On Sunday evening, most of us went to the French Quarter to find somewhere to sit and watch the Saints game. We looked in a lot of different places, but everywhere was either too crowded or not a very young crowd. We decided to go back to Magnolia Grill, where we ate dinner the first time we went to the Quarter. It was a cool little place that wasn’t crowded then, and they had good drink specials and nice TVs. We got there pretty close to the start of the game and it was empty. More people came in later, but not many. It ended up being really fun because the chef and the waiter were both rooting for the Vikings, and the manager guy and the other worker were for the Saints. The workers all kept yelling at each other. I don’t know if any of you watched the game, but it was a pretty exciting game. It stayed really close the whole time and ended with a tie. The Saints won the coin toss to get the ball first in overtime, then won! It was pretty exciting. Everyone in the tiny restaurant was cheering (except for the chef and waiter, of course). The street we were on wasn’t very populated at the time, so we made our way over to Bourbon Street and found the entire population of New Orleans. We walked down the street for a while and caught beads that were being thrown from balconies. As we walked down the street, one bar we passed started playing the Cupid Shuffle. (One of those hip hop songs that have a dance that everyone knows.) People started gathering in the street outside of the bar and doing the dance. Our group joined in and a lot of fun. For a while. Until the CRUSHING MOB OF PEOPLE surrounded everyone. You literally could not move without significant effort and rudeness. We somehow managed to fight our way out, and several of us decided to leave. Even though that mob got a little overwhelming, it was still a really fun night. It was like a culmination of all the Saints energy in the whole city.
Monday was of course another day off since we work Tuesday through Saturday. TK, Heather, and Lindsey had found a YMCA about 20 minutes away and already had memberships. Tomm and I went with the three of them to the Y, which is actually really nice. There’s a pretty big gym with a lot of weight machines and treadmills and stuff. The treadmills, bikes, ellipticals, and cross trainers all have TVs with cable on them. You can change your channel to whatever you want and plug in your headphones to listen. It’s actually nicer than the Nautilus in my hometown. On the way back, Heather, Lindsey, and I decided we wanted to check out the French Market, which is like a permanent flea market. It had a LOT of good stuff. I could have spent so much money there, but I limited it to two pairs of earrings. I had been wanting some Fleur de Lis earrings and found some cute ones, and all three of us got a pair from an artist who made them from heating some special kind of brightly colored plastic. I’m pretty sure we’ll be back.
So right now as I write this next section, it’s Friday. I really really can’t remember exactly what happened each day at work. I know I worked with Jess, Rob, and Marquis a lot because we were the people who weren’t really excited about working on the roof (which looks really slanted). We put up all the soffet and facia. I think I already described what those are. I cut all the soffet pieces and in the process realized how much stronger my right arm is than my left. The circular saw, which is what you use to cut soffet, doesn’t feel very heavy in my right hand but it feels super heavy in my left. This was also an annoying process because at the ends of each wall, the soffet has to be cut at a 45-ish degree angle so they will match up. I say 45-ish because they were all different. And most of them made a couple wasted pieces of soffet from where we got measurements wrong. For the facia, I cut it all (like I did that Saturday when Dan was out of town and we worked on another house), but I also had to help put some of it up. If we could have used regular nails, it would have taken no time at all. But alas, that would be too easy. There are some special skinny little aluminum nails that are painted white that you have to use. They’re aluminum. Bendy, flimsy aluminum. You start hammering it in and you think it’s going in straight, but then it bends almost at the end. And once it’s in that far, it’s quite an ordeal to get it out without scratching the facia. Some of them were REALLY frustrating. And when I say some, I mean most. Also, you have to hammer carefully because if you miss the nail and hit the facia itself, you make a dent in the nice flat facia which can never be removed. It’s pretty horrible.
More of note than soffet and facia was Thursday night. TK’s birthday is today (Friday), and to celebrate, he wanted to go to a concert of a band he likes last night at the House of Blues. It was a bluegrass band called Yonder Mountain. (If you watched that slideshow video we made that’s on Facebook, the first song in the video is from Yonder.) All but two people from our team and two people from Dani’s team (the other Sun team here) bought tickets. It was SO fun. The whole big group of us managed to stand way up close to the stage and everyone was dancing. I had never been to a bluegrass show before, and I would definitely go again. The show started at like 9:30, and Christina had told us that she was taking the van back at 12:30 but we could find our own way back later if we wanted. Surprisingly, almost everyone went back at 12:30. TK and I were the only ones from our team who wanted to stay till the end, along with Erin, Marie, and Matt from Dani’s team. It ended up ending about 20 minutes after they left. Ironically, they all missed the song we had all been waiting for. That first song from our slideshow video is called 40 Miles From Denver (the band is from Colorado) and we all really wanted them to play it. We had been yelling out the song name many times, and a couple times the guitar player who was right in front of us even made eye contact. The rest of our group left, they played like one more song, then the show was over. The band came back out for an encore, and the Denver song was the first one they played. TK and I even got a free ride home. There’s a woman named Mary Lane who had been volunteering on our worksite the first couple weeks we were here. She had just finished grad school and was looking for a job, but wanted to do something useful while waiting for one. She knew Dan through a friend, so she volunteered at our house for a while. (She got a job last week though, so she’s not around anymore.) She and TK apparently have like the exact same taste in music and he had told her that we were all going to the Yonder show for his birthday. She loves them also, so she decided to go to the show too. When it was over, she came over to ask how we were getting home and we told her taking a cab. She offered to drive us. Not only did we get a free ride home, we also were able to prevent her from walking across the entire French Quarter alone late at night to where she was parked. It was pretty nice.
Oh, and the title of this post is the chant the Saints fans like to start ALL THE TIME. It is also completely acceptable to just shout “Who dat?” at any random time you want. During the Yonder show, they started talking about how fun it is to play in New Orleans, and the crowd started the chant. The band told us to keep going, and they started playing a beat with the chant. Then the singer started making up words and turned it into a little song with the chant in the background. When they wrapped up the song, they said that it had been recorded. I would love to somehow get hold of that recording.
So that brings us to Friday. It was supposed to thunderstorm, so Dan planned a not-really-outdoor project for us. After Katrina, Habitat started building houses built about three feet off the ground on concrete pillars in case of flooding. Today, we all had to crawl under the house and put insulation under the floor. Putting the insulation up wasn’t that bad. You just kind of squish it up into the spaces under the house. The bad part of it was that it’s made of fiberglass, so we all have obnoxious tiny fiberglass splinters. Worse than the fiberglass splinters was that after the insulation was all up, we had to cover the whole thing with chicken wire. It was pretty horrible. It couldn’t be too tight because then it would squish the insulation and make it useless, but it couldn’t be too loose because then the insulation could fall down. Bending a big roll of chicken wire to go where you want it isn’t as easy as it might seem. We worked in groups of three or four per roll and usually someone would have to hold it while someone else would hammer. The space under the house is covered in some kind of mud/sand/dirt combination which was caked on the wire and on the wood under there. So every time you hammer, dirt would fall on everyone. This means lots of dirt in your eyes, in your hair, on your face, down your shirt, etc. We were working on all this from 8:00 until about 2:00. It started raining in the afternoon, but at about 2:00 some thunder and lightning started. NCCC rules are that we’re not allowed to work out side when there’s lightning. So at least we got to leave early the day the work was so unpleasant. Unfortunately, the chicken wire isn’t all finished yet, so some people are going to have to go back under there.
