Well I feel bad just leaving this poor blog to become stagnant and dead on the internet without providing some closure. Past-Sam poured too much time into posting to let it waste. Who knows, with luck, this could become an excellent resource for some lost soul seeking information on the elusive NCCC year.
Well, just in case, let's run through the stuff I've learned specific to AmeriCorps:
-getting accepted is a chaotic process. Many people on my campus did not get accepted until 1-2 weeks before the start of the program (i.e. me). I think the campuses go in waves. The start date for my program was actually 2 weeks later than the official date, so don't lose hope if it's down to the wire. You still have a chance.
-the stipend is like 75/week after taxes
-room and board are payed for, just meagerly
-the stuff they give you to keep: 1 fleece vest, 3 cotton t-shirts, 1 cotton long-sleeve, 2 beige cargo shorts, 2 beige cargo pants, 1 pair dress cargo pants, 1 baseball cap, 1 skullcap, 1 round-brim sunhat, 1 hoodie. All emblazoned with the Acorps logo of course.
If I think of anything else I'll throw it in.
But onwards, to closure!
The last weeks at the Forest Service station went really fast. Work became a little more monotonous after we switched over to five 8-hour days, but it still went pretty fast because we often had to drive over an hour to the worksite. An awful waste of gas, I have to say.
We spent most of our time clearing floral matter from the sides of paths and roads to increase visibility. Since it was usually available due to making your shoulders really sore, I spent most of my time on the pole saw (the telescoping chainsaw-on-a-stick) cutting high overhanging limbs. I loved that thing. The last person to use it had sharpened it at an excessively steep angle, so it cut through stuff ridiculously fast. I started felling small trees with it (from a safe distance away, too!), just because it was so much faster than our regular saws. Nothing quite as elegant as making a pie cut from ten feet away.
We also spent time clearing peoples yards of flammable materials. We were pretty much the "forest servie owes you a favor" group. We went around doing defensible space (that's what yard clearance is called) for those less fortunate than us. Less fortunate in the sense that they were unable to do the menial labor because we did it first. Many a fist was raised cursing the fast work of AmeriCorps, sometimes people threw things like cookies or lemonaide at us.
Speaking of, I had the best work experience ever in our last week. We were doing clearance at this older (not old, just older) couples house, who had promised to make us lunch. We finished pretty fast, and it turned out the guy had an old milk barrel. He had laid coals in the barrel earlier, and he made us six racks of the most delicious ribs I have ever tasted.
This guy was crazy. He had survived two different cancers, and one of my teammates had remarked later that one of the cancers this guy lived through had a 100% kill rate. Or 99.9%, I spose, in this guy's case. Really, the couple reminded me of the things I love about AMERICA america. You'll see the youth of the nation bemoaning crass US culture, and yearning for Europe or something, but there is nowhere in Europe that some cowboy-esque veteran could throw you a bbq with the same feel of western romanticism. Nowhere in the world, really, though I'm sure Australia could come close. It's just those backfeelings of staunch do-it-yourself, small government, AmERican hospitality that reminds me why I love the US. And reminds me why I would really miss conservatives if they ever left. The same principles that frustrate me are the ones that state "you, the guest at this bbq, will make no movements whatsoever to do any kind of pre or cleanup work. Just sit and enjoy yourself, now hear?" So yeah, that bbq was awesome. And no, there weren't any leftovers. Between 9 of us (two missing that day), we annihilated 6 full racks, and had to be held back to ensure the hosts got something to eat.
Overall, I am really happy I did AmeriCorps. Towards the end of our service with the Forest Service, I got a bit frustrated with the level of the meniality of our work (on a scale of 1: this work is boring but essential to 10: you are currently moving pine needles from one pile to another, we had a lot of days that were 11: You are now taking something apart to rebuild it with the same materials, but in worse condition), but the people, the teammates I served with for 10 months, made it completely worthwhile. I am really going to miss my erstwhile family that was Silver 4, and I'm getting a little nostalgic just thinking about it.
I remember the way most of our lunches throughout the year, regardless of surroundings, degenerated into throwing stuff at each other. Sticks were good. Banana peels were better.
I remember Jason talking in his sleep. "Dude, my balls are on fire!" Still sleeping "Dude, now Zacks balls are on fire!" And continues sleeping.
I remember going away on our final SPIKE and being one of the last teams to leave campus, so we raided everyone's freezers and made off like bandits with frozen pizzas.
So many other inside jokes, crazy moments, and epic adventures. Even if the programs seems ridiculous, I have to say that the impact it has on its members is invaluable. I have never seen a better environment for America's youth to flourish, being independent and at the same time being indoctrinated with values that society cherishes.
Now that I'm out, I don't think anything could make me repeat it, but the experience I got out of the last ten months will shape much of the rest of my life. I mean, I can cook a full meal for 11 people with under $30. I don't see how anything else can offer much of a challenge anymore.
By the way, if you are looking into AmeriCorps/have questions, leave me a comment. It'll notify me, and I'll get in touch.
This blog is so over.
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Monday, May 3, 2010
Delayed stuff eh?
I suppose longer and longer is the catchword for the frequency of my blog posts.
I’m offline right now, we have to drive places for our wifi. Sitting in a 15-passenger government van with blacked out windows, it’s an interesting time when we park outside a local pizza parlor that foolishly gave us their network password.
If I’ve mentioned our accommodations before, I can’t remember. We’re living in a government house at the pacific ranger station, El Dorado National Forest. It’s a cozy place; one of my teammates is sleeping in the laundry room for lack of space to put a mattress.
The weeks are flying by here. Seven months ago, our first project on Catalina was an eternity of three weeks. Now, we’re moving into week four here at Pacific and I can’t believe fire season (“officially”) starts in six days.
My teammate Pat is convinced that it is the vast quantities of coffee our pro-budgeting has bequeathed us that is to blame for the temporal anomaly. Caffeine, in addition to speeding up a tired body, also speeds up your passage through time, in his theory.
I still don’t drink and don’t like coffee, so it doesn’t really apply to me. A good theory nonetheless, but once he started getting into the quantum mechanics of his theory I gave up following.
Thus far, this is my favorite project. The 4-10 schedule with its three-day weekends, the deadly PT sessions with firefighters, and all the amenities we lacked at one point or another (food, electricity, water that doesn’t taste like the kiddie pool). And within a month I could have a true fire under my belt.
A practice fire is guaranteed as long as I am not sick the weekend of June 2nd. We’ll spend a couple days cutting line, and then they light up a couple of acres of forest and let us maintain the line. Our crew boss is especially excited, because a couple of years ago they did this same live-fire drill. Except, when everyone turned in for the day, the fire jumped the line and they spent the rest of the night fighting a 13 acre fire.
A good fire year for the firefighters is not a year with a couple of minor blazes that are easily dealt with. Firefighters pray for May thunderstorms with multiple ground strikes, for early rain to promote growth and then dry winds to foster fires. A good fire year for a firefighter involves as much overtime as they can handle.
I’m a volunteer, so most of the benefits don’t apply to me. But I still want to see fire. Of course, I don’t want anyone to be injured, or endangered via proximity. I want a fire out in the wilderness where it is a necessary part of the California ecosystem, and my team and I can get a little sweaty and sooty.
I think it would be fun.
Oh and I got to go to Mexico, good stuff that.
I’m offline right now, we have to drive places for our wifi. Sitting in a 15-passenger government van with blacked out windows, it’s an interesting time when we park outside a local pizza parlor that foolishly gave us their network password.
If I’ve mentioned our accommodations before, I can’t remember. We’re living in a government house at the pacific ranger station, El Dorado National Forest. It’s a cozy place; one of my teammates is sleeping in the laundry room for lack of space to put a mattress.
The weeks are flying by here. Seven months ago, our first project on Catalina was an eternity of three weeks. Now, we’re moving into week four here at Pacific and I can’t believe fire season (“officially”) starts in six days.
My teammate Pat is convinced that it is the vast quantities of coffee our pro-budgeting has bequeathed us that is to blame for the temporal anomaly. Caffeine, in addition to speeding up a tired body, also speeds up your passage through time, in his theory.
I still don’t drink and don’t like coffee, so it doesn’t really apply to me. A good theory nonetheless, but once he started getting into the quantum mechanics of his theory I gave up following.
Thus far, this is my favorite project. The 4-10 schedule with its three-day weekends, the deadly PT sessions with firefighters, and all the amenities we lacked at one point or another (food, electricity, water that doesn’t taste like the kiddie pool). And within a month I could have a true fire under my belt.
A practice fire is guaranteed as long as I am not sick the weekend of June 2nd. We’ll spend a couple days cutting line, and then they light up a couple of acres of forest and let us maintain the line. Our crew boss is especially excited, because a couple of years ago they did this same live-fire drill. Except, when everyone turned in for the day, the fire jumped the line and they spent the rest of the night fighting a 13 acre fire.
A good fire year for the firefighters is not a year with a couple of minor blazes that are easily dealt with. Firefighters pray for May thunderstorms with multiple ground strikes, for early rain to promote growth and then dry winds to foster fires. A good fire year for a firefighter involves as much overtime as they can handle.
I’m a volunteer, so most of the benefits don’t apply to me. But I still want to see fire. Of course, I don’t want anyone to be injured, or endangered via proximity. I want a fire out in the wilderness where it is a necessary part of the California ecosystem, and my team and I can get a little sweaty and sooty.
I think it would be fun.
Oh and I got to go to Mexico, good stuff that.
Friday, April 9, 2010
Well ten+ days=one humongous blog post
I certainly have been a little blog-lax lately, but it will have to be excused on the grounds of us using up all of Camp Cedar Glen’s internet (apparently they only get a certain number of MB/month and we utilized them all), and then we had to get settled back into Sacramento.
And then I went skydiving.
So, yeah, busy time. The last days at Cedar Glen were nice. We got to name our trail the Ian Chicken trail, and we even finished building it a day early, earning ourselves a “day off” (or day of rest, due to lack of available work).
So, I want to remember howL
I’m going to do a Sam-ritual recap, really just so I remember stuff. Feel free to tag along.
-I always have to attach my watch to something when I sleep. I don’t like to sleep with it on, but I don’t like to leave it anywhere it could easily move. Preferably I wrap it around a bedpost near my head, so I can easily hear the alarm. Or I Velcro it around my nalgene (also always near when I sleep, being thirsty at night with no water nearby is one of the most base discomforts of my life)
-My bunk became an island besieged by stuff. All the stuff was very purposefully placed, and I always knew where anything was to within 1-2 layers, but with backpacks, charging electronics (I made sure to claim both the biggest bunk AND an outlet) and personal cookware, and waterbottles, and dirty clothes that did not merit a washing but sure as hell weren’t going back with the clean clothes, there was a good 2 foot barrier around my bed
-The cascade of alarms starting at 6:35. Every morning the routine was the same:
6:40-Zach’s alarm, he hits snooze
6:45-Jason’s alarm, he gets up
6:50-Zach’s alarm #2, snoozed
6:53-My alarm, I get up, and across the room from me Matt glares at me and gets up
6:55-No alarm, everyone is up with the noise. Vlad jumps down from his bunk, Steve rolls out, Pat gets up (already dressed), and Zach gets up
7:00-We gather with the girls in the adjoiner room for PT. Total silence, and once everyone is there, we file out with our hands in our pockets
-Running the trails that we built and searching the ground for mountain lion tracks. During “go for a run” PT days, I like to trail run, but no one else does. I spend the entire way up the quad-burning hill estimating my chances of meeting a human-aggressive mountain lion, and gauging adrenaline’s ability to help me fight it off. The entire run.
-Waking up half-lucid in the middle of the night scratching my poison oak like I could scrape it off my skin. The back of my leg finally scabbed over two days ago. It always took me a good 30 seconds before I realized what I was doing, and another 5 seconds before I could bring myself to stop. And of course, it was always 30 minutes before my body stopped burning with itch enough to fall back asleep.
-Getting electrocuted in the shower
-Getting electrocuted by the sink so often that I never ran water without shoes on
-Making midnight leftover-bacon runs down to the dining hall and its glorious walk-in fridges on the weekends
-Coming back to Sacramento and remembering that I had a box of thin mints still in my mini-freezer from my family’s fantastic packages
And that was Cedar Glen. It was a fun place, and it was an intro to what we are doing next (pulaskiing the crap out of hill sides for 3 months). I am sure I will miss the food.
This weekend was our “spring break,” meaning that we got both a Monday and a Friday off. Four whole days!
