. I lost a lot of pieces by mixing up Lindsey's pieces, who was my opponent, and TK's pieces, who was on the side. Their sets looked really similar. TK beat Heather, who was across from him, then I beat Lindsey. It was really difficult with so many pieces on the board. We're thinking of trying again with the same idea, but with teams. Should be interesting.
Tuesday: My Tuesday morning was spent at Urgent Care. On Saturday during our ISP, my left middle finger was hurting over by the nail, but I didn't know why. It hurt a lot less on Sunday, so I didn't even think about it. Monday when I woke up, it was red with a little yellowish spot by the nail and it hurt much more. Tuesday when I woke up, it was more red, swollen, the yellowish spot was bigger and more yellow, and it hurt A LOT. So I told Christina, and she took me to the doctor. After lots of waiting at Urgent Care (there was really nothing urgent about this place), I finally got in to a room. After more waiting, in walks my doctor who had to be at least 70 years old. She looked at my finger and told me it was infected (which I knew). She said she would go get a scalpel to drain the pus. She came back with one of those contraptions that I think surgeons use, with the magnifying glasses that go over your head. This concerned me, because the yellow spot seemed plenty large enough that it could be seen with regular eyes. Then, she took the scalpel out of the package and didn't know how to get the cap off. She had to go ask a nurse how to do it. Now I was really concerned. But she cut the spot open, and I barely even felt it. It was actually pretty gross, with all that pus coming out. Then she glopped some antibacterial stuff on it and put a band-aid about half an inch lower than where the scalpel cut was. I said "Um, the band-aid isn't actually covering the cut," and she said "Oh, I'll go get another one." She came back with an ENORMOUS band-aid. I'm pretty sure I could have just poked it myself without a trip to the doctor, but at least it didn't hurt as much anymore.
Christina and I got back up the mountain pretty much right at lunch time. After lunch, I helped continue what everyone else had been doing all morning. Rick, the maintenance guy, had dumped a bunch of trail mix, and there were a lot of trails around the lodge and cabins that needed filling in. Some people shovel the mix (which is a lot like gravel, but it absorbs water better) into buckets and wheelbarrows, some people haul the buckets and barrows to the trail and dump it, and some people rake the mix evenly across the trail. I spent some time with a shovel, barrow, and rake.
Today (Wednesday): This morning, we finished the trail we had been working on yesterday. After lunch, two people went to go attack more barbed wire somewhere, and the rest of us went with Angie to build a bridge. We took Angie's truck and our cargo truck, which I drove. We had to drive close to where we were on that first day, when we fixed the burn piles and hauled logs down the slippery slippery hill. It was actually pretty fun driving the truck through the woods on a (mostly) dirt road. We parked the trucks, grabbed our shovel, ax, 2x6 boards, drills, and screws, and hiked about half a mile across rugged terrain, most of which was covered by about a foot of snow. It was pretty difficult. When we got there, Angie chainsawed a tree down and cut it in half to be the supports to put the boards across. The bridge went across a frozen stream. I got to screw half the boards down, which was fun. I haven't used a drill since May in the Elmhurst theatre - I'd been missing them. By the time we got back to the lodge, it was about 2:45, and Angie let us be done for the day.
So the plan used to be that we were going to go down to the AmeriMansion tonight for Thanksgiving, but after seeing their house, it was decided that it was much more practical to do Thanksgiving here. We have much more space for sleeping, and an industrial size kitchen. They'll be here sometime tonight, then leave...sometime.
Oh! And yesterday we found out that for our next project, we'll be in the Gulf! Projects are split up into categories of local, regional, and Gulf. Since we had a local project this time, we get to go to the Gulf next! The next step is that our team ranked the available Gulf projects by our preferences, then which preference we get depends on a lottery system. We're number 8 out of the 20 teams in the whole Corps, so I think we'll get one of our top choices. All Gulf projects are in Louisiana. 7 projects in New Orleans, one in Lafayette. I'm not sure when we'll find out our exact project, but we know we'll be in Louisiana.
Friday, November 20, 2009
More Tired
So here we are at the end of our first week. Want to know what I've been doing? Good. I'll tell you.
Wednesday: Like I mentioned, my first wood-splitting shift was Tuesday morning. I'm not going to lie, I was nervous. I was picturing some kind of contraption where you would put the piece of wood down and an ax or a guillotine blade or something slams down at lightning speed, with wood chips flying everywhere. It's not like that at all. You stand the wood up under the blade, pull the handle down, and the blade sloooowwwwwly comes down. I think it's mostly the pressure that splits the wood, not the sharpness of the blade. I didn't touch the blade ever, but it didn't look sharp at all. So since this is a two-person job, while one person is getting bored just sitting there (on a piece of wood - where else?) operating the splitter, the other person is doing all the hard work. The other person grabs unsplit wood (rounds) from the pile and stacks them next to the splitter. This hard-working other person also has to load split wood in a wheel barrow and wheel it up the muddy slippery hill and dump it in the wood pile. My partner and I decided to switch jobs every half-hour, which worked really well. Right when you get bored of splitting or right when you get tired of hauling wood, it's time to switch. The morning actually went by really fast like this. I don't mind splitting at all.
In the afternoon, my team split up again. One group went off to put up a snow fence, and my group went to attack some barbed wire. About half a mile away from the lodge, Angie told us there was a lot of barbed wire that was still there from...something. I don't think Calwood put it there, and that it was already on the property when Calwood bought it or something. Anyway, apparently it was killing trees, and one time a kid got really hurt in it, so it had to come down. So Becky, Jessica, Marquis, and I hiked up there (remember how we love hiking?) armed with wire cutters. It was at a place called Longview, which has probably one of the best mountain views I've seen so far. We all actually had a lot of fun with this job. It was like a treasure hunt, with the treasure being potentially stabbed by wire. The wire was all mingled in or around trees or buried under the piles of snow still on the ground. We had to hunt it down, then attack. A lot of it was all tangled in branches or just in itself, some actually went under the ground, and some was attached to trees. Becky was like a barbed wire ninja. Almost all of the places with wire, she found. We had to go way off the trail into the snowy Narnia-like forest to get it all. Angie told us to bundle it up, so we cut in pieces of about three feet, gathered 15 or 20 pieces together, and wrapped another piece of wire around it. I think based on how many bundles we made, we estimated that we removed about 500 feet of barbed wire. Seriously, we all did have fun with the wire cutting job. This was definitely one of my favorite days so far.
In the evening, we had to do PT (Physical Training). Everyone in NCCC is supposed to do at least 45 minutes of PT three days a week. When we work until 4:30 and it gets dark by 5, we don't have a lot of PT options. On Monday pretty soon after we first arrived here, we did some yoga. Wednesday, we did a Pilates video. It was actually a pretty intense workout, but there was also a lot of laughing at the people in the video. There was the leader person giving instructions who was way too happy about it, and all the demonstrator people. The best were Dagne (no, I don't mean Daphne) demonstrating how to do variations on the exercises "for those of you with weak backs," as the instructor told us several times, and Saul, who had this huge smile on his face the entire time.