On Saturday (it’s Sunday now as I write), the lovely 60 or 70 degree weather we had been having dropped to about 42 with strong wind that made it seem much colder. There were a few various projects on the exterior of the house that had to be finished. I was back to cutting more soffit. (I finally saw it written yesterday. It’s soffit, not soffet. Whoops.) One side of the house has a little bump out thing. From the inside, it’s like a little nook with windows where a window seat might go. From the outside, it’s mostly just annoying and makes things take longer. Siding hadn’t been done yet on the bump out, which means that F-Channel, soffit, and facia couldn’t be done. While some people were finishing that siding, I cut soffit for Heather to put up under the porch roof. Yep, there’s soffit under there too. We ran out of that kind of soffit, so we had to wait for Dan to go to the warehouse and get more. Then he had me show Becky and Michala how to do F-Channel and soffit on the bump out while I cut it for them. The work wasn’t bad or anything, it was just so cold and windy.
So that was the week. I don’t know what’s happening this weekend yet. I can’t believe we’ve been here three weeks already. It’s so nice that we’re here for two months instead of just one.
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Farmer’s Tan in January: Check.
As I write this, it is Friday the 22nd. I’ll do my best to remember what all went on since my last update, but the days kind of mix together.
Saturday the 16th – Dan, our supervisor, was out of town for the weekend so we had to work on a different house. (Our work week is Tuesday – Saturday.) We were sent to a house about two blocks from the house where we live. Ben was our supervisor for this new site, and he was pretty cool. I think this house was almost done. There were giant piles of dirt and sand that had to be spread out over where the lawn would be. There was also soffet and facia (pronounced FAY-sha) to be cut and put up. Don’t know what those things are? If you go outside your house and look up to the underside of where the roof hangs out over the house a foot or so, you will most likely see some white plastic with grooves going toward the house. That white plastic is soffet. If you look to the outside edge of the soffet, you will most likely see an L-shaped piece of metal, where the tall part of the L is vertical and the short part of the L goes under the soffet. That L-shaped metal is facia. I was the facia cutter for the day. I’d never heard of facia before that day, but cutting it is kind of fun (for a weirdo like me who likes doing tedious things). Facia is just a thin piece of aluminum so it bends and cuts pretty easily. I’d have to measure how long the tall part of the L should be, and cut down the length of the 10-foot piece of facia. Snap a chalk line across it, use a utility knife to score as hard as you can down the line, make a little cut with tin snips at one end, then use that cut part to just rip through the line you cut with the knife. Ripping metal is kind of fun. Sometimes I’d also have to fold right angles in it to go around corners. I enjoyed it, but I feel like normal people probably wouldn’t.
After work Saturday was our first night where we didn’t have to work the next day! We all went to the French Quarter, which is surprisingly not far from our house. We got there about 10 minutes before the end of the second to last football game that could send the New Orleans Saints to the Super Bowl, so everyone was REALLY excited. I have never seen a city more excited about their team than New Orleans is about the Saints. Their colors are everywhere. We listen to a lot of radio both in the van and on the work site, and there are a bunch of songs about the Saints. They’re disguised as regular songs that come on the radio, even with voices that sound like the real singers, but the words are about the Saints. It’s ridiculous. As I understand it, if they win on Sunday the 24th, they’re in the Super Bowl. We’re planning to go down to the Quarter and find somewhere to watch the game on Sunday. I don’t even like football, but you can’t help but be excited about it right now.
Anyway, back to Saturday. We mostly did a lot of walking around after we ate dinner. An important mission for the night was to find the House of Blues and buy concert tickets. TK’s birthday is coming up, and he wants to celebrate by going to a concert there so most of us and some of Dani’s team are going. Tickets were cheaper in person at the box office than online, so it was a successful mission. We walked around more, and went to the famous Café du Monde. More walking around. We found Frenchman Street, which the teams who were here last round said was really fun. It seemed fun. The problem was that silly rule about the van having to be parked back at the house by midnight. I think we’re taking a cab next time. So even though we had to come back before we wanted to, it was pretty fun.
Sunday wasn’t really special. It was our only day off. All I even remember doing was making our first trip to the laundromat. Habitat had told us our house would have a washer and dryer, but it doesn’t. Oh well.
Monday the 18th – While the rest of the working world had a day off, AmeriCorps NCCC had a day on. (Yes, that’s really what they say.) All NCCC teams were required to do some kind of service project outside of their normal project for MLK Day. We had been told that we would have to organize this project ourselves and that we would have to recruit other volunteers from the community, but this ended up not being true. There was some kind of giant service thing organized through Camp Hope (where Elmhurst kids and kids from many other colleges stay when they come do Habitat for spring break) that included the NCCC teams from other campuses who are in New Orleans right now. We had to leave the house at 7am to go to Camp Hope for a breakfast with everyone and to hear a few people talk, then everyone split up. My team was with a team from the Fire Unit from Denver, Red Unit from Sacramento, CA, and Delta Unit from Vicksburg, MI. (I learned that the Vicksburg campus has River and Delta units, Sacramento has colors for units, and Vinton, IA has Eagle, Badger, Wolf, and Raven. I like the animal names, but I think our unit names are best.) Anyway, there is a branch of the Louisiana Department of Education called the Recovery School District that has been getting schools running again since Katrina. The school we would be helping for the day had been in trailers or something, and we would be setting up a fancy new building for school to start THE NEXT DAY. Basically all I did was go around and find boxes of trash from new computers and such things and throw them out. My team wasn’t very happy that day. The work was kind of boring, the building was way too hot, and our supervisor was awful. He was rude and bossy and didn’t give good directions. We entertained ourselves for a while during lunch thinking of names for him. Immature, I know, but he was horrible.
After lunch, we got sent to an organization called City Year. I’m not entirely sure what all they do, but they seem like they do a lot. Plus they had nice jackets. There was a little community garden nearby that we would be working on. We weeded for a while but the garden wasn’t that big. We finished pretty early and our new supervisor (who wasn’t awful) said we could go. It was kind of a weird day.