I mentioned a couple entries back that I wanted to try and get my skydiving certification over spring break. Namely, seven ground school course, seven jumps, and the ability to jump solo at any USPA (United States Parachuting Association) certified drop zone. Well, I did go skydiving! HAHA IT WAS GREAT
I went down to a dropzone about 1.3 hrs east of San Fran on Thursday night, taking a greyhound from Sac to Stockton, and then a Cab ride to the Byron Airfield. On the way, I learned that greyhound baggage checking has a max weight of 50 lbs, and I now carry a 60lbs backpack with ease. I also reaffirmed my belief that most people are good people who want to help, and my bag got on the bus.
At the Greyhound in Stockton, I grabbed some McDonalds (which seemed way more expensive than the last time I had it), and then hung out with the security guard at the bus stop. He said as long as I didn’t mind listening to Jesus, I could wait for my cab in his office. There was another a 20-something year old guy already in the small “bus driver’s lounge.” He was waiting for his dad to come pick him up from San Diego, and the security guard was reading to him from the book of John.
I was lucky, in that the cab driver I got was without a doubt the cheapest around. For a 30ish mile drive, he only charged me $2 a mile. We talked about all the times people had tried to rob him and pulled a gun, about skydiving, and when we got to the hangar I was going to be bumming it at, he checked to make sure I knew that no one was going to be there at 10 o’clock at night.
But again, I was lucky. Bay Area Skydiving is a classy enough place that they have pavilions, and I spread out my space-blanket ground tarp, brushed my teeth, and crawled into my bivy-sacked sleeping bag. Fifteen minutes I listened to the wind and tried to pull the corners of my Ameri-issued sleeping bag down farther, when a furry creature stepped on my sleeping bag and headbutted me in the face.
The next day, I found out that it was the skydiving cat, and two days later I figured out why its name tag read “Beer Light.” But, seeing as his collar did read Beer Light, I assumed that he was a runaway the owners (the givers of the name) were not intently searching for. Then I did something I regretted for the next two nights. I scootched over a bit, and made a spot for Beer Light to tunnel in next to me. Thus I sealed my position as the midnight warmth giver, forever woken up by Beer Light trying to poke his head into my sleeping bag.
In the morning I packed up camp, to give Bay Area Skydiving the credit of not appearing to house hobos. The instructor, an elderly brit named Gareth, arrived on a motorcycle, having crashed his car into a hillside about a week ago. Regardless of that, I would say Gareth was overqualified as a skydiving instructor; his job in his youth had apparently been testing out parachutes. The reason you know your parachute has a high chance of opening properly? Because crazy Gareths all over the world jumped out at 12,000’ with a prototype strapped to their back.
Ground school, which I did with another guy named Mark, was mostly going over the parts of the parachute, identifying what a good and bad chute looked like upon deployment, and the body position that gave the most control in freefall (a knees-at-90-degrees, “hands-up” arch). And, of course, the method for cutting away your main chute and deploying your reserve. All the parachutes I used were rectangular ram-air chutes, picture a parasail. They can be steered by pulling on two cords (the brakes), which pull down on one rear corner or another. You do a diving swoop and turn in the desired direction. Along that line, the easiest way to die under canopy (with chute deployed) is to turn too close to the ground. The swoop that swings you out and around just swings you out and slams you into the ground.
I didn’t get to jump at all on the first day, even though we finished the ground school around 1:30. The cloud cover was too low (it’s a federal offense to jump through cloud, you can’t visually tell how close to the ground you are, or avoid airborne obstacles). But Saturday dawned clear and cool, and even though it was something around -7 Fahrenheit at 13,000, I got to make four jumps.
I have always dreamed of freefall, and since parachutes are actually pretty safe if you handle them well, my logical brain figured that jumping out of a plane=no sweat. I overlooked a pretty key detail about the skydive certification process: while you are plummeting to earth at 120mph, you have two instructors hanging onto you, who you must perform a series of skills for well enough to pass onto the next level and jump. Performance anxiety, while the air rushing by is being forced into your lungs, and your body position makes you look like a P.O.W., is a killer.
With five jumps under my belt, I can safely say that I have learned how to relax a bit while diving and enjoy the sensation. But the knots in my stomach do not loosen until I hit terminal velocity. Jumping out of a plane is the most final, irrevocable thing I can think of doing; you are completely committing yourself to trusting the bundle of cloth and string strapped to your back. When jumpers leave, they rocket backwards and down in a rush of air and noise, and the plane shakes a little as the weight rebalances. To jump as a student, you stand outside the plane in the wind and cling, waiting for your instructors to give the OK. You have to give a count with body motions, so that your instructors leave at the same time you do. And then, with two skydivers holding onto each side, you let go, turn into the jetstream, and arch with everything you’ve got.
There are hand signals that your instructors give you while in freefall, to adjust your body position and pass messages along. Possibly the most important is the extension of the pointer finger, which plainly means “PULL.” When I made my first jump, the only reason I could run through the list of practice touches to your pull cord and checking my altimeter every 5 seconds was because I had practiced the motions for hours on the ground. But when I looked to check in with my instructor, and he pointed his finger, I did something of a double take. When he reconfirmed the hand signal by shaking it in my face, I assumed I had done something drastically wrong. In my haze of adrenaline and robotic action I had not been reading the altimeter as closely as necessary, and maybe I had missed the pull height. Kind of like hitting a pedestrian in a driving test, I had completely failed. Thus, I panicked, and fumbled for my ripcord.
All I could think as I floated down was that I had totally failed the easiest level. 3000’ up is a great place to vent, because there really is absolutely nothing you can do about anything for another five minutes or so.
But, as it turned out, we had just been farther from the dropzone than desirable, and my instructors wanted me to pull early so that we wouldn’t have to walk a mile back to the hangar. I passed, with instructions not to panic, and every jump after that was better than the last. As I learned the basics of relaxing in freefall, and was finally let go of on jump #3, I got to enjoy the view, spin myself around. Pretty much everything I had been looking forwards too. And so, on my fifth jump, when I solo exited their smaller plane and tumbled out of control for a couple thousand feet, everything was cool. I have no memory of where the horizon was while I tumbled, but I did figure that if I just arched like I was sposed to, everything would be fine. And it was.
Later on Sunday the clouds came back, and even though I went up for my sixth jump, I came down with the plane. I got a ride back to Sacramento with one of the instructors (an ex-MMA Kyrgyzstani with two daughters), but with luck I will complete my certification process (jumps six and seven) later this year.
And then I went skydiving.
So, yeah, busy time. The last days at Cedar Glen were nice. We got to name our trail the Ian Chicken trail, and we even finished building it a day early, earning ourselves a “day off” (or day of rest, due to lack of available work).
So, I want to remember howL
I’m going to do a Sam-ritual recap, really just so I remember stuff. Feel free to tag along.
-I always have to attach my watch to something when I sleep. I don’t like to sleep with it on, but I don’t like to leave it anywhere it could easily move. Preferably I wrap it around a bedpost near my head, so I can easily hear the alarm. Or I Velcro it around my nalgene (also always near when I sleep, being thirsty at night with no water nearby is one of the most base discomforts of my life)
-My bunk became an island besieged by stuff. All the stuff was very purposefully placed, and I always knew where anything was to within 1-2 layers, but with backpacks, charging electronics (I made sure to claim both the biggest bunk AND an outlet) and personal cookware, and waterbottles, and dirty clothes that did not merit a washing but sure as hell weren’t going back with the clean clothes, there was a good 2 foot barrier around my bed
-The cascade of alarms starting at 6:35. Every morning the routine was the same:
6:40-Zach’s alarm, he hits snooze
6:45-Jason’s alarm, he gets up
6:50-Zach’s alarm #2, snoozed
6:53-My alarm, I get up, and across the room from me Matt glares at me and gets up
6:55-No alarm, everyone is up with the noise. Vlad jumps down from his bunk, Steve rolls out, Pat gets up (already dressed), and Zach gets up
7:00-We gather with the girls in the adjoiner room for PT. Total silence, and once everyone is there, we file out with our hands in our pockets
-Running the trails that we built and searching the ground for mountain lion tracks. During “go for a run” PT days, I like to trail run, but no one else does. I spend the entire way up the quad-burning hill estimating my chances of meeting a human-aggressive mountain lion, and gauging adrenaline’s ability to help me fight it off. The entire run.
-Waking up half-lucid in the middle of the night scratching my poison oak like I could scrape it off my skin. The back of my leg finally scabbed over two days ago. It always took me a good 30 seconds before I realized what I was doing, and another 5 seconds before I could bring myself to stop. And of course, it was always 30 minutes before my body stopped burning with itch enough to fall back asleep.
-Getting electrocuted in the shower
-Getting electrocuted by the sink so often that I never ran water without shoes on
-Making midnight leftover-bacon runs down to the dining hall and its glorious walk-in fridges on the weekends
-Coming back to Sacramento and remembering that I had a box of thin mints still in my mini-freezer from my family’s fantastic packages
And that was Cedar Glen. It was a fun place, and it was an intro to what we are doing next (pulaskiing the crap out of hill sides for 3 months). I am sure I will miss the food.
This weekend was our “spring break,” meaning that we got both a Monday and a Friday off. Four whole days!
I mentioned a couple entries back that I wanted to try and get my skydiving certification over spring break. Namely, seven ground school course, seven jumps, and the ability to jump solo at any USPA (United States Parachuting Association) certified drop zone. Well, I did go skydiving! HAHA IT WAS GREAT
I went down to a dropzone about 1.3 hrs east of San Fran on Thursday night, taking a greyhound from Sac to Stockton, and then a Cab ride to the Byron Airfield. On the way, I learned that greyhound baggage checking has a max weight of 50 lbs, and I now carry a 60lbs backpack with ease. I also reaffirmed my belief that most people are good people who want to help, and my bag got on the bus.
At the Greyhound in Stockton, I grabbed some McDonalds (which seemed way more expensive than the last time I had it), and then hung out with the security guard at the bus stop. He said as long as I didn’t mind listening to Jesus, I could wait for my cab in his office. There was another a 20-something year old guy already in the small “bus driver’s lounge.” He was waiting for his dad to come pick him up from San Diego, and the security guard was reading to him from the book of John.
I was lucky, in that the cab driver I got was without a doubt the cheapest around. For a 30ish mile drive, he only charged me $2 a mile. We talked about all the times people had tried to rob him and pulled a gun, about skydiving, and when we got to the hangar I was going to be bumming it at, he checked to make sure I knew that no one was going to be there at 10 o’clock at night.
But again, I was lucky. Bay Area Skydiving is a classy enough place that they have pavilions, and I spread out my space-blanket ground tarp, brushed my teeth, and crawled into my bivy-sacked sleeping bag. Fifteen minutes I listened to the wind and tried to pull the corners of my Ameri-issued sleeping bag down farther, when a furry creature stepped on my sleeping bag and headbutted me in the face.
The next day, I found out that it was the skydiving cat, and two days later I figured out why its name tag read “Beer Light.” But, seeing as his collar did read Beer Light, I assumed that he was a runaway the owners (the givers of the name) were not intently searching for. Then I did something I regretted for the next two nights. I scootched over a bit, and made a spot for Beer Light to tunnel in next to me. Thus I sealed my position as the midnight warmth giver, forever woken up by Beer Light trying to poke his head into my sleeping bag.
In the morning I packed up camp, to give Bay Area Skydiving the credit of not appearing to house hobos. The instructor, an elderly brit named Gareth, arrived on a motorcycle, having crashed his car into a hillside about a week ago. Regardless of that, I would say Gareth was overqualified as a skydiving instructor; his job in his youth had apparently been testing out parachutes. The reason you know your parachute has a high chance of opening properly? Because crazy Gareths all over the world jumped out at 12,000’ with a prototype strapped to their back.
Ground school, which I did with another guy named Mark, was mostly going over the parts of the parachute, identifying what a good and bad chute looked like upon deployment, and the body position that gave the most control in freefall (a knees-at-90-degrees, “hands-up” arch). And, of course, the method for cutting away your main chute and deploying your reserve. All the parachutes I used were rectangular ram-air chutes, picture a parasail. They can be steered by pulling on two cords (the brakes), which pull down on one rear corner or another. You do a diving swoop and turn in the desired direction. Along that line, the easiest way to die under canopy (with chute deployed) is to turn too close to the ground. The swoop that swings you out and around just swings you out and slams you into the ground.
I didn’t get to jump at all on the first day, even though we finished the ground school around 1:30. The cloud cover was too low (it’s a federal offense to jump through cloud, you can’t visually tell how close to the ground you are, or avoid airborne obstacles). But Saturday dawned clear and cool, and even though it was something around -7 Fahrenheit at 13,000, I got to make four jumps.
I have always dreamed of freefall, and since parachutes are actually pretty safe if you handle them well, my logical brain figured that jumping out of a plane=no sweat. I overlooked a pretty key detail about the skydive certification process: while you are plummeting to earth at 120mph, you have two instructors hanging onto you, who you must perform a series of skills for well enough to pass onto the next level and jump. Performance anxiety, while the air rushing by is being forced into your lungs, and your body position makes you look like a P.O.W., is a killer.
