Tuscaloosa week 2-3
This week we were joined by an awesome group of high
schoolers from Holy Trinity High School in Melbourne Florida. One girl in particular stood head and shoulders
above the rest. Her name was Lauren and
she is one of the sharpest young ladies I’ve seen in a while. The rest of the kids were lots of fun to be
around. One of my favorite was an exchange
student from Hong Kong named Chang. He’s
been in the US for 2 years. I told him
he reminded me of a 2nd grader, always getting into mischief, but he
had a great heart. There were several
other boys on my crew including Reid and Jose.
I’m ashamed to admit I’ve forgotten the names of the other 2-3 boys, but
they were all awesome workers! Together
we raised the outside walls and put up plywood around ½ the house. Another crew including Lauren and the adult
chaperone Mr. B worked on the safe room.
They were joined by Neil and John from the Presbyterian Disaster
Response (PDR) group out of Lancaster Penn.
The PDR had a large group working on a house across the street from us
and I’m happy to report, we received the best two gentlemen by far.
Week 3 we were joined by a group of kids from the Seven
Rivers Christian School. Like the other group, these kids were awesome! I got to work with twins Chris and Larry,
they were so much fun! We finished
putting put the plywood on the outside walls then covered that with a layer of
Dow board. That’s blue Styrofoam used
for insulation. It’s called Dow bard
because Dow donates it to Habitat.
While we were working on the outside of the house, other crews were
putting up the inside walls. Finally we
were ready for the roof trusses. This
was an all hands on deck job. These
trusses are HEAVY!!! It took 6 guys to
carry them from the front yard, where they had been built, to the back of the
house. The 6 guys lifted theM up and 3
of the 6 walked them up ladders and slid them over the roof. 2 people on ladders inside the house helped
lift them to the top. Next step was to
slide the trusses from back of the house to the front. This took 2 people with long 2x4’s to push
and guide the trusses. Once at the
front, there were 3 people on top who the stood the trusses up and held them in
place where 2 people on ladders on the side of the house nailed them to the top
of the inside walls. My job in all this
was to stand on the inside ladder and help lift and guide the trusses onto the
house in the back. I then climbed down
and helped guide them to the front. Next
I climbed up another ladder to nail them into the walls. I gave up on the nailing part because the
nails had to go in at an angle and I kept missing the board. In my defense, the guy on the other side had
a nail gun while I was working with only a hammer.
The Care-A-Vanners have all gone, but we were joined by a
group of 6 from Columbus Ohio. As
always, it’s a great group of people.
Roger is from Columbus so it’s nice for him to work with a few people he
knows. They made friends with a lady on
the street we’re building on who has about 25 cats. The neighborhood was destroyed 2 years ago
when the tornado came through. These cats
lived in various houses and survived, but had no home to return to, so she sort
of took them in. The Ohio group went to
the pet store and got her several large bags of cat food and is sending her
money to help with spaying and neutering the cats. It’s amazing to stand on the roof of our
house and see a line of trees in the distance, then nothing. In talking to several local residence who
were where when the tornado went through, the area we are in had a lot of huge
trees. Now it’s just a open field as far
as you can see unless you are up high. There
are a few houses here and there who survived the tornado, but most were
obliterated.
Speaking of Roger, we have been spending a lot of time
together and I really, really like him.
He’s the reason I stayed an extra week and it’s been great. He really makes me realize how nice it would
be to have a partner on my big adventure.
Without putting the cart before the horse, I really hope we can make our
schedules line up so we can spend more time together in the future.
The rest of the Habitat people in Tuscaloosa were awesome
too, I will absolutely make it back there work with them again. Peter Salemme lives at Camp Y in a great
little house that he rebuilt. He also
has a blog, chronicling his adventures with Habitat http://blog.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/petersalemme/1/1362231531/tpod.html. He’s a great host and has had many of the
groups to dinner at his house.
Although I had the best time in Tuscaloosa, it’s time to
move on to Albany Georgia to work with 2 groups of college kids. I’m told I have 63 kids, 2 houses and 1
construction supervisor waiting for me.
Link to pictures
https://plus.google.com/photos/118205599704530902363/albums/5846870599277451841?authkey=CN2a_p6ytqvwdg#photos/118205599704530902363/albums/5846870599277451841?authkey=CN2a_p6ytqvwdg
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