On Tuesday, we were back on our regular worksite. Tuesday was the day our roof trusses were being delivered! We get a roof soon! Don’t know what trusses are? They’re what make house roofs pointed and slanted. They are long skinny triangular frames made of 2x4s that go across the whole house and gradually get taller to reach the top point of the roof. They’re like the rafters between the ceiling and the slanted part of the roof. Dan asked me if I had an eye for detail, and I answered with an emphatic YES, so I got the eyeballing job. A piece of string had already been set up a foot or so away from the outside of the house, and all the trusses had to line up with it. I got on a ladder on the inside of the house and looked out over the edge of the wall so I could see when the truss lined up with the string. If I didn’t line them up right, the edge where to roof overhangs the house would be squiggly. So no pressure on me or anything. Dan, TK, Heather, and Rob were all up there too. I would tell Dan, TK, and Heather if the truss needed to move right or left, then Rob and I would nail the ends of the trusses into the top of the wall when it was lined up right. It was pretty fun, but it took a lot longer than Dan was expecting. We usually start cleaning up at about 4 then leave by about 4:30, but we weren’t done setting the trusses until almost 5. The rest of the team was just standing around waiting for us. I felt bad, but this was the kind of project that can’t be rushed.
On Wednesday we had to really finish attaching the trusses. Just a couple nails in either end of each truss aren’t quite enough to hold a roof up. There are metal straps where one end goes on the wall and the other goes on the truss, with five holes for nails on each end. This would have been easy, except for where we had to put nails through metal. There were metal plates attaching the diagonal cross pieces supporting the middle of the triangular truss, and most of the time the straps had to go right through those metal plates. The nails we used were pretty short, so I couldn’t really use them to poke a hole through the metal. The only technique I found that worked for me was to start hammering in a 16 penny nail (which is like four inches long and much easier to hold) to get a hole through the metal, then pull it out and put in the right nail. It would seriously take me about 10 minutes to get one nail through the plates. I’m sure you can imagine how frustrating this would be. Gah! I’m frustrated just thinking about it.
I hope I described that well enough. I wish I could have been sketching a picture or something while talking about it. We took pictures, but I don’t know when I’ll be able to post them.
And now it’s Sunday when I’m writing this next section, so details are getting more fuzzy. This not having internet thing makes writing a blog pretty hard.
On Thursday, we had to start putting sheets of plywood up on the roof and nail them into the trusses. It was kind of fun climbing around in the rafters, but kind of difficult in the big clunky steel toed boots (which we have to wear all the time on construction sites). I think the only thing worth noting for Thursday is that I realized how steep the roof slants and that I don’t really want to be up there. Climbing around in the rafters is fine, but I didn’t want to walk around on the slanted plywood sheets. I helped with the sheets for the first few rows while I didn’t have to get on top of them, then came down. Either that happened at the end of the work day, or I just don’t remember what I did after I came down from the roof. Days tend to run together.
On Friday, the main work to be done was nail the rest of the plywood sheets to the roof. I didn’t want to do that, so I was stationed on the ground with a circular saw. A lot of the four by eight foot plywood sheets needed to be cut down in some way, so the roof people would tell me what they needed and I would cut it for them. I also had to be one of the people to hand sheets up to them. Forest had made a thing that looked like a giant letter A out of 2x4s that was as tall as the roof. Two people on the ground would slide a sheet up the easel (which is what it became known as, since that’s what it looked like) and rest it on the cross piece. Then the top of the sheet would be high enough for people on the roof to reach down and pull it up. I think most of you know that I enjoy using power saws, but it got a little boring because the roof people didn’t need very many cuts.
Later in the afternoon, Dan had me start marking where the F-Channel would go. F-Channel is this long piece of plastic which, when you look at it from the end, appropriately looks like a capital letter F. It gets attached to the side of the house up at the level of where the roof overhangs. Soffet, the plastic that goes on the underside of the overhang, slides into the space between the two horizontal stems of the F. It was a lot of up and down a ladder for me, because I had to make a mark at each end of each exterior wall. By the time I was done with that, it was time to go.
Finally, Saturday. Dan wasn’t out of town this weekend so we got to work on our usual house. Jess, Rob, and myself got the maddening job of putting up the F-Channel. Putting up this stupid little piece of plastic around the whole house ended up taking us the entire day. It had to be nailed into the siding, so that already makes it a little difficult because of the cement compound the siding is made of. Also, hammering is really awkward because you keep running into the roof overhang. Also, the nail goes right above one of the stems of the F, so you have to hammer carefully to avoid hitting that piece of plastic. Also, there were people working on the roof, so there was constantly dust and dirt falling in our faces as well as the constant fear of something heavier than dust and dirt being dropped. I could feel all the dirt and grit on my face and in my hair at the end of the day. It was pretty unpleasant. I have bruises up and down my legs from hitting my shins on ladder rungs all day. F-Channel is really just obnoxious in every way possible. All that work and annoyance for a little piece of plastic that barely even noticeable.
And now, it is Sunday. Rob and Marquis made everyone pancakes, eggs, and sausage for breakfast and now most of us are just sitting around. I’ll be going to a café soon to get internet, so I’ll finally be able to post this. Later, we’ll be going out to watch the game that decides whether or not the Saints are going to the Super Bowl.
And yes, I do have a farmer’s tan already. The weather has been pretty nice. It has been sunny with a temperature in the high 60s or even 70s for most of the time we’ve been here so far. That means T-shirts at work, which means farmer’s tan. In January.
Saturday the 16th – Dan, our supervisor, was out of town for the weekend so we had to work on a different house. (Our work week is Tuesday – Saturday.) We were sent to a house about two blocks from the house where we live. Ben was our supervisor for this new site, and he was pretty cool. I think this house was almost done. There were giant piles of dirt and sand that had to be spread out over where the lawn would be. There was also soffet and facia (pronounced FAY-sha) to be cut and put up. Don’t know what those things are? If you go outside your house and look up to the underside of where the roof hangs out over the house a foot or so, you will most likely see some white plastic with grooves going toward the house. That white plastic is soffet. If you look to the outside edge of the soffet, you will most likely see an L-shaped piece of metal, where the tall part of the L is vertical and the short part of the L goes under the soffet. That L-shaped metal is facia. I was the facia cutter for the day. I’d never heard of facia before that day, but cutting it is kind of fun (for a weirdo like me who likes doing tedious things). Facia is just a thin piece of aluminum so it bends and cuts pretty easily. I’d have to measure how long the tall part of the L should be, and cut down the length of the 10-foot piece of facia. Snap a chalk line across it, use a utility knife to score as hard as you can down the line, make a little cut with tin snips at one end, then use that cut part to just rip through the line you cut with the knife. Ripping metal is kind of fun. Sometimes I’d also have to fold right angles in it to go around corners. I enjoyed it, but I feel like normal people probably wouldn’t.
After work Saturday was our first night where we didn’t have to work the next day! We all went to the French Quarter, which is surprisingly not far from our house. We got there about 10 minutes before the end of the second to last football game that could send the New Orleans Saints to the Super Bowl, so everyone was REALLY excited. I have never seen a city more excited about their team than New Orleans is about the Saints. Their colors are everywhere. We listen to a lot of radio both in the van and on the work site, and there are a bunch of songs about the Saints. They’re disguised as regular songs that come on the radio, even with voices that sound like the real singers, but the words are about the Saints. It’s ridiculous. As I understand it, if they win on Sunday the 24th, they’re in the Super Bowl. We’re planning to go down to the Quarter and find somewhere to watch the game on Sunday. I don’t even like football, but you can’t help but be excited about it right now.