Thursday: In the morning, we had to go to a pile of cut rounds that Angie had made the day before. Angie is a monster: she spends most of her days chain sawing trees and doesn't seem to ever get tired. Anyway, she made a huge pile on Wednesday and we had to load it in her truck. In the "downtime" while we waited for her to come back with the empty truck after she dumped our load over by the splitter, we hauled some REALLY FREAKING HEAVY pieces over from far away. Way far away, she had cut some really big trees. Most of these pieces were cut to pretty short lengths, but they were so big around that they were HEAVY. We had log carrying tool, but it's really awkward. There are two hooks that go into both sides of the wood, then a handle on either side for two people to carry it. There were nine of us out there and two log carriers, but it was so hard that no one could make more than one trip with a log per "downtime." Two pairs go get a log, bring it back, two more pairs go get a log, bring it back, then everyone but the person who sat out that turn is tired. Once we were done loading all the smaller pieces, we had to load the big ones. The floor of the truck is maybe slightly lower than my shoulder. It took three or four people to get the big ones up there. After we loaded the big ones we had brought over, Angie decided to drive her truck over to where the big ones were. I wish we could have saved ourselves the trouble of carrying eight big ones over, but oh well. Did I mention that the ground we had to cross carrying the big ones was covered with about seven inches of snow?
In the afternoon, we were inside oiling the lodge. Tip of the Day: If you ever find yourself living in some sort of log structure, like our lodge, the logs must be oiled every year to prevent cracking and splitting. Angie said that in the winter, when people make fires, the dry air makes it really easy for the logs to split. So first we had to go over all of them and clean the dust off, then go back over them with Old English. It wasn't bad. It wasn't at all strenuous, and we had music playing. Not a bad day at all.
Today (Friday): This morning, we dug some ditches. Along the road, there are several water drainage pipes that get dirt and gravel piled up around them. We had to dig little bowl shapes around them to allow as much water as possible through. If those pipes are clogged, whenever they get two feet of snow that melts quickly, which happens often, it all runs down the hill and floods the road. The ground in some of these places was pretty frozen, requiring some pick-ax action, but the non-frozen places weren't too hard to dig out.
This afternoon we all split up again. Two people oiled more rooms in the lodge that we hadn't gotten to yet, two people were splitting wood (there are always two people splitting), two people went to cut more barbed wire in a different area than my group was on Wednesday, and the rest of us went to the barn. Angie said there were a bunch of benches in the barn that we needed to pull down, see which ones are beyond repair and throw them out, and see which ones could be fixed up to use at the lodge. Most of them just needed minor repairs, and it was a pretty fun and easy afternoon. The best part was when we found some kind of plastic goose decoration thing, and Angie told us to go release it out onto the frozen lake. It slid pretty well and ended up almost right in the middle of the lake. We talked about naming it, but I'm not sure if we decided on Gary or Gustav.
Since we do PT on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, today was another PT day. We all got done with work at about 3:30, so we had some daylight left for once. We played kickball out on the recreation field, half of which was covered with about eight inches of snow. There was some unsnowy ground that we used for home plate (which was a tree - what else?) so the ball would roll easily for pitching, but the rest of the field was snowy. Since we wanted to do PT as soon as possible after work to use the daylight, we were still in our uniforms. People have been wearing a variety of shoes each day, and on this particular day, I wore my steel toes. Let me tell you, running through seven or eight inches of snow on uneven ground in steel-toed boots is NOT EASY. My legs are still pretty much dead. I think the game turned out much more intense than we were expecting. My team won with a score of something like 21-2. It was fun, but pretty tiring.
So that was my first week. If you didn't notice, there's another new post right below this one. That's right, two posts in one day. I really wish I could post pictures, but I don't think it's allowed. I guess it will have to wait until winter break. I hope everyone is doing well!
Wednesday: Like I mentioned, my first wood-splitting shift was Tuesday morning. I'm not going to lie, I was nervous. I was picturing some kind of contraption where you would put the piece of wood down and an ax or a guillotine blade or something slams down at lightning speed, with wood chips flying everywhere. It's not like that at all. You stand the wood up under the blade, pull the handle down, and the blade sloooowwwwwly comes down. I think it's mostly the pressure that splits the wood, not the sharpness of the blade. I didn't touch the blade ever, but it didn't look sharp at all. So since this is a two-person job, while one person is getting bored just sitting there (on a piece of wood - where else?) operating the splitter, the other person is doing all the hard work. The other person grabs unsplit wood (rounds) from the pile and stacks them next to the splitter. This hard-working other person also has to load split wood in a wheel barrow and wheel it up the muddy slippery hill and dump it in the wood pile. My partner and I decided to switch jobs every half-hour, which worked really well. Right when you get bored of splitting or right when you get tired of hauling wood, it's time to switch. The morning actually went by really fast like this. I don't mind splitting at all.
In the afternoon, my team split up again. One group went off to put up a snow fence, and my group went to attack some barbed wire. About half a mile away from the lodge, Angie told us there was a lot of barbed wire that was still there from...something. I don't think Calwood put it there, and that it was already on the property when Calwood bought it or something. Anyway, apparently it was killing trees, and one time a kid got really hurt in it, so it had to come down. So Becky, Jessica, Marquis, and I hiked up there (remember how we love hiking?) armed with wire cutters. It was at a place called Longview, which has probably one of the best mountain views I've seen so far. We all actually had a lot of fun with this job. It was like a treasure hunt, with the treasure being potentially stabbed by wire. The wire was all mingled in or around trees or buried under the piles of snow still on the ground. We had to hunt it down, then attack. A lot of it was all tangled in branches or just in itself, some actually went under the ground, and some was attached to trees. Becky was like a barbed wire ninja. Almost all of the places with wire, she found. We had to go way off the trail into the snowy Narnia-like forest to get it all. Angie told us to bundle it up, so we cut in pieces of about three feet, gathered 15 or 20 pieces together, and wrapped another piece of wire around it. I think based on how many bundles we made, we estimated that we removed about 500 feet of barbed wire. Seriously, we all did have fun with the wire cutting job. This was definitely one of my favorite days so far.
In the evening, we had to do PT (Physical Training). Everyone in NCCC is supposed to do at least 45 minutes of PT three days a week. When we work until 4:30 and it gets dark by 5, we don't have a lot of PT options. On Monday pretty soon after we first arrived here, we did some yoga. Wednesday, we did a Pilates video. It was actually a pretty intense workout, but there was also a lot of laughing at the people in the video. There was the leader person giving instructions who was way too happy about it, and all the demonstrator people. The best were Dagne (no, I don't mean Daphne) demonstrating how to do variations on the exercises "for those of you with weak backs," as the instructor told us several times, and Saul, who had this huge smile on his face the entire time.