With five jumps under my belt, I can safely say that I have learned how to relax a bit while diving and enjoy the sensation. But the knots in my stomach do not loosen until I hit terminal velocity. Jumping out of a plane is the most final, irrevocable thing I can think of doing; you are completely committing yourself to trusting the bundle of cloth and string strapped to your back. When jumpers leave, they rocket backwards and down in a rush of air and noise, and the plane shakes a little as the weight rebalances. To jump as a student, you stand outside the plane in the wind and cling, waiting for your instructors to give the OK. You have to give a count with body motions, so that your instructors leave at the same time you do. And then, with two skydivers holding onto each side, you let go, turn into the jetstream, and arch with everything you’ve got.
There are hand signals that your instructors give you while in freefall, to adjust your body position and pass messages along. Possibly the most important is the extension of the pointer finger, which plainly means “PULL.” When I made my first jump, the only reason I could run through the list of practice touches to your pull cord and checking my altimeter every 5 seconds was because I had practiced the motions for hours on the ground. But when I looked to check in with my instructor, and he pointed his finger, I did something of a double take. When he reconfirmed the hand signal by shaking it in my face, I assumed I had done something drastically wrong. In my haze of adrenaline and robotic action I had not been reading the altimeter as closely as necessary, and maybe I had missed the pull height. Kind of like hitting a pedestrian in a driving test, I had completely failed. Thus, I panicked, and fumbled for my ripcord.
All I could think as I floated down was that I had totally failed the easiest level. 3000’ up is a great place to vent, because there really is absolutely nothing you can do about anything for another five minutes or so.
But, as it turned out, we had just been farther from the dropzone than desirable, and my instructors wanted me to pull early so that we wouldn’t have to walk a mile back to the hangar. I passed, with instructions not to panic, and every jump after that was better than the last. As I learned the basics of relaxing in freefall, and was finally let go of on jump #3, I got to enjoy the view, spin myself around. Pretty much everything I had been looking forwards too. And so, on my fifth jump, when I solo exited their smaller plane and tumbled out of control for a couple thousand feet, everything was cool. I have no memory of where the horizon was while I tumbled, but I did figure that if I just arched like I was sposed to, everything would be fine. And it was.
Later on Sunday the clouds came back, and even though I went up for my sixth jump, I came down with the plane. I got a ride back to Sacramento with one of the instructors (an ex-MMA Kyrgyzstani with two daughters), but with luck I will complete my certification process (jumps six and seven) later this year.
Monday, March 22, 2010
Red Ants, Downed Team Members, and Unrelation
Heading into the final week here at Camp Cedar Glen. Looks to be about 5 more days of digging trail, and then maybe one day of goofing off when we finish early (that's the hope). They do have a ropes course here, and the kinda sorta maybe suggested that we would get to use it. And soon I will get to shoot some arrows at their hay bales, as they have an archery range.
Trail maintenance is a dreary process, to say the least. Usually about five of us make up a trail team; two Pulaskis (the axe-hoe double-trouble combo) and three McLeods (the pitchfork-jumbo hoe double-trouble combo). And yes, our tools are proper nouns because they are all named after people. Some kind of famous firefighters I think. Whatever. But, in short, the trail building sounds like this (in order) slam, hack-drag, chipchopCLANG (if there is a rock, which there always is), scrape, and the final rearrangedirt. It is a mind-numbingly slow process, and we are lucky to creep along at .2mph.
But still, it's nice to see the level, new-dirt trail behind us that you could probably drive a golf cart up in dire need. We have discussed amongst ourselves we might be making the trail a wee to wide, but we seem to be unable to alter that.
In other news, we broke the camp's pole-saw today. A pole saw is essentially a chainsaw on a telescoping stick, and the team clearing the road had it all the way out to limb up an overhanging snag. Even though the snag was fairly large, they managed to cut it off quite admirably, but unfortunately, in it's rapid descent to the ground, the branch bent the drive shaft of the saw. One of the camp staff we work with assured us that pole saws are meant to break, so no biggie. He said something about a conspiracy in which the pole saw company still own sole rights to the patent, and they make them to break often enough to be reeeeeally profitable. The idea made me drool.
It's been a rough week for silver four beside the breaking of the pole saw, last week we were down two members due to injuries and sickness. Someone got a nasty virus (which no one else picked up, thankfully), and one of our female members messed up her back via overwork. Of course, the lingering poison oak is still everywhere (the worst part is when you are in the trans-dream sleep state, and you unconsciously scratch the heck out of it. You burn for a good half-hour after one of those). And I made a close aquaintance with a number of red ants today. All it takes is stepping near the ant hill you just annihilated with your Mcleod, and for SOME reason, they climb up your pants and leave large red welts. Obnoxious to say the least.
In closing, I would like to recommend that anyone who looks into buying a GPS in the future NOT buy the brand that is called "Tom Tom." Often we have better luck arbitrarily choosing a direction than following the GPS the Govy so kindly supplied us. It gets us places eventually, but not untill double the projected travel time has passed.
And I am totally going skydiving over spring break. And, as an added bonus, I will be living like a hobo while doing it. The skydiving place said it would be ok for me to camp out on their lawn or nearby, since they are way away from any kind of amenities and I can't rent a car for some reason. So I will be living off PB&J and oatmeal, and oranges if I'm lucky.
But SKYDIVING! Wahahaha
Trail maintenance is a dreary process, to say the least. Usually about five of us make up a trail team; two Pulaskis (the axe-hoe double-trouble combo) and three McLeods (the pitchfork-jumbo hoe double-trouble combo). And yes, our tools are proper nouns because they are all named after people. Some kind of famous firefighters I think. Whatever. But, in short, the trail building sounds like this (in order) slam, hack-drag, chipchopCLANG (if there is a rock, which there always is), scrape, and the final rearrangedirt. It is a mind-numbingly slow process, and we are lucky to creep along at .2mph.
But still, it's nice to see the level, new-dirt trail behind us that you could probably drive a golf cart up in dire need. We have discussed amongst ourselves we might be making the trail a wee to wide, but we seem to be unable to alter that.
In other news, we broke the camp's pole-saw today. A pole saw is essentially a chainsaw on a telescoping stick, and the team clearing the road had it all the way out to limb up an overhanging snag. Even though the snag was fairly large, they managed to cut it off quite admirably, but unfortunately, in it's rapid descent to the ground, the branch bent the drive shaft of the saw. One of the camp staff we work with assured us that pole saws are meant to break, so no biggie. He said something about a conspiracy in which the pole saw company still own sole rights to the patent, and they make them to break often enough to be reeeeeally profitable. The idea made me drool.
It's been a rough week for silver four beside the breaking of the pole saw, last week we were down two members due to injuries and sickness. Someone got a nasty virus (which no one else picked up, thankfully), and one of our female members messed up her back via overwork. Of course, the lingering poison oak is still everywhere (the worst part is when you are in the trans-dream sleep state, and you unconsciously scratch the heck out of it. You burn for a good half-hour after one of those). And I made a close aquaintance with a number of red ants today. All it takes is stepping near the ant hill you just annihilated with your Mcleod, and for SOME reason, they climb up your pants and leave large red welts. Obnoxious to say the least.
In closing, I would like to recommend that anyone who looks into buying a GPS in the future NOT buy the brand that is called "Tom Tom." Often we have better luck arbitrarily choosing a direction than following the GPS the Govy so kindly supplied us. It gets us places eventually, but not untill double the projected travel time has passed.
And I am totally going skydiving over spring break. And, as an added bonus, I will be living like a hobo while doing it. The skydiving place said it would be ok for me to camp out on their lawn or nearby, since they are way away from any kind of amenities and I can't rent a car for some reason. So I will be living off PB&J and oatmeal, and oranges if I'm lucky.
But SKYDIVING! Wahahaha
Saturday, March 13, 2010
Heah we ah in Suthuhn Califohnya
There's no way I'm going to do the past week justice in this post, mostly because I'm a lazy SOB and I'm tired to boot.
But life with Silver Four has been eventful. We are now on location in Julian, California, about 1.3 hours outside of San Diego. From Sacramento, we drove a glorious (make sure you pick up the sarcasm there) 12 hours to our home for the next three weeks: Camp Cedar Glen. The camp is at 3500 feet up in a mountainish area, nestled into the slope in the watershed of tow neighboring peeks. I have no idea of the specific names, but one of the mountains nearby is named Vulcan, which I thought was cool enough.
I don't think I have ever been this uncomfortable as a result of physical labor in my life. Our primary job here is trail maintenance. There are around five miles of trails winding around the camp, which isn't that much, but from the state of things, it's likely that the last time these trails were worked on was in 2006 when the last AmeriCorps team was here. They are essentially game trails that people occasionally walk/crawl under fallen brush on. But I gotta say, I love the work. Most of it, at least. Swamping is a joy. With my teammate running the chainsaw, I dog along behind with the gas and oil cans, and throw everything he cuts down off the trail. Essentially, we are trailblazing. But, unfortunately, we are trailblazing through oceans of poison oak (literally), and I am itchy in various unspeakable places.
The number of game trails intersecting the real trail calls for truly hunter/tracker-worthy observation skills, and I get to plow off up the trails in search of any sign of grading or artificial berms. But on top of the views, the solitude (being wayfarahead of the hand crew, which is laboring along behind us to dig up and level out the trail), and the adventure, I get to wrestle with trees all day. What could be more fun than coming across a downed tree and just being able to move it off the trail with brute strength? I'm usually not one for huge testosterone surges, but leveraging 30', 200+lb trees down a mountainside blasts my muscles. Primal yells of victory, etcetera.
Really. It's freekin awesome.
If I can find time on this busy saturday to do it, I'm trying to call up the various skydiving establishments within 3 hours of Sacramento, to find myself something to do over spring break. My hope is to blow all of my AmeriCorps cash getting myself certified for walk-in skydiving. It's upwards of 1k dinero, but there is SO MUCH I could do with a certification. After paying fof/completing training, I can dive at 12000' for $50 a pop, or $25 if I get my own gear. And if I jump enough, I can get an instructors license, and if that doesn't scream summer job like the fourth of july, I don't know what life is meant for.
Seriously, just imagine what a summer spent as a diving instructor/helper would be like: strapping screaming thrillseekers to your chest and jumping out of planes. Or just jumping out of planes with groups. AND GETTING PAID TO DO IT.
I have to go hop around in excitement for a while, more next time.
But life with Silver Four has been eventful. We are now on location in Julian, California, about 1.3 hours outside of San Diego. From Sacramento, we drove a glorious (make sure you pick up the sarcasm there) 12 hours to our home for the next three weeks: Camp Cedar Glen. The camp is at 3500 feet up in a mountainish area, nestled into the slope in the watershed of tow neighboring peeks. I have no idea of the specific names, but one of the mountains nearby is named Vulcan, which I thought was cool enough.
I don't think I have ever been this uncomfortable as a result of physical labor in my life. Our primary job here is trail maintenance. There are around five miles of trails winding around the camp, which isn't that much, but from the state of things, it's likely that the last time these trails were worked on was in 2006 when the last AmeriCorps team was here. They are essentially game trails that people occasionally walk/crawl under fallen brush on. But I gotta say, I love the work. Most of it, at least. Swamping is a joy. With my teammate running the chainsaw, I dog along behind with the gas and oil cans, and throw everything he cuts down off the trail. Essentially, we are trailblazing. But, unfortunately, we are trailblazing through oceans of poison oak (literally), and I am itchy in various unspeakable places.
The number of game trails intersecting the real trail calls for truly hunter/tracker-worthy observation skills, and I get to plow off up the trails in search of any sign of grading or artificial berms. But on top of the views, the solitude (being wayfarahead of the hand crew, which is laboring along behind us to dig up and level out the trail), and the adventure, I get to wrestle with trees all day. What could be more fun than coming across a downed tree and just being able to move it off the trail with brute strength? I'm usually not one for huge testosterone surges, but leveraging 30', 200+lb trees down a mountainside blasts my muscles. Primal yells of victory, etcetera.
Really. It's freekin awesome.
If I can find time on this busy saturday to do it, I'm trying to call up the various skydiving establishments within 3 hours of Sacramento, to find myself something to do over spring break. My hope is to blow all of my AmeriCorps cash getting myself certified for walk-in skydiving. It's upwards of 1k dinero, but there is SO MUCH I could do with a certification. After paying fof/completing training, I can dive at 12000' for $50 a pop, or $25 if I get my own gear. And if I jump enough, I can get an instructors license, and if that doesn't scream summer job like the fourth of july, I don't know what life is meant for.