Anyway, back to Saturday. We mostly did a lot of walking around after we ate dinner. An important mission for the night was to find the House of Blues and buy concert tickets. TK’s birthday is coming up, and he wants to celebrate by going to a concert there so most of us and some of Dani’s team are going. Tickets were cheaper in person at the box office than online, so it was a successful mission. We walked around more, and went to the famous Café du Monde. More walking around. We found Frenchman Street, which the teams who were here last round said was really fun. It seemed fun. The problem was that silly rule about the van having to be parked back at the house by midnight. I think we’re taking a cab next time. So even though we had to come back before we wanted to, it was pretty fun.
Sunday wasn’t really special. It was our only day off. All I even remember doing was making our first trip to the laundromat. Habitat had told us our house would have a washer and dryer, but it doesn’t. Oh well.
Monday the 18th – While the rest of the working world had a day off, AmeriCorps NCCC had a day on. (Yes, that’s really what they say.) All NCCC teams were required to do some kind of service project outside of their normal project for MLK Day. We had been told that we would have to organize this project ourselves and that we would have to recruit other volunteers from the community, but this ended up not being true. There was some kind of giant service thing organized through Camp Hope (where Elmhurst kids and kids from many other colleges stay when they come do Habitat for spring break) that included the NCCC teams from other campuses who are in New Orleans right now. We had to leave the house at 7am to go to Camp Hope for a breakfast with everyone and to hear a few people talk, then everyone split up. My team was with a team from the Fire Unit from Denver, Red Unit from Sacramento, CA, and Delta Unit from Vicksburg, MI. (I learned that the Vicksburg campus has River and Delta units, Sacramento has colors for units, and Vinton, IA has Eagle, Badger, Wolf, and Raven. I like the animal names, but I think our unit names are best.) Anyway, there is a branch of the Louisiana Department of Education called the Recovery School District that has been getting schools running again since Katrina. The school we would be helping for the day had been in trailers or something, and we would be setting up a fancy new building for school to start THE NEXT DAY. Basically all I did was go around and find boxes of trash from new computers and such things and throw them out. My team wasn’t very happy that day. The work was kind of boring, the building was way too hot, and our supervisor was awful. He was rude and bossy and didn’t give good directions. We entertained ourselves for a while during lunch thinking of names for him. Immature, I know, but he was horrible.
After lunch, we got sent to an organization called City Year. I’m not entirely sure what all they do, but they seem like they do a lot. Plus they had nice jackets. There was a little community garden nearby that we would be working on. We weeded for a while but the garden wasn’t that big. We finished pretty early and our new supervisor (who wasn’t awful) said we could go. It was kind of a weird day.
On Tuesday, we were back on our regular worksite. Tuesday was the day our roof trusses were being delivered! We get a roof soon! Don’t know what trusses are? They’re what make house roofs pointed and slanted. They are long skinny triangular frames made of 2x4s that go across the whole house and gradually get taller to reach the top point of the roof. They’re like the rafters between the ceiling and the slanted part of the roof. Dan asked me if I had an eye for detail, and I answered with an emphatic YES, so I got the eyeballing job. A piece of string had already been set up a foot or so away from the outside of the house, and all the trusses had to line up with it. I got on a ladder on the inside of the house and looked out over the edge of the wall so I could see when the truss lined up with the string. If I didn’t line them up right, the edge where to roof overhangs the house would be squiggly. So no pressure on me or anything. Dan, TK, Heather, and Rob were all up there too. I would tell Dan, TK, and Heather if the truss needed to move right or left, then Rob and I would nail the ends of the trusses into the top of the wall when it was lined up right. It was pretty fun, but it took a lot longer than Dan was expecting. We usually start cleaning up at about 4 then leave by about 4:30, but we weren’t done setting the trusses until almost 5. The rest of the team was just standing around waiting for us. I felt bad, but this was the kind of project that can’t be rushed.
On Wednesday we had to really finish attaching the trusses. Just a couple nails in either end of each truss aren’t quite enough to hold a roof up. There are metal straps where one end goes on the wall and the other goes on the truss, with five holes for nails on each end. This would have been easy, except for where we had to put nails through metal. There were metal plates attaching the diagonal cross pieces supporting the middle of the triangular truss, and most of the time the straps had to go right through those metal plates. The nails we used were pretty short, so I couldn’t really use them to poke a hole through the metal. The only technique I found that worked for me was to start hammering in a 16 penny nail (which is like four inches long and much easier to hold) to get a hole through the metal, then pull it out and put in the right nail. It would seriously take me about 10 minutes to get one nail through the plates. I’m sure you can imagine how frustrating this would be. Gah! I’m frustrated just thinking about it.
I hope I described that well enough. I wish I could have been sketching a picture or something while talking about it. We took pictures, but I don’t know when I’ll be able to post them.
And now it’s Sunday when I’m writing this next section, so details are getting more fuzzy. This not having internet thing makes writing a blog pretty hard.
On Thursday, we had to start putting sheets of plywood up on the roof and nail them into the trusses. It was kind of fun climbing around in the rafters, but kind of difficult in the big clunky steel toed boots (which we have to wear all the time on construction sites). I think the only thing worth noting for Thursday is that I realized how steep the roof slants and that I don’t really want to be up there. Climbing around in the rafters is fine, but I didn’t want to walk around on the slanted plywood sheets. I helped with the sheets for the first few rows while I didn’t have to get on top of them, then came down. Either that happened at the end of the work day, or I just don’t remember what I did after I came down from the roof. Days tend to run together.
On Friday, the main work to be done was nail the rest of the plywood sheets to the roof. I didn’t want to do that, so I was stationed on the ground with a circular saw. A lot of the four by eight foot plywood sheets needed to be cut down in some way, so the roof people would tell me what they needed and I would cut it for them. I also had to be one of the people to hand sheets up to them. Forest had made a thing that looked like a giant letter A out of 2x4s that was as tall as the roof. Two people on the ground would slide a sheet up the easel (which is what it became known as, since that’s what it looked like) and rest it on the cross piece. Then the top of the sheet would be high enough for people on the roof to reach down and pull it up. I think most of you know that I enjoy using power saws, but it got a little boring because the roof people didn’t need very many cuts.
Later in the afternoon, Dan had me start marking where the F-Channel would go. F-Channel is this long piece of plastic which, when you look at it from the end, appropriately looks like a capital letter F. It gets attached to the side of the house up at the level of where the roof overhangs. Soffet, the plastic that goes on the underside of the overhang, slides into the space between the two horizontal stems of the F. It was a lot of up and down a ladder for me, because I had to make a mark at each end of each exterior wall. By the time I was done with that, it was time to go.