Thursday: In the morning, we had to go to a pile of cut rounds that Angie had made the day before. Angie is a monster: she spends most of her days chain sawing trees and doesn't seem to ever get tired. Anyway, she made a huge pile on Wednesday and we had to load it in her truck. In the "downtime" while we waited for her to come back with the empty truck after she dumped our load over by the splitter, we hauled some REALLY FREAKING HEAVY pieces over from far away. Way far away, she had cut some really big trees. Most of these pieces were cut to pretty short lengths, but they were so big around that they were HEAVY. We had log carrying tool, but it's really awkward. There are two hooks that go into both sides of the wood, then a handle on either side for two people to carry it. There were nine of us out there and two log carriers, but it was so hard that no one could make more than one trip with a log per "downtime." Two pairs go get a log, bring it back, two more pairs go get a log, bring it back, then everyone but the person who sat out that turn is tired. Once we were done loading all the smaller pieces, we had to load the big ones. The floor of the truck is maybe slightly lower than my shoulder. It took three or four people to get the big ones up there. After we loaded the big ones we had brought over, Angie decided to drive her truck over to where the big ones were. I wish we could have saved ourselves the trouble of carrying eight big ones over, but oh well. Did I mention that the ground we had to cross carrying the big ones was covered with about seven inches of snow?
In the afternoon, we were inside oiling the lodge. Tip of the Day: If you ever find yourself living in some sort of log structure, like our lodge, the logs must be oiled every year to prevent cracking and splitting. Angie said that in the winter, when people make fires, the dry air makes it really easy for the logs to split. So first we had to go over all of them and clean the dust off, then go back over them with Old English. It wasn't bad. It wasn't at all strenuous, and we had music playing. Not a bad day at all.
Today (Friday): This morning, we dug some ditches. Along the road, there are several water drainage pipes that get dirt and gravel piled up around them. We had to dig little bowl shapes around them to allow as much water as possible through. If those pipes are clogged, whenever they get two feet of snow that melts quickly, which happens often, it all runs down the hill and floods the road. The ground in some of these places was pretty frozen, requiring some pick-ax action, but the non-frozen places weren't too hard to dig out.
This afternoon we all split up again. Two people oiled more rooms in the lodge that we hadn't gotten to yet, two people were splitting wood (there are always two people splitting), two people went to cut more barbed wire in a different area than my group was on Wednesday, and the rest of us went to the barn. Angie said there were a bunch of benches in the barn that we needed to pull down, see which ones are beyond repair and throw them out, and see which ones could be fixed up to use at the lodge. Most of them just needed minor repairs, and it was a pretty fun and easy afternoon. The best part was when we found some kind of plastic goose decoration thing, and Angie told us to go release it out onto the frozen lake. It slid pretty well and ended up almost right in the middle of the lake. We talked about naming it, but I'm not sure if we decided on Gary or Gustav.
Since we do PT on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, today was another PT day. We all got done with work at about 3:30, so we had some daylight left for once. We played kickball out on the recreation field, half of which was covered with about eight inches of snow. There was some unsnowy ground that we used for home plate (which was a tree - what else?) so the ball would roll easily for pitching, but the rest of the field was snowy. Since we wanted to do PT as soon as possible after work to use the daylight, we were still in our uniforms. People have been wearing a variety of shoes each day, and on this particular day, I wore my steel toes. Let me tell you, running through seven or eight inches of snow on uneven ground in steel-toed boots is NOT EASY. My legs are still pretty much dead. I think the game turned out much more intense than we were expecting. My team won with a score of something like 21-2. It was fun, but pretty tiring.
So that was my first week. If you didn't notice, there's another new post right below this one. That's right, two posts in one day. I really wish I could post pictures, but I don't think it's allowed. I guess it will have to wait until winter break. I hope everyone is doing well!
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Wow, I'm Tired
This is a post I wrote last Tuesday night. I had to get off the computer before I had a chance to read it over and edit, and then I haven't been on a computer again until right now. So read this pretending that right now is last Tuesday.
So today was the first day of lumberjacking. Um…it’s hard. We spent half the morning searching through a giant pile of split wood looking for unsplit wood (rounds). When we found them, we threw them in the back of a truck (which is kind of fun) for the truck to go dump them about 20 feet away, in the pile that’s ready for the hydraulic wood splitter. After that, we went to the pile of split wood next to the wood splitter and threw them in the back of the truck so the truck could dump it 20 feet away at the big wood pile we were at before. Next, we piled into trucks (one driven and owned by a person who works here, and the other was the cargo truck we brought up here) and drove to the other end of the property. This was quite an adventure. There is still a lot of snow on the ground, but a lot of it has melted. This creates a fabulous mixture of mud and ice. I think some of it was actually mud that had become ice. The road was pretty slippery and very steep in some places. I was really glad to be in the Calwood truck, with the guy who has driven these roads for six years. Once we got there, we split into two groups. The other group went to haul logs, and my group went to the brush piles. There were lots of brush piles that had already been created, some by Team Leaders who came here for a two-day project during their month of training before the rest of us got here. The problem was, the piles were in the wrong shape. For a brush pile to be ready for burning, it has to be in a triangular tee-pee shape. Something about oxygen flow and this shape makes the piles burn faster and hotter, which is what we want. Pretty much all of the piles were in boxy shapes, so we had to turn them into tee-pees. This was actually kind of fun. We had to dig some branches out of the snow and out of the bottom of the piles, and throw them onto the top. Heaving branches farther than you expect you can is really satisfying.
After lunch (which was eaten outside because we were too far away to go back to the lodge to eat), the two groups switched. There was a large pile of logs that had already been cut down, but they needed to be hauled to the road to be ready for a truck to pick them up. No problem, right? Nope. A lot of the logs weren’t too terribly heavy or big, but we had to carry them a fairly long distance, and down a muddy icy hill. I’m not at all clumsy, but I tend to have a really hard time when I’m walking on something slippery. Add a steep bumpy hill and a giant log in my arms, and I’m in trouble. I only fell down in the mud once, but I came close several more times. It wasn’t that bad, I just seemed to be going slower than most other people. Trudge up the slippery hill, grab a log, trudge down the slippery hill, throw the log on the pile, and repeat. Did I mention the hill was slippery?
The work day is usually supposed to go till 4:30, but we got done with the log hauling and brush piles at about 3. There were ribbons around lots of trees to mark them for something, and Angie, our site supervisor, told us to go around and tear them off. Then we came back down to the lodge. There was a little more to do (unload split wood from Angie’s truck, throw it in a pile, load up her truck with some long ponderosa pine logs, then carry the split wood that we threw from the truck over to the fire pit to be used as fire wood), then we were done with work for the day.
Plus sides of this project: It is REALLY pretty here. Snowy mountains all around us, lots of trees, and a peaceful feeling (when we’re not hauling logs – that’s not peaceful). Also, when school groups are here, we get to eat the meals that are provided for them. The cook here is REALLY good. Unfortunately, kids won’t be here for like half of the project, and we’ll have to cook for ourselves.
Have I even explained this project? Calwood is an educational center for kids. Colorado schools have some kind of emphasis on environmental education. Schools will bring kids to Calwood for like two days and teach them all kinds of things. I know there’s a lot of learning by doing, but I’m not entirely sure what they do. They’re the reason we all have to sleep in the lodge right now, because the kids are filling the cabins. They’re leaving tomorrow, and we can move into cabins. Another smaller group will be here Thursday and Friday I think, then no kids for the next two weeks.
So about the hydraulic wood splitter I mentioned: We need to have two people splitting all day every day. We decided to set up a schedule and do two people in the morning and two different people in the afternoon, because apparently it gets boring. My turn is tomorrow morning…yay?