Seriously, just imagine what a summer spent as a diving instructor/helper would be like: strapping screaming thrillseekers to your chest and jumping out of planes. Or just jumping out of planes with groups. AND GETTING PAID TO DO IT.
I have to go hop around in excitement for a while, more next time.
Thursday, March 4, 2010
Burning brush piles in the rain (what fossil fuels?)
The phrase on my mind today was “if only they could see me now.” Where was I a year ago today? It’s the third? Coming back from winter break I think, dragging my body back into the combine, pondering the feasibility of a state mandated education. Today, I spent half the day felling and bucking oaks with a chainsaw, and we burned enormous brushpiles. It rained most of the day, but a little bit of diesel fuel fixed that problem.
It’s just crazy. Let’s see if I can do a first-person snippet from today…if it doesn’t feel too much like writing a college essay.
Chainsaws are heavy. To let a saw eat into a downed log is a simple matter; the weight of the saw pushes the bar through the wood. But my arms feel too dense to make the face cut. The first cut in felling a tree is a pie-slice wedge, the face cut, guiding the fall of the tree when you make the back cut to release the tension and bring it down. Wielding a 30-pound hunk of roaring metal with enough finesse to cut a pie slice out of a tree takes a lot of huffing, puffing, and stops to check your work. But of course, I’m half-blind and wet, too.
No matter how many times I wipe my goggles, it’s like I get cataracts every time I breathe. A penumbra of mist constantly follows me around; my vision is a field of gray. I glance up at the tree as I cut into it, to check for movement, but all I see are silhouettes. The rain doesn’t make things any easier. I already had to change my gloves, as my leather ones (state issued, fire retardant) got so waterlogged and heavy that they would hold form around the throttle, and the saw would continue to run until I took my hand off of it entirely.
Since the tree is supposed to fall towards that side (based on the lean), it’s totally possible that the tree will settle as you’re cutting. If your saw is in the tree when it starts to lean even a little bit, the tree will trap your bar and no amount of horsepower outside of another saw will be able to free it. Besides cutting your chaps, this is the most embarrassing thing a sawyer can do. But I finally free a wedged slice from the tree. I hit the chain brake, shut off the saw, and stretched a bit.
The final cut is the fun part. One straight slice into the tree, and it falls. I give a final shout to my teammates to let them know a tree’s coming down and start the saw. I think I stop cutting too soon, because all of my trees fall slowly, letting themselves down gently as the stump pops and cracks.
I still think it’s crazy, just to look back at what I did in school (which I think more than ever was horribly implemented, but gives me less grief now that I’m gone), and all the questions I had about my future. Especially last summer, where the amount of energy I spent fretting about getting into AmeriCorps was monumental. Last year’s Sam seems pretty shallow now. Not his fault at all I’d say, just a product of his environment. That goes to say that the school and mainstream adolescent environment in this country is pretty shallow. Sure, in school I learned all about the abstract stuff that will let me build machines to manipulate matter and energy, but I’d say I’ve learned as much this year (and with only half of AmeriCorps done, too) about human life than I have in all of my preceding 18 years combined. The way people interact, the way people live, how the individual relates to society and vice versa.
Well, this is going to turn into a societal rant, so I’m going to stop here. But thus far, 19 year-old Sam is primarily concerned with getting to sleep at a decent hour and knows his place in society.
This is my last full day here at Mendocino, and I’m going to miss the industrial kitchens, giant redwoods, and noisy generators. Tomorrow we head back to Sacramento for a day, and then it’s on to Camp Cedar Glen, about 1.5 hours east of San Diego.
It’s just crazy. Let’s see if I can do a first-person snippet from today…if it doesn’t feel too much like writing a college essay.
Chainsaws are heavy. To let a saw eat into a downed log is a simple matter; the weight of the saw pushes the bar through the wood. But my arms feel too dense to make the face cut. The first cut in felling a tree is a pie-slice wedge, the face cut, guiding the fall of the tree when you make the back cut to release the tension and bring it down. Wielding a 30-pound hunk of roaring metal with enough finesse to cut a pie slice out of a tree takes a lot of huffing, puffing, and stops to check your work. But of course, I’m half-blind and wet, too.
No matter how many times I wipe my goggles, it’s like I get cataracts every time I breathe. A penumbra of mist constantly follows me around; my vision is a field of gray. I glance up at the tree as I cut into it, to check for movement, but all I see are silhouettes. The rain doesn’t make things any easier. I already had to change my gloves, as my leather ones (state issued, fire retardant) got so waterlogged and heavy that they would hold form around the throttle, and the saw would continue to run until I took my hand off of it entirely.
Since the tree is supposed to fall towards that side (based on the lean), it’s totally possible that the tree will settle as you’re cutting. If your saw is in the tree when it starts to lean even a little bit, the tree will trap your bar and no amount of horsepower outside of another saw will be able to free it. Besides cutting your chaps, this is the most embarrassing thing a sawyer can do. But I finally free a wedged slice from the tree. I hit the chain brake, shut off the saw, and stretched a bit.
The final cut is the fun part. One straight slice into the tree, and it falls. I give a final shout to my teammates to let them know a tree’s coming down and start the saw. I think I stop cutting too soon, because all of my trees fall slowly, letting themselves down gently as the stump pops and cracks.
I still think it’s crazy, just to look back at what I did in school (which I think more than ever was horribly implemented, but gives me less grief now that I’m gone), and all the questions I had about my future. Especially last summer, where the amount of energy I spent fretting about getting into AmeriCorps was monumental. Last year’s Sam seems pretty shallow now. Not his fault at all I’d say, just a product of his environment. That goes to say that the school and mainstream adolescent environment in this country is pretty shallow. Sure, in school I learned all about the abstract stuff that will let me build machines to manipulate matter and energy, but I’d say I’ve learned as much this year (and with only half of AmeriCorps done, too) about human life than I have in all of my preceding 18 years combined. The way people interact, the way people live, how the individual relates to society and vice versa.
Well, this is going to turn into a societal rant, so I’m going to stop here. But thus far, 19 year-old Sam is primarily concerned with getting to sleep at a decent hour and knows his place in society.
This is my last full day here at Mendocino, and I’m going to miss the industrial kitchens, giant redwoods, and noisy generators. Tomorrow we head back to Sacramento for a day, and then it’s on to Camp Cedar Glen, about 1.5 hours east of San Diego.
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Livin' in the Doll House
So this past weekend my team finally got a taste of living all together under one roof. Till now, whenever we go on spike we either stayed in separate tents, cabins, or rooms. But last weekend the Boys and Girls clubs had us move out of our rooms because there were actual kids coming to use the camp, honest-to-goodness campers. So we moved into one of the houses that camp owns (this one's called the doll house, there must be at least 5 just sitting empty around camp, in various states of disrepair). We spent most of last week cleaning the house out, fixing it up, and staining its floors, so it was a getting our just rewards kind of thing. Very posh.
It was interesting, but could have been cooler, because we were really only at the house for sleeping purposes. We still hung out down at the main building complex, which has the lounge (with electric lighting!) and the kitchen. A few of us still dream of a “Silver 4 House” where we all chill in the living room. Maybe one spike, but not any spike soon.
Arrgh. I’m frustrated with this camp. Not awfully so, just it’s week three of our stay here and we still have yet to find where they are hiding the board games. If they have any. Honestly, what’s the point of having no electricity if there are no board games? Cards are an option of course, but I lost my entire $5 buy-in by the second hand of poker last time, so I’m iffy on that one. I’m really not that bad, it’s just the guy I was in a bluff-off with had a higher face card (ace to my king…sigh). I’m pro.
Today was pretty fun. We splintered into three groups, and I headed off with 3 other guys to clean out the maintenance sheds. Not super fun in itself, but Camp Mendocino gets most of its equipment via donation or army surplus (apparently their official non-profit status figures in at the federal level, so they are eligible for HUGE air force dump-trucks or a military grade forklift—which was named Anthony). Plus, they’ve been a camp for over half a century, so they have a lot of cool junk accumulated, which we get to fool with before throwing out (or sometimes keeping)
They have a massive box of .22 caliber bullet casings from where there was a rifle range at the camp (now it’s politically incorrect to teach inner-city kids how to respect guns). There are two chariot (think coliseum) beds, sans wheels, waiting to be utilized. They have a large assortment of industrial grade tools—namely, wrenches that are half as tall as I am and truly a bitch to lift. The best find of the day was a piece of nameless rubber with a mini caribiner attached to it, which I have now appropriated and added to my collection.
It’s true, you can’t trust us AmeriCorps kids with anything. If given the chance, we will steal your needless junk and expired food right out from under you.
Devious little bastards, aren’t we?
It was interesting, but could have been cooler, because we were really only at the house for sleeping purposes. We still hung out down at the main building complex, which has the lounge (with electric lighting!) and the kitchen. A few of us still dream of a “Silver 4 House” where we all chill in the living room. Maybe one spike, but not any spike soon.
Arrgh. I’m frustrated with this camp. Not awfully so, just it’s week three of our stay here and we still have yet to find where they are hiding the board games. If they have any. Honestly, what’s the point of having no electricity if there are no board games? Cards are an option of course, but I lost my entire $5 buy-in by the second hand of poker last time, so I’m iffy on that one. I’m really not that bad, it’s just the guy I was in a bluff-off with had a higher face card (ace to my king…sigh). I’m pro.
Today was pretty fun. We splintered into three groups, and I headed off with 3 other guys to clean out the maintenance sheds. Not super fun in itself, but Camp Mendocino gets most of its equipment via donation or army surplus (apparently their official non-profit status figures in at the federal level, so they are eligible for HUGE air force dump-trucks or a military grade forklift—which was named Anthony). Plus, they’ve been a camp for over half a century, so they have a lot of cool junk accumulated, which we get to fool with before throwing out (or sometimes keeping)
They have a massive box of .22 caliber bullet casings from where there was a rifle range at the camp (now it’s politically incorrect to teach inner-city kids how to respect guns). There are two chariot (think coliseum) beds, sans wheels, waiting to be utilized. They have a large assortment of industrial grade tools—namely, wrenches that are half as tall as I am and truly a bitch to lift. The best find of the day was a piece of nameless rubber with a mini caribiner attached to it, which I have now appropriated and added to my collection.
It’s true, you can’t trust us AmeriCorps kids with anything. If given the chance, we will steal your needless junk and expired food right out from under you.
Devious little bastards, aren’t we?
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Ketchup, please
Well I hope everything is well.
I realized that I mentioned squat about what we’d been doing these past days here at Mendocino besides what we do in our spare time. What, AmeriCorps gets things done? Pshaw.
But indeed, we have been doin’ stuff. Our first task upon arrival was to increase visibility along a three-mile stretch of the windy, altitudally schizo bit of road from the camp gate to the main parking lot.
Imagine I have a mobster accent, and thus: “Now, see? All these plants, stickin’ up outta the ground here, they gotsta go, see? I want ‘em gone, and I want ‘em gone good!”
It was supposed to take us a week to do the brush clearance, and we were at the bottom in two days. Now, I think it proooobably should have taken us three days (the bottom mile was skimped when people realized how close they were. I have no guilt, I was still at mile 2 doing “quality control” on the skimping when they hit bottom), but we still got all the overhanging trees, small brush, and obnoxious viney things out in a 5’ corridor.
That was boring, mind-numbing work, lightened only by the fact that our handsaws had belt holsters. Not only could we drop our loppers and wip them out to saw stuff down if we got really bored, but a couple of us spent the walk back to our lunches going “1. 2. 3. DRAW” Good times.
BUT. We did get to burn the 15-or-so large piles of brush we accumulated. Much more stressful and tiring than you would think, seeing as it rains every night here. The fire has to be slowly coaxed up to heat by burning leafy brush stuff in exponentially increasing amounts at the instant the last batch flares up. Add more fuel too early and smothered, too late and the new stuff didn’t catch. However, once the fire was blazing with a great coal base, you could dump anything on it and it was torch instantly. And since we are very responsible fire tenders, we were willing to sit around and watch the fire die before moving on, to make sure none of the forest caught fire.
The rest of our week involved a lot of painting over graffiti in the cabins and buildings (a lot of misspellings, but humorous stuff) and staining the floor of one of the buildings. This week we’ve moved on into odd jobs. We have, thus far, dug a trench for gas lines, half-demolished a small building, deep cleaned our kitchens and the walk-in fridges, and organized the camps food warehouse.
The warehouse was a scary job, primarily because it smelled amazingly strongly of mouse urine and decomposing rodents. At one point, we opened up and plastic tub to see what was inside, and everybody ended up sprinting from the warehouse because the smell from the tub stung your face. It turned out to contain the liquefied corpses of three very unlucky mice. I don’t think we even bothered to clean it; we just dumped it about 100 yards from the work area and had the back loader come pick it up.