Finally, Saturday. Dan wasn’t out of town this weekend so we got to work on our usual house. Jess, Rob, and myself got the maddening job of putting up the F-Channel. Putting up this stupid little piece of plastic around the whole house ended up taking us the entire day. It had to be nailed into the siding, so that already makes it a little difficult because of the cement compound the siding is made of. Also, hammering is really awkward because you keep running into the roof overhang. Also, the nail goes right above one of the stems of the F, so you have to hammer carefully to avoid hitting that piece of plastic. Also, there were people working on the roof, so there was constantly dust and dirt falling in our faces as well as the constant fear of something heavier than dust and dirt being dropped. I could feel all the dirt and grit on my face and in my hair at the end of the day. It was pretty unpleasant. I have bruises up and down my legs from hitting my shins on ladder rungs all day. F-Channel is really just obnoxious in every way possible. All that work and annoyance for a little piece of plastic that barely even noticeable.
And now, it is Sunday. Rob and Marquis made everyone pancakes, eggs, and sausage for breakfast and now most of us are just sitting around. I’ll be going to a café soon to get internet, so I’ll finally be able to post this. Later, we’ll be going out to watch the game that decides whether or not the Saints are going to the Super Bowl.
And yes, I do have a farmer’s tan already. The weather has been pretty nice. It has been sunny with a temperature in the high 60s or even 70s for most of the time we’ve been here so far. That means T-shirts at work, which means farmer’s tan. In January.
Friday, January 15, 2010
Dr. Scholl's Gel Insoles Are a Gift From the Gods
So this post is kind of a mish mash. I started writing it Wednesday, continued Thursday, and now I’m posting it here at the Habitat office on Friday. There’s no internet at the house we live in, so I’m just writing in Word documents until I get internet. So…here we go.
We left on Saturday morning for a lovely three-day road trip to New Orleans. We had decided that we didn’t want to drive through Kansas, so we went south into New Mexico, then over through Texas. We were caravanning with Sun 5 (led by team leader Dani), who is also doing Habitat construction down here. They were working at the Arkansas Children’s Hospital last round. This was my team’s first real trip, and we were all excited about it. We pulled over at the “Welcome to New Mexico” sign to take a team picture. Then we also took pictures at the entertaining visitor’s centers in Texas and Oklahoma. (Much to our surprise, the route we had planned took us across the top of Texas, into Oklahoma, then down through Texas again. We didn’t know until we passed the Welcome to Oklahoma sign.) My team was all about the silly pictures, while Dani’s team mocked us behind our backs. Their loss.
We stopped for the first night at a hotel in Amarillo, TX and ate dinner at the Boot Hill Saloon and Grill. It was even better than a place with that kind of name would make you imagine. It was decorated all fancily and the waitresses were in saloon type dresses. The meals all had names like Billy the Kid or The Rancher’s Wife. (The Rancher’s Wife was the only non-red meat meal I saw on the menu.) The men’s room looked like an outhouse (I heard), but the women’s room was awesome. The stall doors were like the double swinging saloon doors with a pull chain from the ceiling to flush the toilet. There were also a few feather boas and a dress hanging on the wall. We may or may not have had all the girls on my team and a few from Dani’s team in there at once taking silly pictures.
Did I really just devote half a paragraph to describing a public restroom? Yes, I believe I did.
The second day of travel took us across the bottom of Oklahoma, then down through Texas again. We spent the second night in Tyler, TX and ate dinner at the Lonestar Grill. It was like a tiny local diner. I had some fabulous breakfast for dinner. It was at this diner where I had my Texas Revelation, which I will now share with you. Everything in Texas is shaped like one of two things: the state of Texas itself or a star. Sometimes, to throw in a little variety, things will be shaped like a cowboy boot. There was a make-your-own-waffle thing at breakfast in our Amarillo hotel and it was shaped like Texas. I ate Texas for breakfast that morning.
Finally, at about 7:30 or 8:00pm on Monday, we arrived at our house in New Orleans! We had learned during lunch on the road on Monday that both the heat and hot water in our house weren’t working for the night but they would be fixed Tuesday. We had a choice between staying in our cold house or spending the night at a volunteer camp. (Specifically at Camp Hope, where Elmhurst people who did Habitat during spring break lived.) The team chose the cold house. We just wanted to get our stuff in and get settled. We found out when we got there that the circuit breaker was also not the greatest, so the lights in the bedrooms wouldn’t stay on for long. We got issued AmeriCorps sleeping bags, which are the kind that taper at the feet like a mummy (I think the Army uses them) and are supposed to be super warm, but I still didn’t sleep very well because I was too cold. The thermostat that wasn’t doing anything said the temperature inside was like forty-something degrees. It was pretty miserable.
Tuesday the 12th, we had our first day of work. We went to one construction site, that only had the house foundation done so far, and had a safety meeting with a bunch of other volunteers. We then found out that we would be working on a different site, where the house had already been started. The interior and exterior wall frames were already up, which is unfortunate because that’s my favorite part of building a house. My team actually got lucky, because Habitat frequently splits NCCC teams up, but we get to stay together. Dan, our site supervisor, did AmeriCorps Direct with Habitat last year. I had never heard of Direct before. He said he applied directly to Habitat, not to AmeriCorps. He was the assistant to a site supervisor for all of last year, and now he’s in charge of a house. Forest, Dan’s assistant, is in AmeriCorps Direct right now. All that happened the first day was Dan teaching us how to use a chop saw, circular saw, jig saw, and planar, all of which I have used for the past four years in the Elmhurst scene shop, and also a little bit while working with Habitat during high school. He would show us the tool, explain how to use it, demonstrate, then have all 11 of us do a practice cut. That took until lunch. After lunch, we would have had to leave early to get to a meeting with the Habitat volunteer coordinator anyway, but Christina decided to just take us back to the house to have some relaxation time after that unpleasant night in the house.
Wednesday the 13th in the morning, Heather, Rob and I had a weird task. We cut about 300 six or eight-inch squares of Tyvek (paper-like stuff that helps waterproof the house). Not what you think of when you think of construction work, but oh well. After that, most of my team worked on siding, and I had a fairly significant personal triumph. When I had done Habitat in high school, there was a time when I had to do siding. The siding was some kind of cement compound, and it was REALLY hard. Most of the time, I physically could not put a nail through it. Even five or six years later, I still get frustrated just thinking about it. I would hammer and hammer and hammer, and the nail would barely go in at all. Many times the nail would just fall back out. When I heard we were siding, I had a flashback to that frustration. Well wouldn’t you know it, Habitat still uses that same cement compound siding. But now, five or six years later, I don’t have much trouble getting a nail into it at all! I even had less trouble than some other people. It was pretty exciting for me.