Tomorrow we’re also doing some kind of fence installing I think. I know it involves sledge hammers. Angie had told us that she would alternate strenuous physical days with not-so-strenuous days, but I’m not sure that’s quite true. Hauling logs followed by sledge hammer work? I don’t see any alteration there.
So that’s it for now. I don’t know when I’ll manage to get pictures up, but there are already some good ones. Actually, I don’t know if I’ll be allowed to upload pictures. Since we’re in the mountains, Calwood is only allowed a certain amount of megabytes a day. Seriously. So Angie said we can’t download or stream ANYTHING EVER. Even Youtube videos. Apparently if we go over our limit, internet gets shut off for a day. Calwood needs internet to operate, so we don’t want that to happen. I haven’t found out yet if pictures would count for that, but I’ll ask.
So today was the first day of lumberjacking. Um…it’s hard. We spent half the morning searching through a giant pile of split wood looking for unsplit wood (rounds). When we found them, we threw them in the back of a truck (which is kind of fun) for the truck to go dump them about 20 feet away, in the pile that’s ready for the hydraulic wood splitter. After that, we went to the pile of split wood next to the wood splitter and threw them in the back of the truck so the truck could dump it 20 feet away at the big wood pile we were at before. Next, we piled into trucks (one driven and owned by a person who works here, and the other was the cargo truck we brought up here) and drove to the other end of the property. This was quite an adventure. There is still a lot of snow on the ground, but a lot of it has melted. This creates a fabulous mixture of mud and ice. I think some of it was actually mud that had become ice. The road was pretty slippery and very steep in some places. I was really glad to be in the Calwood truck, with the guy who has driven these roads for six years. Once we got there, we split into two groups. The other group went to haul logs, and my group went to the brush piles. There were lots of brush piles that had already been created, some by Team Leaders who came here for a two-day project during their month of training before the rest of us got here. The problem was, the piles were in the wrong shape. For a brush pile to be ready for burning, it has to be in a triangular tee-pee shape. Something about oxygen flow and this shape makes the piles burn faster and hotter, which is what we want. Pretty much all of the piles were in boxy shapes, so we had to turn them into tee-pees. This was actually kind of fun. We had to dig some branches out of the snow and out of the bottom of the piles, and throw them onto the top. Heaving branches farther than you expect you can is really satisfying.
After lunch (which was eaten outside because we were too far away to go back to the lodge to eat), the two groups switched. There was a large pile of logs that had already been cut down, but they needed to be hauled to the road to be ready for a truck to pick them up. No problem, right? Nope. A lot of the logs weren’t too terribly heavy or big, but we had to carry them a fairly long distance, and down a muddy icy hill. I’m not at all clumsy, but I tend to have a really hard time when I’m walking on something slippery. Add a steep bumpy hill and a giant log in my arms, and I’m in trouble. I only fell down in the mud once, but I came close several more times. It wasn’t that bad, I just seemed to be going slower than most other people. Trudge up the slippery hill, grab a log, trudge down the slippery hill, throw the log on the pile, and repeat. Did I mention the hill was slippery?
The work day is usually supposed to go till 4:30, but we got done with the log hauling and brush piles at about 3. There were ribbons around lots of trees to mark them for something, and Angie, our site supervisor, told us to go around and tear them off. Then we came back down to the lodge. There was a little more to do (unload split wood from Angie’s truck, throw it in a pile, load up her truck with some long ponderosa pine logs, then carry the split wood that we threw from the truck over to the fire pit to be used as fire wood), then we were done with work for the day.
Plus sides of this project: It is REALLY pretty here. Snowy mountains all around us, lots of trees, and a peaceful feeling (when we’re not hauling logs – that’s not peaceful). Also, when school groups are here, we get to eat the meals that are provided for them. The cook here is REALLY good. Unfortunately, kids won’t be here for like half of the project, and we’ll have to cook for ourselves.
Have I even explained this project? Calwood is an educational center for kids. Colorado schools have some kind of emphasis on environmental education. Schools will bring kids to Calwood for like two days and teach them all kinds of things. I know there’s a lot of learning by doing, but I’m not entirely sure what they do. They’re the reason we all have to sleep in the lodge right now, because the kids are filling the cabins. They’re leaving tomorrow, and we can move into cabins. Another smaller group will be here Thursday and Friday I think, then no kids for the next two weeks.
So about the hydraulic wood splitter I mentioned: We need to have two people splitting all day every day. We decided to set up a schedule and do two people in the morning and two different people in the afternoon, because apparently it gets boring. My turn is tomorrow morning…yay?
Tomorrow we’re also doing some kind of fence installing I think. I know it involves sledge hammers. Angie had told us that she would alternate strenuous physical days with not-so-strenuous days, but I’m not sure that’s quite true. Hauling logs followed by sledge hammer work? I don’t see any alteration there.
So that’s it for now. I don’t know when I’ll manage to get pictures up, but there are already some good ones. Actually, I don’t know if I’ll be allowed to upload pictures. Since we’re in the mountains, Calwood is only allowed a certain amount of megabytes a day. Seriously. So Angie said we can’t download or stream ANYTHING EVER. Even Youtube videos. Apparently if we go over our limit, internet gets shut off for a day. Calwood needs internet to operate, so we don’t want that to happen. I haven’t found out yet if pictures would count for that, but I’ll ask.
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Untitled
There's no easy way to say it or write about it, but many people suffered a terrible loss last Thursday. Kristin (with two i's, like your face) Spangler, a brilliant theatre professor, wonderful mentor, and amazing friend passed away after a two and a half year fight against breast cancer. Anyone who knew her is absolutely crushed. K-Spang taught many people more about theatre and about themselves than they could have imagined possible. I am not alone in the feeling that I am a better person for having known her.
I feel really weird about writing in a blog right now, but I'm trying to get back to normal. On Thursday morning, my team went shopping for snow pants to keep us warm in the mountainy wilderness. I didn't buy any because I'm not entirely sure I'll need them, but I did get a fleece jacket for $20, marked down from $70. The rest of the day is a bit of a blur because the end of the shopping trip is when I was informed that K-Spang was in the hospital in extremely critical condition, but I'll do my best to tell you about it.
In the afternoon, we had a community meeting (which means the entire corps plus all staff) to present our projects, telling everyone where we're going and what we're doing. Exactly zero teams just stood up there and gave a little speech about it. Everyone did some sort of song or skit about their project. My team took some inspiration from the Lumberjack Song from Monty Python and changed some of the words. If you're not familiar with the song, it can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zey8567bcg . Since the song has a main guy and then some backup lumberjacks, we chose Rob to be our main lumberjack since he looks the most lumberjackish. We also had Jordan, an extremely petite girl, be a main lumberjack with him. Our lyrics:
(Rob and Jordan)
I'm a lumberjack and I'm ok,
I sleep all night and I work all day
(the rest of us)
We are lumberjacks and we're ok,
We sleep all night and we work all day
(R & J)
I cut down trees, I eat my lunch, I go to the lavat'ry,
In Boulder I go shopping, for all my groceries
(rest of us)
We cut down trees, we eat our lunch, we go to the lavat'ry,
In Boulder we go shopping, for all our groceries
(R & J)
I build a trail, I dig a ditch, I put up a fence or two
(rest of us)
Up at Calwood we get things done, because we're the Sun 4 crew!