Demolishing the building, on the other hand, was a real blast. There was much use of axes to smash holes in things and then yell “HEEEEERE’S JOHNNY!” and many a successful roundhouse kick landed in the sideboards. The only bad part was digging through the wreckage later for our tools and hauling away the debris to a burn pile.
A good week, thus far, and we’re only kind of running out of food! I would like to claim some credit for that status, since I have assumed the position of food nazi. It’s a cold place to be when we’re shopping, but eating is good so it balances out.
I wrote the stuff above a couple days ago, and the generator is on, so booya. In recent news, the camp kitchen has a deep fryer, and my cooking partners and I decided to utilize it this week. So yesterday we did homemade chicken fingers and fries that were finger-lickin good, with one catch. WE HAVE NO KETCHUP. What kind of America-orps do we live in where a boy must use barbeque sauce with his fries? Well, I didn’t, cause those fries were so good and droopy with oil that I just scarfed handfuls plain. Oh, and we made broccoli and a salad. Please, we’re not savages.
I spent 8 hours today stripping the bark from a 20’ section of a redwood by hand. Or pretty much by hand, I had a walloping-looking iron scrape bar. Not easy, I’m certain my palms are permanently bruised.
But how many people can say that they manually stripped a redwood?
The sound you hear is Sam entering the exclusive club of lumberjacky.
I realized that I mentioned squat about what we’d been doing these past days here at Mendocino besides what we do in our spare time. What, AmeriCorps gets things done? Pshaw.
But indeed, we have been doin’ stuff. Our first task upon arrival was to increase visibility along a three-mile stretch of the windy, altitudally schizo bit of road from the camp gate to the main parking lot.
Imagine I have a mobster accent, and thus: “Now, see? All these plants, stickin’ up outta the ground here, they gotsta go, see? I want ‘em gone, and I want ‘em gone good!”
It was supposed to take us a week to do the brush clearance, and we were at the bottom in two days. Now, I think it proooobably should have taken us three days (the bottom mile was skimped when people realized how close they were. I have no guilt, I was still at mile 2 doing “quality control” on the skimping when they hit bottom), but we still got all the overhanging trees, small brush, and obnoxious viney things out in a 5’ corridor.
That was boring, mind-numbing work, lightened only by the fact that our handsaws had belt holsters. Not only could we drop our loppers and wip them out to saw stuff down if we got really bored, but a couple of us spent the walk back to our lunches going “1. 2. 3. DRAW” Good times.
BUT. We did get to burn the 15-or-so large piles of brush we accumulated. Much more stressful and tiring than you would think, seeing as it rains every night here. The fire has to be slowly coaxed up to heat by burning leafy brush stuff in exponentially increasing amounts at the instant the last batch flares up. Add more fuel too early and smothered, too late and the new stuff didn’t catch. However, once the fire was blazing with a great coal base, you could dump anything on it and it was torch instantly. And since we are very responsible fire tenders, we were willing to sit around and watch the fire die before moving on, to make sure none of the forest caught fire.
The rest of our week involved a lot of painting over graffiti in the cabins and buildings (a lot of misspellings, but humorous stuff) and staining the floor of one of the buildings. This week we’ve moved on into odd jobs. We have, thus far, dug a trench for gas lines, half-demolished a small building, deep cleaned our kitchens and the walk-in fridges, and organized the camps food warehouse.
The warehouse was a scary job, primarily because it smelled amazingly strongly of mouse urine and decomposing rodents. At one point, we opened up and plastic tub to see what was inside, and everybody ended up sprinting from the warehouse because the smell from the tub stung your face. It turned out to contain the liquefied corpses of three very unlucky mice. I don’t think we even bothered to clean it; we just dumped it about 100 yards from the work area and had the back loader come pick it up.
Demolishing the building, on the other hand, was a real blast. There was much use of axes to smash holes in things and then yell “HEEEEERE’S JOHNNY!” and many a successful roundhouse kick landed in the sideboards. The only bad part was digging through the wreckage later for our tools and hauling away the debris to a burn pile.
A good week, thus far, and we’re only kind of running out of food! I would like to claim some credit for that status, since I have assumed the position of food nazi. It’s a cold place to be when we’re shopping, but eating is good so it balances out.
I wrote the stuff above a couple days ago, and the generator is on, so booya. In recent news, the camp kitchen has a deep fryer, and my cooking partners and I decided to utilize it this week. So yesterday we did homemade chicken fingers and fries that were finger-lickin good, with one catch. WE HAVE NO KETCHUP. What kind of America-orps do we live in where a boy must use barbeque sauce with his fries? Well, I didn’t, cause those fries were so good and droopy with oil that I just scarfed handfuls plain. Oh, and we made broccoli and a salad. Please, we’re not savages.
I spent 8 hours today stripping the bark from a 20’ section of a redwood by hand. Or pretty much by hand, I had a walloping-looking iron scrape bar. Not easy, I’m certain my palms are permanently bruised.
But how many people can say that they manually stripped a redwood?
The sound you hear is Sam entering the exclusive club of lumberjacky.
Monday, February 15, 2010
Skunk Trains and Braggart Towns
Since today is a federal holiday, we get a three day weekend (unofficially I think, seeing as I only get 20 days off besides weekends total, and what with xmas break and all we’ve already used up about 15 of them I think). It just kind of happened because our sponsor usually works from Tuesday to Saturday, and we’re currently shifting to match his schedule.
We finally saw the skunk train this weekend; it rolled by at a speedy 15 miles per hour on Sunday. We were good Americans and waved to the tourists as they went by, and refrained from hopping on the back, regardless of how tempting it was. They went by again today, and I swear I heard the announcer say “AmeriCorps” on the intercom. I know (from reading the past debriefs written by other teams) that the last AmeriCorps team to come here for a SPIKE got themselves installed as part of the scenic Skunk Train tour, but that was five years ago. Either way, awesome if they mention us, because as Media Rep, it’s my job to get that kind of thing set up. In other words, I got a freebie.
Regardless of how much of our food we eat when we hang around all day, I love not doing anything here at Mendocino. Lazing en sleeping bag until 11ish, reading sci-fi (finally found a short story anthology), enjoying SUN today. Actually, we went into Fort Bragg to hang out/foodshop on Saturday, and while wandering around, I found a crazy shop. It had a really old-fashioned wooden sign that read “studies in electro energetic waves.” It was a one-man museum; the guy that ran it is apparently the guy who did the laser/mirrors experiment and nailed down the speed of light decades back. I really wanted to get one of his free lessons. The guy called himself “82 years young” and had his desk in the back of the shop/place, with a name card on top. Everything was about what he had created and discovered, and I couldn’t tell if the guy was really into bioelectric, new-agey stuff or just really egocentric. It was closed when we got there, but everything I could see through the windows made the old guy who ran the place out to be a magician or something. I will be calling for a free lesson.
I am officially a data geek. We’ve been having some trouble shopping (we had to put items back on the shelves again this week), so I’ve started actually organizing it, what with lists and all. And now I’ve put the receipt into excel and created pie-graphs to distinguish our spending on breakfast/lunch/dinner and that kind of thing.
I have no shame.
More next time the main generator comes on.
We finally saw the skunk train this weekend; it rolled by at a speedy 15 miles per hour on Sunday. We were good Americans and waved to the tourists as they went by, and refrained from hopping on the back, regardless of how tempting it was. They went by again today, and I swear I heard the announcer say “AmeriCorps” on the intercom. I know (from reading the past debriefs written by other teams) that the last AmeriCorps team to come here for a SPIKE got themselves installed as part of the scenic Skunk Train tour, but that was five years ago. Either way, awesome if they mention us, because as Media Rep, it’s my job to get that kind of thing set up. In other words, I got a freebie.
Regardless of how much of our food we eat when we hang around all day, I love not doing anything here at Mendocino. Lazing en sleeping bag until 11ish, reading sci-fi (finally found a short story anthology), enjoying SUN today. Actually, we went into Fort Bragg to hang out/foodshop on Saturday, and while wandering around, I found a crazy shop. It had a really old-fashioned wooden sign that read “studies in electro energetic waves.” It was a one-man museum; the guy that ran it is apparently the guy who did the laser/mirrors experiment and nailed down the speed of light decades back. I really wanted to get one of his free lessons. The guy called himself “82 years young” and had his desk in the back of the shop/place, with a name card on top. Everything was about what he had created and discovered, and I couldn’t tell if the guy was really into bioelectric, new-agey stuff or just really egocentric. It was closed when we got there, but everything I could see through the windows made the old guy who ran the place out to be a magician or something. I will be calling for a free lesson.
I am officially a data geek. We’ve been having some trouble shopping (we had to put items back on the shelves again this week), so I’ve started actually organizing it, what with lists and all. And now I’ve put the receipt into excel and created pie-graphs to distinguish our spending on breakfast/lunch/dinner and that kind of thing.
I have no shame.
More next time the main generator comes on.
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Yes, we are still at Mendocino. But it's only raining a LITTLE!
I think we can be considered “settled in” here at camp Mendocino; it’s been four days, we completed one of our tasks, and we’ve started griping about our dwindling food supply. We have an issue with food as a team. We have been getting by admirably without any sort of planning, figuring out what we want to cook for dinner as we shop each week at Trader Joe’s (I’m not sure how we got by shopping at Trader Joe’s, but it worked), and all for under $350 a week. However, regardless of how much or how little food we buy, we always go through four stages (the Silver Four Food Cycle):
1) Being excited about how much food we bought when we first get the food
2) Exclaiming at how fast we are going through food
3) Running out of one or more of the following: eggs, milk, or bread
4) Going shopping a day earlier than we had planned
Personally, I think our food consumption is directly related to the amount of food we have. Everyone just gets guilty about snacking when it looks like you’re probably eating the bread that someone is going to need for lunch on Friday.
Added to that little cycle is the fact that we run generators from 7-8:30 AM and 6-10:30 pm to power the heater for water and our rooms, the lights in the kitchen, and the TV in the lounge. Otherwise the buildings are rather cold and dark. We are still concerned for our milk and meats.
Oho. I recently had a slight dilemma. Because of the 3 rooms for 11 of us, one of my roommates is my team leader. He’s a shorter guy, but packed with more muscle and passion for life than one might think possible. He is the epitome of giving 100% to everything, and generally he lets nothing worry him. This week he has repeatedly been using my towel, to shower, to dry his face off, whatever, and this threw me for a loop.
Initially, I was pretty pissed, but I buy into the “ignore it-see if it goes away” confrontation strategy. The only thing that ever bothers me about him is that sometimes his carefree, unworried attitude leads to certain social faux paus (fox paws? Faw pow? I have no idea how to spell it). So then I wondered: why did him using my towel bother me? It’s not cause I think it’s unsanitary; I wouldn’t mind if a family member or good friend used my towel without asking. So I figure I was annoyed because he broke an ambiguous social rule put in place by the first whiny guy to say “dude. That’s MY towel.” Thus, since I ultimately approve of his ability to not worry about anything, assuming that it will be ok with others because he wouldn’t mind, I am now ok with the whole issue. With the exception of the fact that my towel reeks a bit. He’s a true backwoodsian, and has been said to be the child of a bear.
And that was the story of a towel. Obviously a disaster needs to happen so my blog can be EXCITING and PICKED UP BY A MAJOR PUBLISHER.
We did burn stuff today. We’ve been brushwacking the side of the inroad to the camp so the buses can see where they are going, and we are now burning the piles. Cool stuff. On a side note, they figured it would take us to Friday to finish the brushwacking. We finished today. No biggie, we just kick ass.
Well the main generator (on today so our team leader could get some paperwork in) is going back off soon, so the computers are gonna die. More next time on the Corps Life.
1) Being excited about how much food we bought when we first get the food
2) Exclaiming at how fast we are going through food
3) Running out of one or more of the following: eggs, milk, or bread
4) Going shopping a day earlier than we had planned
Personally, I think our food consumption is directly related to the amount of food we have. Everyone just gets guilty about snacking when it looks like you’re probably eating the bread that someone is going to need for lunch on Friday.
Added to that little cycle is the fact that we run generators from 7-8:30 AM and 6-10:30 pm to power the heater for water and our rooms, the lights in the kitchen, and the TV in the lounge. Otherwise the buildings are rather cold and dark. We are still concerned for our milk and meats.
Oho. I recently had a slight dilemma. Because of the 3 rooms for 11 of us, one of my roommates is my team leader. He’s a shorter guy, but packed with more muscle and passion for life than one might think possible. He is the epitome of giving 100% to everything, and generally he lets nothing worry him. This week he has repeatedly been using my towel, to shower, to dry his face off, whatever, and this threw me for a loop.