After work, we attacked our house (the one we live in). It was built by Habitat, so it’s not a bad house, but it was pretty disgusting when we got here. The windows were caked with dirt and had no curtains or blinds, the floors were dirty, the only furniture was a couch and two loveseats, the bathroom was pretty gross, etc. After work, we cleaned EVERYTHING. We had gotten a little bit of furniture from the Habitat warehouse on Tuesday so we could arrange everything better. We also got curtains for all the windows and some carpet to put in various rooms. The house is SO MUC better now.
After dinner, six people went out to go to Whole Foods and Walgreens, leaving the house much emptier than usual. I love my team, but it was pretty pleasant. Christina had brought a TV to New Orleans for us to use, and Tomm brought his Xbox. (X-Box? XBox? Who knows.) There has already been some video game playing, usually a game where you just walk around and kill the zombies that attack you. I never played because I don’t even know how to use an Xbox/X-Box/XBox controller, but Rob helped me through the zombie game. It’s called Left for Dead 2. On the controller, there are two joysticks. One controls your body, the other controls your head. You have to use them simultaneously because you have to turn your head in the direction you want to go. Rob was very patient with me and gave me a little time to get used to moving around at the beginning, but it didn’t help much. The first thing we had to do was go down some stairs, and it took me about five minutes. Rob was getting attacked by zombies and shooting them all down and I trapped myself on the stairs. I think what happened was that I pointed my head down then forgot to put it up and just spun in circles. Those stairs were quite a challenge for me. After I figured out how to walk, every time I got attacked, I would just start pushing all the buttons. Rob would try to tell me how to do various special moves and techniques, but I would just push all the buttons. All while freaking out and yelling a lot. I’m proud to say I got through two levels without dying, but goodness. It was stressful.
Thursday the 14th, we just did more siding. All day. My right shoulder was pretty stiff this morning, probably from all the hammering yesterday, so that just made it more fun. But I was not nearly as sore as I was the first time I did Habitat and hammered all day. I’m stronger than I was when I was 17 years old! Woo hoo! Forest had some of us splitting up and working with some of the other volunteers, which was interesting. There’s a group of college kids here from Harvard, and an all male group from Kent State. They seem kind of like frat guys, and they’re all majoring in Construction Something. I didn’t even know that was a major. We call them the Bros (as in brothers). They never talk to any of us or the Harvard kids. Several of us worked with some of the Harvard kids today, and they were pretty cool. Highlight of my day: I said something to someone on my team about the Bros, and a Harvard girl was right there. She overheard me, and said “You guys call them the Bros too?!” It was hilarious. We now have an alliance with the Harvard group against the Bros. Nothing actually comes out of this alliance, we just kind of make fun of the Bros a little bit. The Harvard group is here all this week and next week (it’s still their winter break), but the Bros are only here this week.
Oh, and about the title of this post. I bought some Dr. Scholl's gel insoles for my steel toes while we were still at Calwood, and finally put them in my boots before we left for New Orleans. Oh my goodness, they are amazing. My feet would frequently hurt at the end of the day when I wore the steel toes at Calwood, but they’ve been totally fine so far here. If you have uncomfortable shoes, I highly recommend getting some of those gel things.
And about that picture slide show thing from Calwood - Christina said it was too big of a file to email, so I can't send it to anyone. (Until I figure out a way.) But she put it on Facebook, and I went and tagged all of us. I'm pretty sure anyone who is reading this is my Facebook friend, so you should be able to find it posted on my wall. I think it's highly worth watching, but I made it. So I might be a little biased. Make sure you have the sound on!
Well, that’s the first week. No promises when the next post might come, but I’ll do the best I can. I think I can probably find internet maybe once a week or so.
We left on Saturday morning for a lovely three-day road trip to New Orleans. We had decided that we didn’t want to drive through Kansas, so we went south into New Mexico, then over through Texas. We were caravanning with Sun 5 (led by team leader Dani), who is also doing Habitat construction down here. They were working at the Arkansas Children’s Hospital last round. This was my team’s first real trip, and we were all excited about it. We pulled over at the “Welcome to New Mexico” sign to take a team picture. Then we also took pictures at the entertaining visitor’s centers in Texas and Oklahoma. (Much to our surprise, the route we had planned took us across the top of Texas, into Oklahoma, then down through Texas again. We didn’t know until we passed the Welcome to Oklahoma sign.) My team was all about the silly pictures, while Dani’s team mocked us behind our backs. Their loss.
We stopped for the first night at a hotel in Amarillo, TX and ate dinner at the Boot Hill Saloon and Grill. It was even better than a place with that kind of name would make you imagine. It was decorated all fancily and the waitresses were in saloon type dresses. The meals all had names like Billy the Kid or The Rancher’s Wife. (The Rancher’s Wife was the only non-red meat meal I saw on the menu.) The men’s room looked like an outhouse (I heard), but the women’s room was awesome. The stall doors were like the double swinging saloon doors with a pull chain from the ceiling to flush the toilet. There were also a few feather boas and a dress hanging on the wall. We may or may not have had all the girls on my team and a few from Dani’s team in there at once taking silly pictures.
Did I really just devote half a paragraph to describing a public restroom? Yes, I believe I did.
The second day of travel took us across the bottom of Oklahoma, then down through Texas again. We spent the second night in Tyler, TX and ate dinner at the Lonestar Grill. It was like a tiny local diner. I had some fabulous breakfast for dinner. It was at this diner where I had my Texas Revelation, which I will now share with you. Everything in Texas is shaped like one of two things: the state of Texas itself or a star. Sometimes, to throw in a little variety, things will be shaped like a cowboy boot. There was a make-your-own-waffle thing at breakfast in our Amarillo hotel and it was shaped like Texas. I ate Texas for breakfast that morning.
Finally, at about 7:30 or 8:00pm on Monday, we arrived at our house in New Orleans! We had learned during lunch on the road on Monday that both the heat and hot water in our house weren’t working for the night but they would be fixed Tuesday. We had a choice between staying in our cold house or spending the night at a volunteer camp. (Specifically at Camp Hope, where Elmhurst people who did Habitat during spring break lived.) The team chose the cold house. We just wanted to get our stuff in and get settled. We found out when we got there that the circuit breaker was also not the greatest, so the lights in the bedrooms wouldn’t stay on for long. We got issued AmeriCorps sleeping bags, which are the kind that taper at the feet like a mummy (I think the Army uses them) and are supposed to be super warm, but I still didn’t sleep very well because I was too cold. The thermostat that wasn’t doing anything said the temperature inside was like forty-something degrees. It was pretty miserable.