(Calwood is the name of our project site, "Getting Things Done" is the NCCC motto, and my team is Sun 4.) I'm not sure everyone got the reference to Monty Python, but at least we were more original than some teams. In case you were wondering, for this round of projects, there will be 4 teams in Colorado, 1 team in Missouri, 3 teams in Arkansas, 2 teams in Arizona, 2 teams in Texas, and 8 teams in Louisiana. And that's only the teams from this campus. (There are four other NCCC campuses.)
Friday morning, we had to take an all corps photo. This was a bit of an ordeal with 250 or so people, but it was fine. After that we had our induction ceremony. This signifies that CTI (Corps Training Institute, which is this month of training we just finished) is officially over, and we are real Corps Members now. It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. There were some interesting speakers, including Barbara the Regional Director (who is awesome), someone who was a Corps Member here in Denver 16 years ago in the first year NCCC existed, and the National Director of NCCC. Kevin, the Earth Unit Leader, sang an original song, a Team Leader performed an original poem, and a girl from my unit sang the national anthem. After the ceremony, there was a much fancier lunch than usual in the cafeteria. There were tablecloths and everything.
Yesterday, Saturday, was the departure of most teams who are traveling far away. Which is most of the Corps. There was a big send off where Barbara the Regional Director gave a little speech and everyone hugged goodbye and everything. It was pretty anticlimactic for those of us who haven't left yet to watch them all go, then go back into our dorm. At least I wasn't just sitting around all day thinking about things. I had an ISP at the Children's Museum again (I volunteered there on Halloween also) all day with 5 other people. Our main job was to keep the art room clean. They have a room set up with stations for kids to paint, and also a bunch of construction paper, crayons, glue sticks, etc. I think it's the most popular room, and it gets absolutely trashed if someone isn't there to constantly clean up. There were also a few birthday parties there that day that they needed help with, and some other random things to do. The staff was really glad we were there because they said they were understaffed that day, and the museum was really busy. It was pretty cold and snowy yesterday, and they said that whenever the weather is bad the museum is always really crazy.
Last night, no one wanted to go anywhere since the weather was so bad, so my team got together with Sun 1 (the team that will be at the AmeriMansion in Boulder) and played Cranium, Sun 4 vs. Sun 1. Since we're planning on having Thanksgiving with them in their house, the two Team Leaders decided that the winning team wouldn't have to do dishes on Thanksgiving. We won, and the other team started arguing about how it should be best two out of three, with other games, including a sport of some kind on Thanksgiving day. I don't know what the final verdict was, but I really hope my team doesn't have to do dishes.
Yesterday and today have been pretty weird with so few people here. We (Suns 1 and 4) are getting excited about leaving tomorrow and finally doing something. Blog updates might become even less often than they are now, because I think the internet up in our project site is supposed to be really slow, but I'll do the best I can. We also may or may not have cell phone service up there.
Also, I think some people may not be aware that anyone can comment on this blog, not just people with Blogspot accounts. At the bottom of the post, click where it says 0 Comments (or however comments there happen to be). Write the comment in the comment box. Where is says to choose an identity, choose Anonymous (but put your name in the comment so I know who you are). My mom (love you!) is pretty much the only person who ever comments, so I have very little idea of who is actually reading this thing.
So, the next time I talk to anyone, I'll pretty much be a lumberjack. Wish me luck!
I feel really weird about writing in a blog right now, but I'm trying to get back to normal. On Thursday morning, my team went shopping for snow pants to keep us warm in the mountainy wilderness. I didn't buy any because I'm not entirely sure I'll need them, but I did get a fleece jacket for $20, marked down from $70. The rest of the day is a bit of a blur because the end of the shopping trip is when I was informed that K-Spang was in the hospital in extremely critical condition, but I'll do my best to tell you about it.
In the afternoon, we had a community meeting (which means the entire corps plus all staff) to present our projects, telling everyone where we're going and what we're doing. Exactly zero teams just stood up there and gave a little speech about it. Everyone did some sort of song or skit about their project. My team took some inspiration from the Lumberjack Song from Monty Python and changed some of the words. If you're not familiar with the song, it can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zey8567bcg . Since the song has a main guy and then some backup lumberjacks, we chose Rob to be our main lumberjack since he looks the most lumberjackish. We also had Jordan, an extremely petite girl, be a main lumberjack with him. Our lyrics:
(Rob and Jordan)
I'm a lumberjack and I'm ok,
I sleep all night and I work all day
(the rest of us)
We are lumberjacks and we're ok,
We sleep all night and we work all day
(R & J)
I cut down trees, I eat my lunch, I go to the lavat'ry,
In Boulder I go shopping, for all my groceries
(rest of us)
We cut down trees, we eat our lunch, we go to the lavat'ry,
In Boulder we go shopping, for all our groceries
(R & J)
I build a trail, I dig a ditch, I put up a fence or two
(rest of us)
Up at Calwood we get things done, because we're the Sun 4 crew!
(Calwood is the name of our project site, "Getting Things Done" is the NCCC motto, and my team is Sun 4.) I'm not sure everyone got the reference to Monty Python, but at least we were more original than some teams. In case you were wondering, for this round of projects, there will be 4 teams in Colorado, 1 team in Missouri, 3 teams in Arkansas, 2 teams in Arizona, 2 teams in Texas, and 8 teams in Louisiana. And that's only the teams from this campus. (There are four other NCCC campuses.)
Friday morning, we had to take an all corps photo. This was a bit of an ordeal with 250 or so people, but it was fine. After that we had our induction ceremony. This signifies that CTI (Corps Training Institute, which is this month of training we just finished) is officially over, and we are real Corps Members now. It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. There were some interesting speakers, including Barbara the Regional Director (who is awesome), someone who was a Corps Member here in Denver 16 years ago in the first year NCCC existed, and the National Director of NCCC. Kevin, the Earth Unit Leader, sang an original song, a Team Leader performed an original poem, and a girl from my unit sang the national anthem. After the ceremony, there was a much fancier lunch than usual in the cafeteria. There were tablecloths and everything.
Yesterday, Saturday, was the departure of most teams who are traveling far away. Which is most of the Corps. There was a big send off where Barbara the Regional Director gave a little speech and everyone hugged goodbye and everything. It was pretty anticlimactic for those of us who haven't left yet to watch them all go, then go back into our dorm. At least I wasn't just sitting around all day thinking about things. I had an ISP at the Children's Museum again (I volunteered there on Halloween also) all day with 5 other people. Our main job was to keep the art room clean. They have a room set up with stations for kids to paint, and also a bunch of construction paper, crayons, glue sticks, etc. I think it's the most popular room, and it gets absolutely trashed if someone isn't there to constantly clean up. There were also a few birthday parties there that day that they needed help with, and some other random things to do. The staff was really glad we were there because they said they were understaffed that day, and the museum was really busy. It was pretty cold and snowy yesterday, and they said that whenever the weather is bad the museum is always really crazy.