Initially, I was pretty pissed, but I buy into the “ignore it-see if it goes away” confrontation strategy. The only thing that ever bothers me about him is that sometimes his carefree, unworried attitude leads to certain social faux paus (fox paws? Faw pow? I have no idea how to spell it). So then I wondered: why did him using my towel bother me? It’s not cause I think it’s unsanitary; I wouldn’t mind if a family member or good friend used my towel without asking. So I figure I was annoyed because he broke an ambiguous social rule put in place by the first whiny guy to say “dude. That’s MY towel.” Thus, since I ultimately approve of his ability to not worry about anything, assuming that it will be ok with others because he wouldn’t mind, I am now ok with the whole issue. With the exception of the fact that my towel reeks a bit. He’s a true backwoodsian, and has been said to be the child of a bear.
And that was the story of a towel. Obviously a disaster needs to happen so my blog can be EXCITING and PICKED UP BY A MAJOR PUBLISHER.
We did burn stuff today. We’ve been brushwacking the side of the inroad to the camp so the buses can see where they are going, and we are now burning the piles. Cool stuff. On a side note, they figured it would take us to Friday to finish the brushwacking. We finished today. No biggie, we just kick ass.
Well the main generator (on today so our team leader could get some paperwork in) is going back off soon, so the computers are gonna die. More next time on the Corps Life.
Saturday, February 6, 2010
Back at Mendocino for a SPIKE
Awright. So I'm at camp mendocino, comfortable situated in one of our three bunk rooms (one for the four girls, two for the seven guys).
Electricity here is a give-and-take. We got spoiled last night since they are having a kind of Boys and Girls Club conference/retirement party. With the bigwigs here they left the main generator running all night. In the future, we get power from around 5:30 to 10:45, and they also said we could run the generator for about an hour in the morning for breakfast and the like. It is unfortunate that we did not know this while we were shopping, because we bought an all time record of 7 gallons of milk, anticipating our next shopping trip being 9 days away. Buuuuut since we are now living out of coolers, the milk may not last that long. Ah, well, another brick in the road.
It is February in California, so of course it is raining pretty much constantly. I am very happy that we are indoors and not in the cabins, as we initially thought. Much more comfortable.
We start work monday. We were told to wear our FRT clothes (nomex pants, fireboots, the like) so I assume we must be doing brush hauling, and maybe a little burning of the brush piles. Nothing glorious.
The camp itself is a pretty awesome place to be spending four weeks. It has the ability to house and feed about 400 kids at once during the summer, so clusters of cabins (I think they are divided into "tribes" during the summer season) sprawl out from the main complex that has laundry, offices (with computers and wifi if I get the password), and a gigantic kitchen.
This is redwood country, and this area is fairly old growth. Not quite sequoia national forest old growth, but much bigger than el averago treeo back home. The upper canopy is easily sixty to seventy feet up, and the forest floor is bare of almost all low-lying shrubs, just layered in needles. Fairly magical area.
The Skunk Train that runs through camp (apparently the only train left in the country that the postal service actively uses to transport mail), supposedly comes daily, though I never saw it when AmeriCorps was here last time for team training. It goes into nearby Willits and Fort Bragg, so theoretically the plan is to hop it if it makes enough passes to get us back before next week. Otherwise the weekend is going to be pretty sleepy here.
By the way, I'm getting great photos and videos now that I have a cord to connect my camera to my computer, the wondrous technology. I'll figure out where I'm going to put those so yous all can see them eventually. And we do have internet here (obviously), it's just a little hard to get (need electricity and time) but since I have my loyal lappy I can write on there and flash it over to the office to for webification.
It is realllllly lazy here without anything to do, and it being rainy and the weekend. We played some cranium and some cards and came to the conclusion that we eat the most of our food supply when we don't work. Yuss indeedy.
But theoretically, once we get our act together and it stops raining, this is a boys and girls club camp. They have bows and arrows with rubber tips, and we have goggles and helmets, so fun is to be had by all. Now the rain just needs to stop.
Electricity here is a give-and-take. We got spoiled last night since they are having a kind of Boys and Girls Club conference/retirement party. With the bigwigs here they left the main generator running all night. In the future, we get power from around 5:30 to 10:45, and they also said we could run the generator for about an hour in the morning for breakfast and the like. It is unfortunate that we did not know this while we were shopping, because we bought an all time record of 7 gallons of milk, anticipating our next shopping trip being 9 days away. Buuuuut since we are now living out of coolers, the milk may not last that long. Ah, well, another brick in the road.
It is February in California, so of course it is raining pretty much constantly. I am very happy that we are indoors and not in the cabins, as we initially thought. Much more comfortable.
We start work monday. We were told to wear our FRT clothes (nomex pants, fireboots, the like) so I assume we must be doing brush hauling, and maybe a little burning of the brush piles. Nothing glorious.
The camp itself is a pretty awesome place to be spending four weeks. It has the ability to house and feed about 400 kids at once during the summer, so clusters of cabins (I think they are divided into "tribes" during the summer season) sprawl out from the main complex that has laundry, offices (with computers and wifi if I get the password), and a gigantic kitchen.
This is redwood country, and this area is fairly old growth. Not quite sequoia national forest old growth, but much bigger than el averago treeo back home. The upper canopy is easily sixty to seventy feet up, and the forest floor is bare of almost all low-lying shrubs, just layered in needles. Fairly magical area.
The Skunk Train that runs through camp (apparently the only train left in the country that the postal service actively uses to transport mail), supposedly comes daily, though I never saw it when AmeriCorps was here last time for team training. It goes into nearby Willits and Fort Bragg, so theoretically the plan is to hop it if it makes enough passes to get us back before next week. Otherwise the weekend is going to be pretty sleepy here.
By the way, I'm getting great photos and videos now that I have a cord to connect my camera to my computer, the wondrous technology. I'll figure out where I'm going to put those so yous all can see them eventually. And we do have internet here (obviously), it's just a little hard to get (need electricity and time) but since I have my loyal lappy I can write on there and flash it over to the office to for webification.
It is realllllly lazy here without anything to do, and it being rainy and the weekend. We played some cranium and some cards and came to the conclusion that we eat the most of our food supply when we don't work. Yuss indeedy.
But theoretically, once we get our act together and it stops raining, this is a boys and girls club camp. They have bows and arrows with rubber tips, and we have goggles and helmets, so fun is to be had by all. Now the rain just needs to stop.
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Boys and Girls club finale
So here's an entry I wrote on thursday but was prevented from accessing the internet due to the glories of technology. I think I was feeling a little grumbly at the time, so color me blue. Currently things are cool, we found out for about the fifth time when we are leaving for our next project, and for the fifth time we are leaving on a different day. We leave friday for camp Mendocino, so we can spend a glorious weekend in the woods not getting into trouble, or something like that.
On an unrelated note, with the arrival of my giant "ethical hacking" anthologies my interest in tech has gone back up, so I have things to occupy all of my durn free time. What better place to learn to hack than on a government computer?
Kidding, kidding.
Here's the thing I wrote a couple days ago (mood dims):
Tomorrow is our last day at the boys and girls club, and I am sorry to go. Not just because I loved eating grilled cheese for lunch everyday and having such awesome facilities, but because I will miss the kids, and feeling like, for once in AmeriCorps, I was actually making a direct impact on someones life (besides making their job easier).
Thus far, it often feels like we've essentially just been free labor for nonprofits that can't afford the real deal. Catalina, for instance. It's damn expensive to hire 11 people to do odd jobs and weed fennel 8 hours a day, and Corpsians will do it for a wee piece of land to lay down on and a smile. We definitely did some of that at the boys and girls club, but instead of helping a island that is falling out of favor with tourists regain some of its composure, we tripled the number of floating staff at the club. These kids need attention.
I'll be the first to say I've grown up with almost every advantage possible. Two attentive parents, four involved grandparents for all of my developmental years, a supportive extended family, and born into one of the most influential demographics on the map. 90% of the children at the boys and girls club lack at least one parent in their lives, and many miss both, with a father virtually nonexistant and a mother in jail. They are raised by their grandparents, other relatives, or the foster system.
Did you know that in the foster system it is possible to apply to get you child transferred out of your home? If a family adopts you as an infant, and decides when you hit early adolescence that you've become to much to handle, only a few signatures stand between you and a new home. There are a number of these "lost children" at the boys and girls club, kids who lived with a family, as a part of a family, for eight or so years, only to be booted back into the faster care system when they needed consistent adult role models most. People decided to trade them back in for a younger model, one that they can control again.
It might show, but today was our final debrief with our project sponsor. He shared some of the kids' backstories, what goes on in their lives. He told us a few success stories, of kids who got on track and pulled themselves out. He told us of the ones who don't pay attention, riding along in the foster care system untill they hit 18 and get shocked when the government ceases to help them.
Some of these kid have it rough, the hooligans that we played dodgeball and uno with, did math and writing with. I always tried to be attentive, admiring, and kind. But now I wonder how I couldn't have done so much more. The system, like all systems, is broken or has never worked in some areas.
On an unrelated note, with the arrival of my giant "ethical hacking" anthologies my interest in tech has gone back up, so I have things to occupy all of my durn free time. What better place to learn to hack than on a government computer?
Kidding, kidding.
Here's the thing I wrote a couple days ago (mood dims):
Tomorrow is our last day at the boys and girls club, and I am sorry to go. Not just because I loved eating grilled cheese for lunch everyday and having such awesome facilities, but because I will miss the kids, and feeling like, for once in AmeriCorps, I was actually making a direct impact on someones life (besides making their job easier).
Thus far, it often feels like we've essentially just been free labor for nonprofits that can't afford the real deal. Catalina, for instance. It's damn expensive to hire 11 people to do odd jobs and weed fennel 8 hours a day, and Corpsians will do it for a wee piece of land to lay down on and a smile. We definitely did some of that at the boys and girls club, but instead of helping a island that is falling out of favor with tourists regain some of its composure, we tripled the number of floating staff at the club. These kids need attention.
I'll be the first to say I've grown up with almost every advantage possible. Two attentive parents, four involved grandparents for all of my developmental years, a supportive extended family, and born into one of the most influential demographics on the map. 90% of the children at the boys and girls club lack at least one parent in their lives, and many miss both, with a father virtually nonexistant and a mother in jail. They are raised by their grandparents, other relatives, or the foster system.
Did you know that in the foster system it is possible to apply to get you child transferred out of your home? If a family adopts you as an infant, and decides when you hit early adolescence that you've become to much to handle, only a few signatures stand between you and a new home. There are a number of these "lost children" at the boys and girls club, kids who lived with a family, as a part of a family, for eight or so years, only to be booted back into the faster care system when they needed consistent adult role models most. People decided to trade them back in for a younger model, one that they can control again.
It might show, but today was our final debrief with our project sponsor. He shared some of the kids' backstories, what goes on in their lives. He told us a few success stories, of kids who got on track and pulled themselves out. He told us of the ones who don't pay attention, riding along in the foster care system untill they hit 18 and get shocked when the government ceases to help them.
Some of these kid have it rough, the hooligans that we played dodgeball and uno with, did math and writing with. I always tried to be attentive, admiring, and kind. But now I wonder how I couldn't have done so much more. The system, like all systems, is broken or has never worked in some areas.
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Boys and Girls club
Really, I'll get to the leftover Catalina Journals at some point. They just seem so stale now. Eh. But Boys and Girls club is still interesting, and it turns out that we have one more week still. This is very good news, in the event you were wondering, because it means one more week of wifi and phone service before I head out into the hinterlands of Mendocino to:
Cut, burn, chip area around ropes course – 5 days
Cut, burn, clean up area around archery – 1 day
Clear out oak trees around Shawnee – 1 day
Walls at Arts & Crafts – 1 day
Doll House Floors - 1 day
Organize / Empty nail + tool shed - 3 days
2+ miles of dirt road brush back/clearing – 3 days
Tear down bathroom – 2days
Trim 30 Apple Trees – 1day
Garden: planter boxes, greenhouse, stonewall, worm bins – 2 days
that's the official itinerary they sent us. I would say the most interesting thing so far looks like tearing down a bathroom, but that could change based on how much they let us use sledgehammers.
Boys and Girls club though? This week there was no dodgeball, unfortunately, but they still don't usually have much work for us to do in the mornings. Meaning that from around 11 to about 2:15 I serve America by lavishing time on lunchmaking (grilled cheeses, carbonara, you name it), reading books, and playing starcraft, which I happen to have on my flash drive. It's a good life.
Usually our days at the Boys and Girls club are all about playing with the kids/helping with homework, just kind of drifting among the groups and making sure no one hucks dodgeballs at peoples' faces (or when they do, stopping vengeance and providing ice bags). But recently I have become a little boy's private tutor. His mom is really intense about him getting his homework done, and asked me one night to check over ALL of it before she left. So I took a good while to go over math and reading homework that gave me ugly flashbacks, and now I am the boys official go-to guy for help. Actually, even more than go-to guy, since he won't let anyone else help him. What can I say, why would you settle for less?