Tuesday the 12th, we had our first day of work. We went to one construction site, that only had the house foundation done so far, and had a safety meeting with a bunch of other volunteers. We then found out that we would be working on a different site, where the house had already been started. The interior and exterior wall frames were already up, which is unfortunate because that’s my favorite part of building a house. My team actually got lucky, because Habitat frequently splits NCCC teams up, but we get to stay together. Dan, our site supervisor, did AmeriCorps Direct with Habitat last year. I had never heard of Direct before. He said he applied directly to Habitat, not to AmeriCorps. He was the assistant to a site supervisor for all of last year, and now he’s in charge of a house. Forest, Dan’s assistant, is in AmeriCorps Direct right now. All that happened the first day was Dan teaching us how to use a chop saw, circular saw, jig saw, and planar, all of which I have used for the past four years in the Elmhurst scene shop, and also a little bit while working with Habitat during high school. He would show us the tool, explain how to use it, demonstrate, then have all 11 of us do a practice cut. That took until lunch. After lunch, we would have had to leave early to get to a meeting with the Habitat volunteer coordinator anyway, but Christina decided to just take us back to the house to have some relaxation time after that unpleasant night in the house.
Wednesday the 13th in the morning, Heather, Rob and I had a weird task. We cut about 300 six or eight-inch squares of Tyvek (paper-like stuff that helps waterproof the house). Not what you think of when you think of construction work, but oh well. After that, most of my team worked on siding, and I had a fairly significant personal triumph. When I had done Habitat in high school, there was a time when I had to do siding. The siding was some kind of cement compound, and it was REALLY hard. Most of the time, I physically could not put a nail through it. Even five or six years later, I still get frustrated just thinking about it. I would hammer and hammer and hammer, and the nail would barely go in at all. Many times the nail would just fall back out. When I heard we were siding, I had a flashback to that frustration. Well wouldn’t you know it, Habitat still uses that same cement compound siding. But now, five or six years later, I don’t have much trouble getting a nail into it at all! I even had less trouble than some other people. It was pretty exciting for me.
After work, we attacked our house (the one we live in). It was built by Habitat, so it’s not a bad house, but it was pretty disgusting when we got here. The windows were caked with dirt and had no curtains or blinds, the floors were dirty, the only furniture was a couch and two loveseats, the bathroom was pretty gross, etc. After work, we cleaned EVERYTHING. We had gotten a little bit of furniture from the Habitat warehouse on Tuesday so we could arrange everything better. We also got curtains for all the windows and some carpet to put in various rooms. The house is SO MUC better now.
After dinner, six people went out to go to Whole Foods and Walgreens, leaving the house much emptier than usual. I love my team, but it was pretty pleasant. Christina had brought a TV to New Orleans for us to use, and Tomm brought his Xbox. (X-Box? XBox? Who knows.) There has already been some video game playing, usually a game where you just walk around and kill the zombies that attack you. I never played because I don’t even know how to use an Xbox/X-Box/XBox controller, but Rob helped me through the zombie game. It’s called Left for Dead 2. On the controller, there are two joysticks. One controls your body, the other controls your head. You have to use them simultaneously because you have to turn your head in the direction you want to go. Rob was very patient with me and gave me a little time to get used to moving around at the beginning, but it didn’t help much. The first thing we had to do was go down some stairs, and it took me about five minutes. Rob was getting attacked by zombies and shooting them all down and I trapped myself on the stairs. I think what happened was that I pointed my head down then forgot to put it up and just spun in circles. Those stairs were quite a challenge for me. After I figured out how to walk, every time I got attacked, I would just start pushing all the buttons. Rob would try to tell me how to do various special moves and techniques, but I would just push all the buttons. All while freaking out and yelling a lot. I’m proud to say I got through two levels without dying, but goodness. It was stressful.
Thursday the 14th, we just did more siding. All day. My right shoulder was pretty stiff this morning, probably from all the hammering yesterday, so that just made it more fun. But I was not nearly as sore as I was the first time I did Habitat and hammered all day. I’m stronger than I was when I was 17 years old! Woo hoo! Forest had some of us splitting up and working with some of the other volunteers, which was interesting. There’s a group of college kids here from Harvard, and an all male group from Kent State. They seem kind of like frat guys, and they’re all majoring in Construction Something. I didn’t even know that was a major. We call them the Bros (as in brothers). They never talk to any of us or the Harvard kids. Several of us worked with some of the Harvard kids today, and they were pretty cool. Highlight of my day: I said something to someone on my team about the Bros, and a Harvard girl was right there. She overheard me, and said “You guys call them the Bros too?!” It was hilarious. We now have an alliance with the Harvard group against the Bros. Nothing actually comes out of this alliance, we just kind of make fun of the Bros a little bit. The Harvard group is here all this week and next week (it’s still their winter break), but the Bros are only here this week.
Oh, and about the title of this post. I bought some Dr. Scholl's gel insoles for my steel toes while we were still at Calwood, and finally put them in my boots before we left for New Orleans. Oh my goodness, they are amazing. My feet would frequently hurt at the end of the day when I wore the steel toes at Calwood, but they’ve been totally fine so far here. If you have uncomfortable shoes, I highly recommend getting some of those gel things.
And about that picture slide show thing from Calwood - Christina said it was too big of a file to email, so I can't send it to anyone. (Until I figure out a way.) But she put it on Facebook, and I went and tagged all of us. I'm pretty sure anyone who is reading this is my Facebook friend, so you should be able to find it posted on my wall. I think it's highly worth watching, but I made it. So I might be a little biased. Make sure you have the sound on!
Well, that’s the first week. No promises when the next post might come, but I’ll do the best I can. I think I can probably find internet maybe once a week or so.
Thursday, January 7, 2010
More Pictures
I'm back again with more pictures. If you haven't been here in a while, the post right after this one just went up last night.
Our 22-person Thanksgiving table:
This wasn't even all the food:
The next bunch of pictures are from the Hike of Insanity that TK, Heather, and I did:
We didn't use any trails. This is what we hiked through most of the time. Yes, I'm glad I'm still alive:
I believe we hiked to the top of that thing on the right, called Berry Ridge:
He wasn't actually climbing here, but it's a cool picture:
I'm so glad my camera has a timer:
At the top was this cool boulder suspended between two other boulders:
Ok, no more Hike pictures. This thing that looks like Eeyore's house was up near Longview, so Heather and Tomm climbed in:
Heather and Becky carrying one of those ridiculously heavy rounds:
TK and Lindsey:
Me and Tomm. Why do I look like I'm struggling so much more than everyone else?:
Jess and Rob:
Loading rounds into Angie's truck. We seriously had to get those giant rounds into a truck that was nearly the height of my shoulder:
The team on the deck of the lodge with Angie. Back row: Rob, Michala, Becky, Jess, me, TK, Tomm, Christina. Front row: Marquis, Heather, Lindsey, Angie.
Rob starting on the mural he painted in the classroom:
Tomm, me, Lindsey, and Jess in a cool tree that was growing out of boulders:
Sawing a tree trunk so it would fit in Angie's truck in the last week we were there, when we loaded the truck to haul away brush piles:
Tomm's new velociraptor tattoo!:
Hauling freshly split wood off to the wood pile:
Splitting wood:
Rob with his completed mural:
None of these are actually the bird boxes I made (these pictures weren't from my camera - I wasn't there when these were made), but this is the style:
Some of them turned out...interesting:
On our last morning, right before we left, we wanted to take a picture of the team with Angie, Rick, and Rafa (the executive director). We gathered, had someone take this picture with like 4 different cameras. Then right after we all started to walk away, Michala came out of the bathroom. We retook the picture with her in it, but I didn't add my camera into the mix this time. Back row: Rick, Marquis, Becky, Tomm, me, Rob, TK, Rafa. Front row: Heather, Lindsey, Jess, Christina, Angie.