Last night, no one wanted to go anywhere since the weather was so bad, so my team got together with Sun 1 (the team that will be at the AmeriMansion in Boulder) and played Cranium, Sun 4 vs. Sun 1. Since we're planning on having Thanksgiving with them in their house, the two Team Leaders decided that the winning team wouldn't have to do dishes on Thanksgiving. We won, and the other team started arguing about how it should be best two out of three, with other games, including a sport of some kind on Thanksgiving day. I don't know what the final verdict was, but I really hope my team doesn't have to do dishes.
Yesterday and today have been pretty weird with so few people here. We (Suns 1 and 4) are getting excited about leaving tomorrow and finally doing something. Blog updates might become even less often than they are now, because I think the internet up in our project site is supposed to be really slow, but I'll do the best I can. We also may or may not have cell phone service up there.
Also, I think some people may not be aware that anyone can comment on this blog, not just people with Blogspot accounts. At the bottom of the post, click where it says 0 Comments (or however comments there happen to be). Write the comment in the comment box. Where is says to choose an identity, choose Anonymous (but put your name in the comment so I know who you are). My mom (love you!) is pretty much the only person who ever comments, so I have very little idea of who is actually reading this thing.
So, the next time I talk to anyone, I'll pretty much be a lumberjack. Wish me luck!
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
And again...
...Sorry for the long absence. I'm getting worse and worse at the regular updates, aren't I?
On Monday, we were in the Little Auditorium (yes, that's really its name) ALL DAY. The Red Cross was here talking about disasters ALL DAY. ALL DAY is a really long time to be in one room that has uncomfortable seats with negative two inches of leg room. Half of the stuff the Red Cross talked about, we had already been told in another Red Cross meeting. The other half could have been condensed to about a quarter of its length. But apparently now we're prepared to go help if a disaster strikes.
Monday night there was a talent show. You know how in talent shows like this, some people are pretty good, but most people not so much? Most people were really pretty good. The first act was a guy doing a stand up comedy routine, and it was WAY better than most talent show comedy. The only joke I can specifically remember is when he was talking about the different units. He said something like "Isn't the Sun unit kind of redundant when there's a Fire unit? Why do we need a Fire unit and a Giant Ball of Fire unit? Just add a Two Cavemen with Sticks unit, and we'll be set."
This guy (not from my unit)
did a bunch of impressions, which were AMAZING. These guys
did a ground guide dance. Remember driver safety day, and how you need a ground guide when you back up the AmeriVans? They did a dance with the ground guide arm motions. Here we see them turning right. Halfway through, they crashed the "van." Half of them fell down and the other half did CPR. It was pretty funny. I think my favorite part though was Carl (in plaid) and Matt (both from my unit):
singing "Wagon Wheel," which somehow seems to come on every other time we're in the vans. When they were done, Matt left the stage, and Carl started playing "You Belong with Me" by Taylor Swift. In the middle of it, Shawn:
jumped on stage in his sunglasses, cut Carl off, and said "I'm sorry Taylor, I'm going to let you finish, but Beyonce had the best video of all time!" (Remember when Kanye West did that to Taylor Swift at the Video Music Awards?) Then Carl ran off the stage, and "Single Ladies" by Beyonce immediately started playing, and Shawn did the entire dance. It was hilarious.
Yesterday was interesting. Let me tell you a little story. I had read in a few different places before I got here that roommates here on campus are assigned randomly. It will be someone in your unit, but your roommate will not be on your team. Understandable, right? You go out on a two month spike project where you eat, sleep, work, and live with your team. Probably the last thing you want to do is come back to Denver after those two months and still be living with one of those people. Well, when the teams were all announced last week, there were FIVE pairs of roommates on my floor (my floor is all Sun unit girls) who were on the same team. The solution? Not just refrain from putting roommates on a team together in the first place. No, lets make them all switch rooms so they're not with a teammate. Luckily, my roommate Stephanie isn't on my team, because we get along really well. In addition, there is a division of NCCC called Fire Management (they go out and fight wildfires). Fire management people are all in the Earth unit. One Sun unit girl, Ayla, decided to join Fire Management, so she had to switch to the Earth unit. She apparently has to switch rooms also, to move to the Earth floor, leaving her roommate Ashley without a roommate. After all the unit switching happened when the Fire Management people were decided, Sun got two new people from Earth, Jim and Lauren. Yep, you guessed it, Lauren now needs to move to our floor. The logical solution would be to put her in with Ashley, Ayla's old roomie, but Ashley and Lauren are on the same team so that can't happen. So now that means that there are six pairs of roommates that need to be split. Two pairs traded last week (one person from each room switched with each other), so now there are only four rooms that need to change. That's an even number, making it super easy. One person from each room trades with each other, right? Well, yesterday morning a fellow Sun girl (Sarah) came up to me and asked what my room number was. When I told her, she said "Oh, I think either you or your roommate are going to have to move." Yes, you are correct in what you're thinking, that makes ZERO sense. Obviously I didn't take this too seriously since it didn't come from a leader or anything, but I was concerned. Later, at lunch, Sarah came back over to me and told me what specific room I was moving into. Now I decided to investigate. I called Christina to see if she knew anything about this, and she didn't. I called Nichole, our Sun UDA (which I think stands for Unit Development Assistant, but I'm not sure). She's like our liaison to Vaughn and the big wigs. When I told her my name and room number, she said exactly what Sarah had said, that I was moving to that other room. I tried to convince her that it made no sense and how much easier it would be if they all just switched with each other, but I wasn't sure it worked. Then I saw her later when she sat in on my team's Project Briefing (which I'll explain later), and she told me I don't have to move! Woo hoo!
Anyway, back to AmeriCorps stuff that happened yesterday. In the morning, we had vehicle and tool check out. My team was issued a cargo truck that the Fire Management people usually use. (They don't need them this round of projects because all the Fire people are going to New Orleans to do Habitat for Humanity. Every other round, I think they'll be fighting fires somewhere.) We also got issued sleeping bags because we'll be sleeping all in one big room in the lodge. We also got rain gear. What do you think of when you think of rain gear? If you think of this guy
then you've got a good picture of our rain gear. Only there's a hood, not a hat. And also some yellow pants that come up to our shoulders. (Yes, there will be pictures.) I guess the thinking was that it won't really protect us from the cold we should be expecting, but at least it'll be waterproof. We also got 10 handsaws. We're lumberjacks, remember? Apparently lumberjacks wear yellow rain slickers.
We also had our project briefing. This is where we put on our dress uniform (white polo, black BDU pants, and steel toes) and go in a room with Vaughn the unit leader and Ray the Assistant Regional Director (I don't think that's actually his title, but something like that) and tell them all about our project - where we're going, what we're doing, living arrangements, media plan, physical training plan, service learning plan, etc. (This is where Nichole was sitting in and gave me the news about not moving.) It was fine. It wasn't nearly as scary as everyone kept making it seem.