Kidding aside, he's a really nice kid, I just miss some of the mingling/not really having to do any work bit. This guy has an amazing work ethic; Friday we were hard at work while everyone else was running around (the club doesn't even HAVE homework hour on Fridays). But it's cool. Changing the lives of America's youth and all.
One more week, then off to mendocino. And for the record, I finally got my camera cord in the mail, so I can finally upload photos from my camera. I am thus far trying to figure out how to put them on here in a less obnoxious fashion than copy/paste. Here's Silver IV at the end of wildland firefighter training in our bangin' yellow and greens, btws PICTURES!!!! that I can put in with my uber html skills
Cut, burn, chip area around ropes course – 5 days
Cut, burn, clean up area around archery – 1 day
Clear out oak trees around Shawnee – 1 day
Walls at Arts & Crafts – 1 day
Doll House Floors - 1 day
Organize / Empty nail + tool shed - 3 days
2+ miles of dirt road brush back/clearing – 3 days
Tear down bathroom – 2days
Trim 30 Apple Trees – 1day
Garden: planter boxes, greenhouse, stonewall, worm bins – 2 days
that's the official itinerary they sent us. I would say the most interesting thing so far looks like tearing down a bathroom, but that could change based on how much they let us use sledgehammers.
Boys and Girls club though? This week there was no dodgeball, unfortunately, but they still don't usually have much work for us to do in the mornings. Meaning that from around 11 to about 2:15 I serve America by lavishing time on lunchmaking (grilled cheeses, carbonara, you name it), reading books, and playing starcraft, which I happen to have on my flash drive. It's a good life.
Usually our days at the Boys and Girls club are all about playing with the kids/helping with homework, just kind of drifting among the groups and making sure no one hucks dodgeballs at peoples' faces (or when they do, stopping vengeance and providing ice bags). But recently I have become a little boy's private tutor. His mom is really intense about him getting his homework done, and asked me one night to check over ALL of it before she left. So I took a good while to go over math and reading homework that gave me ugly flashbacks, and now I am the boys official go-to guy for help. Actually, even more than go-to guy, since he won't let anyone else help him. What can I say, why would you settle for less?
Kidding aside, he's a really nice kid, I just miss some of the mingling/not really having to do any work bit. This guy has an amazing work ethic; Friday we were hard at work while everyone else was running around (the club doesn't even HAVE homework hour on Fridays). But it's cool. Changing the lives of America's youth and all.
One more week, then off to mendocino. And for the record, I finally got my camera cord in the mail, so I can finally upload photos from my camera. I am thus far trying to figure out how to put them on here in a less obnoxious fashion than copy/paste. Here's Silver IV at the end of wildland firefighter training in our bangin' yellow and greens, btws PICTURES!!!! that I can put in with my uber html skills
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
FRT certification and various amounts of temporality
Well then. It certainly has been a while since I was on here. My sincere apologies, I’m having a hard time getting a solid schedule down. Although, to tell the truth, spotty bloggings may be the case with my Ameriyear. My next project is up north in Cali, where there is no phone service, let alone wifi. We’re going to do maintenance stuff at a boys and girls camp, such as demolishing bathrooms and burning brush piles (which is apparently what qualifies this project as FRT necessary).
On the fire note, all us FRTers got out official certifications Friday. Last week mon-thurs was spent in classrooms learning about fire behavior, safety protocols, and general fire-fighting know-how. Seeing as I am incapable of remaining awake when set in a chair and talked at (unless I have food: I utilized tortilla chips to give me brief periods of attentiveness), the class was pretty ho-hum. But, on Friday, we did field training.
We drove north to the Tahoe Hotshots’ headquarters (Hotshot groups are the professional wildland firefighters, they’re pretty badass), and splintered off to do simulated fire-fighting activities. Hotshot instructors hiked us out into the middle of the woods where we cut line for most of the day. Cutting line is the primary method of fighting wildfires. You remove fuel along one of the fire’s fronts, theoretically stopping all fire movement in that direction. Given Pulaskis, shovels, Mcleods, and a variety of other diversely named tools, we cleared a 5’ wide swath of woods down to mineral soil. It’s relatively backbreaking. Towards the end of the day, if I bent an arm, every muscle seized up, and I would have to use the other arm to unbend it. I look forward to applying this work in the field.
Another cool thing is our fire shelters, the aluminum foil sleeping bags we get issued to keep us alive in the event of extreme heat exposure. They function by reflecting radiant heat and giving you a pocket of breathable air inside the shelter. They’re relatively useless against direct fire exposure, so its advised that you not use them. Another theory is that the shiny exterior of the shelters makes it easier for the helicopters to find your bodies after the fire’s come through. Whatever.
But back to the cool part, during the field day we simulated a fire breaking out of control. In full gear (with our tools and packs), we ran out of the valley we had been digging line in, dumped our packs, and sprinted to a clearing with a practice (plastic) fire shelter. We then deployed and hung out, and were told who survived and who died. I think the asthmatics were the ones that died, cause they couldn’t make it up the hill fast enough. It was fun though, sprinting uphill in giant boots and fire-resistant clothing.
Yeah, all the fire crews were issued special fire-retardant clothes. They’re great, because instead of the usual, exciting, AmeriCorps grey-and-beige, FRT’s get forest-green pants and big-bird yellow shirts.
Lessee. What else interesting? Oh, TAHOE!
So this weekend two friends and I headed to lake Tahoe for a weekend of snowsports. We got in later-ish on Saturday, and spent the rest of the day wandering around the town. Tahoe is a pretty cool place, what with its huge tourist revenues and all that. But Sunday we got up early and headed to Homewood ski area, which was cheap and perfectly sized for our one day. Also, their “teen” distinction is 13-18, soooo I got to ride for $35.
Since we were renting, two of us got snowboards for the day. In a few words, a blast. It started snowing pretty heavily in the afternoon, so the last half of the day was filled with excellent runs with great cover, and I even managed to do some glades on a board, of which I am immensely proud.
The only issue to the snow was that California has some nasty laws regarding snowy conditions, and the road to Tahoe is probably one of the curviest and cliffiest I’ve been on besides the Mt. Washington Autoroad. Once it started snowing, we discovered that Caltrans has the authority to require tire chains on all vehicles. Being good tourists, we financed the booming chain industry in Tahoe (conveniently provided for all those stuck without them), and outfitted our dinky little rental car with them.
Tire chains are easy to put on if you know what you’re doing. We learned fast, but that is not to say that putting chains on tires on a 20-degree, snowy Tahoe night is a fun process. I remember very clearly thinking “Wow, my hands are so cold. It would be really easy to slice them without knowing while wrestling with this darn tire chain” (darn probably was not the word used). Then I looked at my hands and tried to figure out where all the blood was from. We got back fine, and my hands are healing just dandy. It was an “experience.”
I still have loads more Catalina stuff, but I wanted to actually talk about what we’ve been doing recently. Which is Boys and Girls club of greater Sacramento, but I’m tired and sick and on the edge of sleep deprivation so excuse me. Tomorrow or some time in the future.
Time? What the heck is that? All I know is that I’ve already spent ¼ of a year here in Cali. It’s crayzeh.
On the fire note, all us FRTers got out official certifications Friday. Last week mon-thurs was spent in classrooms learning about fire behavior, safety protocols, and general fire-fighting know-how. Seeing as I am incapable of remaining awake when set in a chair and talked at (unless I have food: I utilized tortilla chips to give me brief periods of attentiveness), the class was pretty ho-hum. But, on Friday, we did field training.
We drove north to the Tahoe Hotshots’ headquarters (Hotshot groups are the professional wildland firefighters, they’re pretty badass), and splintered off to do simulated fire-fighting activities. Hotshot instructors hiked us out into the middle of the woods where we cut line for most of the day. Cutting line is the primary method of fighting wildfires. You remove fuel along one of the fire’s fronts, theoretically stopping all fire movement in that direction. Given Pulaskis, shovels, Mcleods, and a variety of other diversely named tools, we cleared a 5’ wide swath of woods down to mineral soil. It’s relatively backbreaking. Towards the end of the day, if I bent an arm, every muscle seized up, and I would have to use the other arm to unbend it. I look forward to applying this work in the field.
Another cool thing is our fire shelters, the aluminum foil sleeping bags we get issued to keep us alive in the event of extreme heat exposure. They function by reflecting radiant heat and giving you a pocket of breathable air inside the shelter. They’re relatively useless against direct fire exposure, so its advised that you not use them. Another theory is that the shiny exterior of the shelters makes it easier for the helicopters to find your bodies after the fire’s come through. Whatever.
But back to the cool part, during the field day we simulated a fire breaking out of control. In full gear (with our tools and packs), we ran out of the valley we had been digging line in, dumped our packs, and sprinted to a clearing with a practice (plastic) fire shelter. We then deployed and hung out, and were told who survived and who died. I think the asthmatics were the ones that died, cause they couldn’t make it up the hill fast enough. It was fun though, sprinting uphill in giant boots and fire-resistant clothing.
Yeah, all the fire crews were issued special fire-retardant clothes. They’re great, because instead of the usual, exciting, AmeriCorps grey-and-beige, FRT’s get forest-green pants and big-bird yellow shirts.
Lessee. What else interesting? Oh, TAHOE!
So this weekend two friends and I headed to lake Tahoe for a weekend of snowsports. We got in later-ish on Saturday, and spent the rest of the day wandering around the town. Tahoe is a pretty cool place, what with its huge tourist revenues and all that. But Sunday we got up early and headed to Homewood ski area, which was cheap and perfectly sized for our one day. Also, their “teen” distinction is 13-18, soooo I got to ride for $35.
Since we were renting, two of us got snowboards for the day. In a few words, a blast. It started snowing pretty heavily in the afternoon, so the last half of the day was filled with excellent runs with great cover, and I even managed to do some glades on a board, of which I am immensely proud.
The only issue to the snow was that California has some nasty laws regarding snowy conditions, and the road to Tahoe is probably one of the curviest and cliffiest I’ve been on besides the Mt. Washington Autoroad. Once it started snowing, we discovered that Caltrans has the authority to require tire chains on all vehicles. Being good tourists, we financed the booming chain industry in Tahoe (conveniently provided for all those stuck without them), and outfitted our dinky little rental car with them.
Tire chains are easy to put on if you know what you’re doing. We learned fast, but that is not to say that putting chains on tires on a 20-degree, snowy Tahoe night is a fun process. I remember very clearly thinking “Wow, my hands are so cold. It would be really easy to slice them without knowing while wrestling with this darn tire chain” (darn probably was not the word used). Then I looked at my hands and tried to figure out where all the blood was from. We got back fine, and my hands are healing just dandy. It was an “experience.”
I still have loads more Catalina stuff, but I wanted to actually talk about what we’ve been doing recently. Which is Boys and Girls club of greater Sacramento, but I’m tired and sick and on the edge of sleep deprivation so excuse me. Tomorrow or some time in the future.
Time? What the heck is that? All I know is that I’ve already spent ¼ of a year here in Cali. It’s crayzeh.
Sunday, January 10, 2010
More Catalina Stuff
Awright, here's the next entry I did
---journal---journal---journal---journal---journal---journal---journal---journal---
Catalina: day too tired for math (11/27)
Got back from two night, 35 mile hiking trip with Patrick (one of my awesome teammates) about 1.75 hrs ago. It was awesome getting back because my beloved teammates brought thanksgiving leftovers up to camp from the dinner they had at the Avalon teen center while we were backpacking. Seeing as we brought essentially no food on the trip, we were hungry.
We wanted to hike to the end of the trans-Catalina trail from our tent site and bck over the thanksgiving weekend. It is a 56 mile hike round-trip, and we each brought a small container of dried oatmeal, and between us had 14 small granola bars (those 90 calorie per bar crap. Sheesh, it’s not like I’m on a diet), two tins of honey roasted peanuts, and a handful of raisins. We didn’t have enough. I did bring (and carry the entire time) 5 liters of water.
So, yeah, this hike was a last minute decision. I had to lend Pat a spork, we left so fast. We had no tent, no bivies, just our pads and bags against the wind.
The first night we started out at dusk (~5pm) and hiked till 7pm. It was an amazingly stressful hike. The moment it got gull dark I took lead cause Pat didn’t have headlamp, and following the trail was an extremely fretful process. I worried about getting lost, even though it really didn’t matter as we were hiking on a small island, but the trail was light a dusty and the surrounding terrain was also dusty and only slightly darker. So I would get increasingly worried each time we left a trailmarker behind, until we found the next one 500 yards later.