Well, those are some of the best pictures. There are many many more, but I think this gives sort of a summary of our lumberjacking activities.
If you're interested, TK and I made a slide show (with music and everything!) for the Project Debrief we had to do for Vaughn and the important people. It includes quite a few pictures that haven't made it onto my computer. If you leave a comment or send me an email or something with your email address, I'd be happy to send it to anyone. Vaughn told Christina that he was really impressed with our debrief presentation.
Next up: A 3-day road trip in the AmeriVan to New Orleans! The 11 of us will be living in a 3-bedroom, 1-bathroom house with couches but no beds in the upper 9th ward. We leave bright and early Saturday morning.
Our 22-person Thanksgiving table:
This wasn't even all the food:
The next bunch of pictures are from the Hike of Insanity that TK, Heather, and I did:
We didn't use any trails. This is what we hiked through most of the time. Yes, I'm glad I'm still alive:
I believe we hiked to the top of that thing on the right, called Berry Ridge:
He wasn't actually climbing here, but it's a cool picture:
I'm so glad my camera has a timer:
At the top was this cool boulder suspended between two other boulders:
Ok, no more Hike pictures. This thing that looks like Eeyore's house was up near Longview, so Heather and Tomm climbed in:
Heather and Becky carrying one of those ridiculously heavy rounds:
TK and Lindsey:
Me and Tomm. Why do I look like I'm struggling so much more than everyone else?:
Jess and Rob:
Loading rounds into Angie's truck. We seriously had to get those giant rounds into a truck that was nearly the height of my shoulder:
The team on the deck of the lodge with Angie. Back row: Rob, Michala, Becky, Jess, me, TK, Tomm, Christina. Front row: Marquis, Heather, Lindsey, Angie.
Rob starting on the mural he painted in the classroom:
Tomm, me, Lindsey, and Jess in a cool tree that was growing out of boulders:
Sawing a tree trunk so it would fit in Angie's truck in the last week we were there, when we loaded the truck to haul away brush piles:
Tomm's new velociraptor tattoo!:
Hauling freshly split wood off to the wood pile:
Splitting wood:
Rob with his completed mural:
None of these are actually the bird boxes I made (these pictures weren't from my camera - I wasn't there when these were made), but this is the style:
Some of them turned out...interesting:
On our last morning, right before we left, we wanted to take a picture of the team with Angie, Rick, and Rafa (the executive director). We gathered, had someone take this picture with like 4 different cameras. Then right after we all started to walk away, Michala came out of the bathroom. We retook the picture with her in it, but I didn't add my camera into the mix this time. Back row: Rick, Marquis, Becky, Tomm, me, Rob, TK, Rafa. Front row: Heather, Lindsey, Jess, Christina, Angie.
Well, those are some of the best pictures. There are many many more, but I think this gives sort of a summary of our lumberjacking activities.
If you're interested, TK and I made a slide show (with music and everything!) for the Project Debrief we had to do for Vaughn and the important people. It includes quite a few pictures that haven't made it onto my computer. If you leave a comment or send me an email or something with your email address, I'd be happy to send it to anyone. Vaughn told Christina that he was really impressed with our debrief presentation.
Next up: A 3-day road trip in the AmeriVan to New Orleans! The 11 of us will be living in a 3-bedroom, 1-bathroom house with couches but no beds in the upper 9th ward. We leave bright and early Saturday morning.
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Well, Break's Over
To tell you the truth, I've been putting off this post. I couldn't post pictures while I was at Calwood because it probably would have made them go over their megabyte limit. This means that I now have 200+ pictures that haven't been posted. (They're not ALL mine. Several of us put our pictures on each other's computers.) That means I need to post some the next time I update this thing. I hope you can see what a daunting task this seems to be. I meant to at least start this over our winter break, but I kept putting it off. So...I'll do my best.
Our first views of Calwood:
The sign marks the beginning of the 2.3 mile drive up the VERY steep dirt road. This is of course after the 20 minutes or so you've been driving up the mountains since leaving Boulder.
The split wood pile (I would have needed a panoramic camera to get the whole thing in one shot):
Michala, TK, Lindsey, and Heather:
Tomm and Rob:
I don't remember why, but Michala climbed on top of the slash piles we worked on for our first day:
Don't snow pants make for a flattering photo? (Hauling logs down the slippery icy muddy snowy hill):
The logs we hauled down the slippery icy muddy snowy hill:
The hydraulic wood splitter:
The view from (the aptly named) Longview, where Becky, Jess, Marquis, and I cut and bundled barbed wire (See the benches? Apparently weddings and other events happen here):
Foraging through the snowy Narnia-like woods to find barbed wire:
I don't think this is quite all the barbed wire we cut, but here are some of our bundles:
The church in Jamestown:
The Merc! (Jamestown Mercantile Cafe, the restaurant/bar/general store):
Angie cutting down the tree to build our bridge with:
It took several of us to move the tree trunks into place:
Angie again:
Why do I make such weird faces sometimes? Nobody knows.
The bridge group:
The bridge! (A few more boards should probably be added, but this was all we brought out there with us):
Well, I think that's a good start. This might take a few posts to get in as many pictures as I want to get in. Sorry for such a long delay!
Our first views of Calwood:
The sign marks the beginning of the 2.3 mile drive up the VERY steep dirt road. This is of course after the 20 minutes or so you've been driving up the mountains since leaving Boulder.
The split wood pile (I would have needed a panoramic camera to get the whole thing in one shot):
Michala, TK, Lindsey, and Heather:
Tomm and Rob:
I don't remember why, but Michala climbed on top of the slash piles we worked on for our first day:
Don't snow pants make for a flattering photo? (Hauling logs down the slippery icy muddy snowy hill):
The logs we hauled down the slippery icy muddy snowy hill:
The hydraulic wood splitter:
The view from (the aptly named) Longview, where Becky, Jess, Marquis, and I cut and bundled barbed wire (See the benches? Apparently weddings and other events happen here):
Foraging through the snowy Narnia-like woods to find barbed wire:
I don't think this is quite all the barbed wire we cut, but here are some of our bundles:
The church in Jamestown:
The Merc! (Jamestown Mercantile Cafe, the restaurant/bar/general store):
Angie cutting down the tree to build our bridge with:
It took several of us to move the tree trunks into place:
Angie again:
Why do I make such weird faces sometimes? Nobody knows.
The bridge group:
The bridge! (A few more boards should probably be added, but this was all we brought out there with us):
Well, I think that's a good start. This might take a few posts to get in as many pictures as I want to get in. Sorry for such a long delay!
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