Today was Veterans Day, and we had the day off. When I say day off, I usually mean day to get some ISP (Independent Service Project) hours done. I went with 7 other Sun unit people to Food Serve America, which is like a warehouse food bank kind of place. For the first hour or so, we stood there with thousands of onions and put them in bags of 4. Know what looks disgusting? Smushed, rotten onions. Know what smells disgusting? Smushed, rotten onions. There weren't too many really bad ones, but enough to make it not a very fun job. We also had to wear lunch lady style hair nets. Who wants hair in their smushed, rotten onions? After that, we worked an assembly line packing one each of various kinds of frozen meat into boxes. I was at the beginning of the line having a (mostly) friendly competition with a guy named Cody from my unit about who could set up the flattened boxes faster.
And now some pictures that didn't fit in anywhere else in this post:
My team, Sun 4. In back, left to right: Lindsey, Jessica, TK. Front: Marquis, Rob, Michala, Becky, Christina the team leader, me, Jordan, and Heather
Becky and I carrying our newly-issued hand saws through the lobby of our dorm in our snazzy dress uniforms.
Elizabeth and Cody with our mountains of onions
Empty boxes that used to hold the meat we packed into other boxes. If you're ever moving and need boxes, go to your local food bank. Seriously.
On Monday, we were in the Little Auditorium (yes, that's really its name) ALL DAY. The Red Cross was here talking about disasters ALL DAY. ALL DAY is a really long time to be in one room that has uncomfortable seats with negative two inches of leg room. Half of the stuff the Red Cross talked about, we had already been told in another Red Cross meeting. The other half could have been condensed to about a quarter of its length. But apparently now we're prepared to go help if a disaster strikes.
Monday night there was a talent show. You know how in talent shows like this, some people are pretty good, but most people not so much? Most people were really pretty good. The first act was a guy doing a stand up comedy routine, and it was WAY better than most talent show comedy. The only joke I can specifically remember is when he was talking about the different units. He said something like "Isn't the Sun unit kind of redundant when there's a Fire unit? Why do we need a Fire unit and a Giant Ball of Fire unit? Just add a Two Cavemen with Sticks unit, and we'll be set."
This guy (not from my unit)
did a bunch of impressions, which were AMAZING. These guys
did a ground guide dance. Remember driver safety day, and how you need a ground guide when you back up the AmeriVans? They did a dance with the ground guide arm motions. Here we see them turning right. Halfway through, they crashed the "van." Half of them fell down and the other half did CPR. It was pretty funny. I think my favorite part though was Carl (in plaid) and Matt (both from my unit):
singing "Wagon Wheel," which somehow seems to come on every other time we're in the vans. When they were done, Matt left the stage, and Carl started playing "You Belong with Me" by Taylor Swift. In the middle of it, Shawn:
jumped on stage in his sunglasses, cut Carl off, and said "I'm sorry Taylor, I'm going to let you finish, but Beyonce had the best video of all time!" (Remember when Kanye West did that to Taylor Swift at the Video Music Awards?) Then Carl ran off the stage, and "Single Ladies" by Beyonce immediately started playing, and Shawn did the entire dance. It was hilarious.Yesterday was interesting. Let me tell you a little story. I had read in a few different places before I got here that roommates here on campus are assigned randomly. It will be someone in your unit, but your roommate will not be on your team. Understandable, right? You go out on a two month spike project where you eat, sleep, work, and live with your team. Probably the last thing you want to do is come back to Denver after those two months and still be living with one of those people. Well, when the teams were all announced last week, there were FIVE pairs of roommates on my floor (my floor is all Sun unit girls) who were on the same team. The solution? Not just refrain from putting roommates on a team together in the first place. No, lets make them all switch rooms so they're not with a teammate. Luckily, my roommate Stephanie isn't on my team, because we get along really well. In addition, there is a division of NCCC called Fire Management (they go out and fight wildfires). Fire management people are all in the Earth unit. One Sun unit girl, Ayla, decided to join Fire Management, so she had to switch to the Earth unit. She apparently has to switch rooms also, to move to the Earth floor, leaving her roommate Ashley without a roommate. After all the unit switching happened when the Fire Management people were decided, Sun got two new people from Earth, Jim and Lauren. Yep, you guessed it, Lauren now needs to move to our floor. The logical solution would be to put her in with Ashley, Ayla's old roomie, but Ashley and Lauren are on the same team so that can't happen. So now that means that there are six pairs of roommates that need to be split. Two pairs traded last week (one person from each room switched with each other), so now there are only four rooms that need to change. That's an even number, making it super easy. One person from each room trades with each other, right? Well, yesterday morning a fellow Sun girl (Sarah) came up to me and asked what my room number was. When I told her, she said "Oh, I think either you or your roommate are going to have to move." Yes, you are correct in what you're thinking, that makes ZERO sense. Obviously I didn't take this too seriously since it didn't come from a leader or anything, but I was concerned. Later, at lunch, Sarah came back over to me and told me what specific room I was moving into. Now I decided to investigate. I called Christina to see if she knew anything about this, and she didn't. I called Nichole, our Sun UDA (which I think stands for Unit Development Assistant, but I'm not sure). She's like our liaison to Vaughn and the big wigs. When I told her my name and room number, she said exactly what Sarah had said, that I was moving to that other room. I tried to convince her that it made no sense and how much easier it would be if they all just switched with each other, but I wasn't sure it worked. Then I saw her later when she sat in on my team's Project Briefing (which I'll explain later), and she told me I don't have to move! Woo hoo!
Anyway, back to AmeriCorps stuff that happened yesterday. In the morning, we had vehicle and tool check out. My team was issued a cargo truck that the Fire Management people usually use. (They don't need them this round of projects because all the Fire people are going to New Orleans to do Habitat for Humanity. Every other round, I think they'll be fighting fires somewhere.) We also got issued sleeping bags because we'll be sleeping all in one big room in the lodge. We also got rain gear. What do you think of when you think of rain gear? If you think of this guy
then you've got a good picture of our rain gear. Only there's a hood, not a hat. And also some yellow pants that come up to our shoulders. (Yes, there will be pictures.) I guess the thinking was that it won't really protect us from the cold we should be expecting, but at least it'll be waterproof. We also got 10 handsaws. We're lumberjacks, remember? Apparently lumberjacks wear yellow rain slickers.We also had our project briefing. This is where we put on our dress uniform (white polo, black BDU pants, and steel toes) and go in a room with Vaughn the unit leader and Ray the Assistant Regional Director (I don't think that's actually his title, but something like that) and tell them all about our project - where we're going, what we're doing, living arrangements, media plan, physical training plan, service learning plan, etc. (This is where Nichole was sitting in and gave me the news about not moving.) It was fine. It wasn't nearly as scary as everyone kept making it seem.
Today was Veterans Day, and we had the day off. When I say day off, I usually mean day to get some ISP (Independent Service Project) hours done. I went with 7 other Sun unit people to Food Serve America, which is like a warehouse food bank kind of place. For the first hour or so, we stood there with thousands of onions and put them in bags of 4. Know what looks disgusting? Smushed, rotten onions. Know what smells disgusting? Smushed, rotten onions. There weren't too many really bad ones, but enough to make it not a very fun job. We also had to wear lunch lady style hair nets. Who wants hair in their smushed, rotten onions? After that, we worked an assembly line packing one each of various kinds of frozen meat into boxes. I was at the beginning of the line having a (mostly) friendly competition with a guy named Cody from my unit about who could set up the flattened boxes faster.
