Monday, June 22, 2009

"This is how you hold the Nailgun"


Day 19 - June 22, 10:10pm
Portsmouth, OH. Build day

Had our fourth build day today. Didn't go out with the group last night in an attempt to sleep though heard they had an okay time given that it was a Sunday. It's such an incredible feeling waking up and not needing to bike 90 miles after doing it a week straight.

We were working with Habitat for Humanity today. Only the foundation was in and it was our job to fill in dirt both inside and outside of the concrete as well as various other oddjobs. We had some pretty intense assembly lines going at some points and were like a fine tuned bicycle. The big project for the second half of the day was installing all of the first floor support joints. It was our best build day yet. It was sunny(though hot), we were all together, and we were all mostly busy the entire day. Getting to wield the power saw and nail gun was a personal plus for me, or power rush to be more exact. Both the foreman's were named Paul which made for fun. They were super nice and you could just tell that they were great people. They told us that filling in the dirt alone would've taken at least three weeks had we not arrived so it was totally awesome to know what a difference we had made.



Dinner at the church was great. Our trip leader Jenny finally broke her vegetarian streak for want of protein. Oh how fried chicken seduces... I stocked up on baked beans but left lots of room for the tiramisu ice cream!

After dinner we did more affordable housing presentations where Colin King and I presented our Fight Club themed presentation on a case study of a family's healthcare and housing issues. We had been working a lot on it, mostly on how to make it funny. It definitely succeeded in being informative and entertaining and won much applause. Our surprise in the case study was that the wife contracted Lupus, and our comment on how the family was "thrown for a Lup-us" was easily the highlight.

Those just finished and It's incredible how even on our non-cycling days almost every hour of our lives is dominated by some bike and build activity. We're all getting more used to it, aka ruthlessly conditioned, but its a crazy concept how basic our needs and activities have become, namely eat, sleep, bike, build. I've often wondered with others what our lives will be like in August after we've been used to 6am wake up for 72 days, not to mention such huge adrenaline rushes and routinization and group living. We'll need to get our fix from somewhere, I just hope it's relatively harmless and legal.

After being frustrated at losing more of my personal items and searching everywhere tonight, I found they were in the lost and found bin in the middle of the room. That was a happy moment to say the least.

Tomorrow we're going into Paris! Kentucky that is. Its a 92 mile day in 80+ degrees so we'll be waking up at five. Father Dwayne remarked that God doesn't even wake up that early. Either way, I think you get the point.

1 comment:

  1. oh man, 92 miles. You were probably so wiped out that you didn't post last night. I just wanted to say hi, you're awesome, be safe, and I hope you're in good spirits. Keep updating! :)

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