And now some pictures that didn't fit in anywhere else in this post:
My team, Sun 4. In back, left to right: Lindsey, Jessica, TK. Front: Marquis, Rob, Michala, Becky, Christina the team leader, me, Jordan, and Heather
Becky and I carrying our newly-issued hand saws through the lobby of our dorm in our snazzy dress uniforms.
Elizabeth and Cody with our mountains of onions
Empty boxes that used to hold the meat we packed into other boxes. If you're ever moving and need boxes, go to your local food bank. Seriously.Saturday, November 7, 2009
AmeriHike...Part 3
Actually, not really, but that was the plan for today. But let's start where we left off last time...
Friday we had team role trainings. Christina, my TL (Team Leader - we use a lot of acronyms here) wanted two people to go to every training, and for everyone to go to two trainings. I went to training for Media Rep and Yearbook Rep, which are two positions that I really wanted. Media Reps write press releases to distribute in the communities we go to. We're supposed to do this really soon after we get to our spike site. (Have I explained spike? A spike project is any project that is more than an hour drive from campus, meaning we can't commute there. For spike projects, we set up temporary housing which could be anything closer to the project site. For my first spike, we're all sleeping in one big room in a lodge at our site.) The hope is that a reporter will come to our project site and maybe interview people and take pictures, then run a story about it. Heather, the media staff person, said that sometimes smaller newspapers without many reporters will just put our press release in the paper as a story. So that would be cool. Yearbook Reps have to submit a little description of our project and 1-3 pictures for every round of projects. Also, there are a few other things that need to be written which needed volunteers. One of those is that each unit gets a little introduction at the beginning of their sections, so I volunteered to write the intro for Sun Unit. I think this will be a fun job, because I like to write and I like to take pictures. Unfortunately, I might not have this job for every round. Christina said we could switch jobs around because some jobs have like 4 or 5 people interested in them, and Yearbook Rep is one of them.
Friday night, we had an event called World Cafe. There were three different stations with an activity and discussion questions that we went to that got us talking about world hunger. We read some personal stories of people struggling here in Denver, watched a slide show with some shocking statistics, and made a collage about how it makes us feel. It ended up being a lot more interesting than I thought it would be. Service learning is a big component of NCCC, so I think this was supposed to get us started learning.
Today, every team had some kind of team day. My team was going to go to Boulder and do something. I'll give you one guess. That's right, hiking! Yep, we sure do love to hike. We were going to go hiking, then go to the farmer's market which we've heard is really good, have lunch, write out a team charter (kind of an agreement on rules so we don't all drive each other crazy), and write out our spike prep packet. Well, it took about twice as long to get to Boulder as it should have, and the farmer's market was closing soon, so we did that first instead. When we were done there, it was lunch time. Christina took us out to lunch at a pretty good pizza place. (Some of you may be aware that I can't stand tomatoes, therefore don't like tomato sauce, therefore don't like pizza. This place had pizza with a tomato-less white sauce, which wasn't too bad.) We did our team charter there, then went to a park to do the spike prep stuff. That packet consisted of stuff like a media plan, a Capping plan, a service learning plan, a PT (Physical Training) plan, an ISP (Independent Service Project) plan, etc.
I guess I could tell you who's on my team. I wish I had a group picture for you, but I'm sure that'll happen soon. I have Christina, my TL, from Indiana, Michala from New York, Tomm with two m's from Ohio, Lindsey from Washington state, Jessica from California, TK from South Carolina, Heather from Maine, Rob from Virginia, Becky from Pennsylvania, Marquis from California, and Jordan from Michigan. I think we'll all get along pretty well.
As I like to do, I'll end with the few pictures I took today.
There was a band at the farmer's market, which was actually pretty good.
Contortionist street performer guy on Pearl Street, who is from an island in the Caribbean and has an awesome accent.
On his way into the 20 x 20 inch box.
In the box!
And two little boys in the box.
Friday we had team role trainings. Christina, my TL (Team Leader - we use a lot of acronyms here) wanted two people to go to every training, and for everyone to go to two trainings. I went to training for Media Rep and Yearbook Rep, which are two positions that I really wanted. Media Reps write press releases to distribute in the communities we go to. We're supposed to do this really soon after we get to our spike site. (Have I explained spike? A spike project is any project that is more than an hour drive from campus, meaning we can't commute there. For spike projects, we set up temporary housing which could be anything closer to the project site. For my first spike, we're all sleeping in one big room in a lodge at our site.) The hope is that a reporter will come to our project site and maybe interview people and take pictures, then run a story about it. Heather, the media staff person, said that sometimes smaller newspapers without many reporters will just put our press release in the paper as a story. So that would be cool. Yearbook Reps have to submit a little description of our project and 1-3 pictures for every round of projects. Also, there are a few other things that need to be written which needed volunteers. One of those is that each unit gets a little introduction at the beginning of their sections, so I volunteered to write the intro for Sun Unit. I think this will be a fun job, because I like to write and I like to take pictures. Unfortunately, I might not have this job for every round. Christina said we could switch jobs around because some jobs have like 4 or 5 people interested in them, and Yearbook Rep is one of them.
Friday night, we had an event called World Cafe. There were three different stations with an activity and discussion questions that we went to that got us talking about world hunger. We read some personal stories of people struggling here in Denver, watched a slide show with some shocking statistics, and made a collage about how it makes us feel. It ended up being a lot more interesting than I thought it would be. Service learning is a big component of NCCC, so I think this was supposed to get us started learning.
Today, every team had some kind of team day. My team was going to go to Boulder and do something. I'll give you one guess. That's right, hiking! Yep, we sure do love to hike. We were going to go hiking, then go to the farmer's market which we've heard is really good, have lunch, write out a team charter (kind of an agreement on rules so we don't all drive each other crazy), and write out our spike prep packet. Well, it took about twice as long to get to Boulder as it should have, and the farmer's market was closing soon, so we did that first instead. When we were done there, it was lunch time. Christina took us out to lunch at a pretty good pizza place. (Some of you may be aware that I can't stand tomatoes, therefore don't like tomato sauce, therefore don't like pizza. This place had pizza with a tomato-less white sauce, which wasn't too bad.) We did our team charter there, then went to a park to do the spike prep stuff. That packet consisted of stuff like a media plan, a Capping plan, a service learning plan, a PT (Physical Training) plan, an ISP (Independent Service Project) plan, etc.
I guess I could tell you who's on my team. I wish I had a group picture for you, but I'm sure that'll happen soon. I have Christina, my TL, from Indiana, Michala from New York, Tomm with two m's from Ohio, Lindsey from Washington state, Jessica from California, TK from South Carolina, Heather from Maine, Rob from Virginia, Becky from Pennsylvania, Marquis from California, and Jordan from Michigan. I think we'll all get along pretty well.
As I like to do, I'll end with the few pictures I took today.
There was a band at the farmer's market, which was actually pretty good.
Contortionist street performer guy on Pearl Street, who is from an island in the Caribbean and has an awesome accent.
On his way into the 20 x 20 inch box.
In the box!
And two little boys in the box.And now I'm off to downtown because it's the last weekend that we'll all be here before leaving for spikes. Good night!
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