To our merit, though, we only got lost once. The trail crossed a dry lakebed, and with no markers it was impossible to follow the trail. We found it again by beelining in the right (we thought) direction, but there is something about being tired and hungry in the darkened wilderness that freaks me out and feeds my panic monster. We had done a hard PT before hiking and I know we were throwing ourselves into an insane hike with little/no preparation. That was part of why I wanted to do it, feeding my urge to vision quest in the wild. It seems weak in retrospect to have put so much nervous energy into those few miles, but I do know that the more tired I am the more likely I will want to curl up when placed in a strange situation. Not that I ever have (damn right) but it’s that much harder to do stuff.
But it turned out ok. We aborted the 56 mile hike on day two when 2000foot elevation gains/losses in 4 miles took the wind out of both of our sails, but we still ended up hiking 36 miles overall in under 48 hours (day 1 [starting at dusk: 6 miles]->night 1->day 2 [turned around: 18 miles]->night 2->day 3 [got back around 1:30: 12 miles]). Pretty decent I’d say.
Our second night was blessed. We were both dead from the hike and hanging out at a campsite (pay-per-use, which we did not), when the site ranger drove by. She noticed us lounging on said site, and asked us if we were camping there tonight. When we said “no, we’re just cruising through” (it now being 3:30 and the last thing we wanted was to have to move), and told us our story of a failed attempt at a farther campsite, she told us that the campsite we were on was rented to her for the night. She told us that she was heading home (it was thanksgiving), and that we could use her campsite if we wanted. We got caught site-stealing (pretty much) and were given the site. THANK YOU, RANGER LADY.
Then we got home and our teammates had saved us Thanksgiving leftovers from the teen center and it was glorious.
Currently I am enjoying glory:
-my sleepingbag, hung up to air out, rotates naturally in the wind for even UV exposure
-kiwi can be eaten like and apple, skin and all and then some (4 down the hatch. Don’t tell my teammates)
-I realized I have had the most instances of déjà vu in my life since starting AmeriCorps: 4
-One at a conference table eating lunch during a project
-One walking over a curb
-One sitting at a picnic table on our tent platform
-One I can’t remember but remember having
-> With all of these I get recollections from what I think are dreams I’ve had. Just brief emotion/memory snapshots. It’s crazy
Awright, gotta head 4 miles to Avalon to charge cell phone, wash clothes, etc
---journal---journal---journal---journal---journal---journal---journal---journal---
everythings good here, getting my red card for wildland firefighting this week
---journal---journal---journal---journal---journal---journal---journal---journal---
Catalina: day too tired for math (11/27)
Got back from two night, 35 mile hiking trip with Patrick (one of my awesome teammates) about 1.75 hrs ago. It was awesome getting back because my beloved teammates brought thanksgiving leftovers up to camp from the dinner they had at the Avalon teen center while we were backpacking. Seeing as we brought essentially no food on the trip, we were hungry.
We wanted to hike to the end of the trans-Catalina trail from our tent site and bck over the thanksgiving weekend. It is a 56 mile hike round-trip, and we each brought a small container of dried oatmeal, and between us had 14 small granola bars (those 90 calorie per bar crap. Sheesh, it’s not like I’m on a diet), two tins of honey roasted peanuts, and a handful of raisins. We didn’t have enough. I did bring (and carry the entire time) 5 liters of water.
So, yeah, this hike was a last minute decision. I had to lend Pat a spork, we left so fast. We had no tent, no bivies, just our pads and bags against the wind.
The first night we started out at dusk (~5pm) and hiked till 7pm. It was an amazingly stressful hike. The moment it got gull dark I took lead cause Pat didn’t have headlamp, and following the trail was an extremely fretful process. I worried about getting lost, even though it really didn’t matter as we were hiking on a small island, but the trail was light a dusty and the surrounding terrain was also dusty and only slightly darker. So I would get increasingly worried each time we left a trailmarker behind, until we found the next one 500 yards later.
To our merit, though, we only got lost once. The trail crossed a dry lakebed, and with no markers it was impossible to follow the trail. We found it again by beelining in the right (we thought) direction, but there is something about being tired and hungry in the darkened wilderness that freaks me out and feeds my panic monster. We had done a hard PT before hiking and I know we were throwing ourselves into an insane hike with little/no preparation. That was part of why I wanted to do it, feeding my urge to vision quest in the wild. It seems weak in retrospect to have put so much nervous energy into those few miles, but I do know that the more tired I am the more likely I will want to curl up when placed in a strange situation. Not that I ever have (damn right) but it’s that much harder to do stuff.
But it turned out ok. We aborted the 56 mile hike on day two when 2000foot elevation gains/losses in 4 miles took the wind out of both of our sails, but we still ended up hiking 36 miles overall in under 48 hours (day 1 [starting at dusk: 6 miles]->night 1->day 2 [turned around: 18 miles]->night 2->day 3 [got back around 1:30: 12 miles]). Pretty decent I’d say.
Our second night was blessed. We were both dead from the hike and hanging out at a campsite (pay-per-use, which we did not), when the site ranger drove by. She noticed us lounging on said site, and asked us if we were camping there tonight. When we said “no, we’re just cruising through” (it now being 3:30 and the last thing we wanted was to have to move), and told us our story of a failed attempt at a farther campsite, she told us that the campsite we were on was rented to her for the night. She told us that she was heading home (it was thanksgiving), and that we could use her campsite if we wanted. We got caught site-stealing (pretty much) and were given the site. THANK YOU, RANGER LADY.
Then we got home and our teammates had saved us Thanksgiving leftovers from the teen center and it was glorious.
Currently I am enjoying glory:
-my sleepingbag, hung up to air out, rotates naturally in the wind for even UV exposure
-kiwi can be eaten like and apple, skin and all and then some (4 down the hatch. Don’t tell my teammates)
-I realized I have had the most instances of déjà vu in my life since starting AmeriCorps: 4
-One at a conference table eating lunch during a project
-One walking over a curb
-One sitting at a picnic table on our tent platform
-One I can’t remember but remember having
-> With all of these I get recollections from what I think are dreams I’ve had. Just brief emotion/memory snapshots. It’s crazy
Awright, gotta head 4 miles to Avalon to charge cell phone, wash clothes, etc
---journal---journal---journal---journal---journal---journal---journal---journal---
everythings good here, getting my red card for wildland firefighting this week
Thursday, January 7, 2010
The Continuing Catalina Chronicles
Here's the next bit. Yeah, I'm a lazy liar who can't type stuff up when he says he will. But, in my defense, the wifi is down again. And no more news on the shooting. There is just this sketchy hookah bar that most people figure is a front for some eastern-european mob, and that's where the shooting was. Not surprising really.
---journal---journal---journal---journal---journal---journal---journal---journal---
Catalina: day 1
Today was much less eventful than our travel day. I made some oatmeal for bfast, and then we stacked wood all day. It looks like we may be stacking a lot of wood. Two years ago there was a massive (4000 acre ish) fire on Catalina, and all the wood that was cut down as fire prevention/cleanup got stacked in one huge pile at our campsite. It turns out that fire codes don’t allow the wood to be neatly stacked in one MASSIVE pile, so we have to separate it into individual cords. There is upwards of 50 cords of wood in this pile, I’m sure. And, ironically, the last AmeriCorps group that was on Catalina? Yeah, they stacked the wood into one massive pile. We’re just redoing their work. AHH
But stacking wood is weird. It makes me miss home, and especially Jacko. We stack wood better than anyone. If throwing and stacking wood was an Olympic event, we would easily net bronze.
Last night was cool because we all went to sleep essentially the moment it got dark. Which is to say 7 o’clock.
---journal---journal---journal---journal---journal---journal---journal---journal---
More...soon?
I'll talk about the boys and girls club soon too, that's where we're working now. It's a pretty cushy post. Can you say industrial dishwasher and access to their food supply? I can.
---journal---journal---journal---journal---journal---journal---journal---journal---
Catalina: day 1
Today was much less eventful than our travel day. I made some oatmeal for bfast, and then we stacked wood all day. It looks like we may be stacking a lot of wood. Two years ago there was a massive (4000 acre ish) fire on Catalina, and all the wood that was cut down as fire prevention/cleanup got stacked in one huge pile at our campsite. It turns out that fire codes don’t allow the wood to be neatly stacked in one MASSIVE pile, so we have to separate it into individual cords. There is upwards of 50 cords of wood in this pile, I’m sure. And, ironically, the last AmeriCorps group that was on Catalina? Yeah, they stacked the wood into one massive pile. We’re just redoing their work. AHH
But stacking wood is weird. It makes me miss home, and especially Jacko. We stack wood better than anyone. If throwing and stacking wood was an Olympic event, we would easily net bronze.
Last night was cool because we all went to sleep essentially the moment it got dark. Which is to say 7 o’clock.
---journal---journal---journal---journal---journal---journal---journal---journal---
More...soon?
I'll talk about the boys and girls club soon too, that's where we're working now. It's a pretty cushy post. Can you say industrial dishwasher and access to their food supply? I can.
Sunday, January 3, 2010
Catalina Journal take 1
So I did keep a journal on Catalina, here's the first entry from the night we arrived on November 23. Though, before I do the journal, there was a shooting right across the street! An army of SWAT and about 12 squad cars. More tomorrow on that one. The rumor currently is at least on dead and it was a bad drug deal involving the Russian mob.
---Journal---Journal---Journal---Journal---Journal---Journal---Journal---Journal---
The trip here was insane. So much action and just generally cool stuff has already happened. The start of the trip, where we all gathered up at the van, was tight-strung with energy, and the first ten minutes in the van was all yelling and laughing and good vibes, being late but not really and leaving campus for the first time on the first SPIKE.
So the first interesting thing that happened occurred when we arrived at our living arrangements at the Best Western Hotel.
But I don’t want to skip stuff. The trip was good, I listened to the ever-reliable ‘pod, we drove through mid-California to the coast, stopped at subway, and made a lot of sarcastic remarks.
Ok, interesting thing number one. When we stopped at the hotel, we did it strategically, because we were planning on putting 11 people in a room booked for four (thus saving oodles of cash we could then use to eat). So, I got out with our leader (Vlad) and another teammate (Laura) and we went to check in. Buuut, when I hopped out of the van, I forgot my headphones were on. My ipod yanked after me, the headphones jerked out, and it clattered neatly into a storm drain.
I took my typical route in calamity and ignored the problem. I find issues much easier to deal with when the emotional elements are ignored (MY MUSIC! NOOOOO!), and we went inside to check in. Later, I came out with a teammate, and managed to stick most of my upper torso into the drain. It wasn’t a grated drain, just a 6”x3’ slit in the curb which dropped about four feet to a cement slope that drained the water into the sewers or wherever it goes. The good news was that I could see my ipod, and there was no water to be seen. The bad bit was I couldn’t quite reach it, because trying to fit any more of my body into the drain brought some serious creakage from my ribs.
But, thank goodness for Jason (our unofficial cook), we had some cooking tongs. With said apparati, I was able to nab my ipod and save it from the clutches of the LA waste-treatment system. A shout-out to the old-fashioned ipod minis which can bounce off anything and not break.
The second crazy thing was the general process of fitting 11 people into one hotel room. This was no master suite neither, it was two queen beds crammed into a room, with an attached bathroom. There were three people per bed, and no space to walk on the floor. I was pretty comfy with my therma-rest, and even managed to call dibs on an outlet to charge my phone.
All the while we were all slightly concerned about whether or not the hotel would call us out on booking a room for four and then parading 11 people laden with gear through the hotel. I would like to take credit for solving that problem, if there ever was one. I went back down to the lobby after we all got up to the room to check on parking arrangements for our van, since it couldn’t fit in the garage. When I got to the lobby, there were two elderly ladies checking in with the receptionist, so I stuck my hands in my pockets and waited. However, while I was waiting, one of the ladies made a comment about “hiring one of those young men” to help with their baggage, and gestured in my direction. Being a good American lad, I laughed and asked if I could help. Long story short, I ended up loading up a cart for them and trundling their luggage up to their rooms. The women were apparently friends from elementary school traveling and sight-seeing across the west coast. Carol and Caroline, and Caroline was traveling with her husband.
They were really nice people, and I got a chance to talk about AmeriCorps NCCC as I put their bags in their rooms. One of the women tried to put a twenty dollar bill in my pocket, but I told them I couldn’t and wouldn’t anyway, policy and morals and whatsuch. Why would I sign up for NCCC if I wanted money for helping people?
The reason I take credit for ensuring the hotel didn’t care about us piling into a room is because I volunteered to help these women right at the front desk and was very obviously being a good Samaritan. Brownie points for the overbooked room.
The next interesting thing was a classic Silver IV crisis. We needed to go shopping for food while in Long Beach, so that we could bring it to Catalina with us and avoid paying lots of dough on the island. So we headed to Sam’s club to buy bulk. Unfortunately, we have something of a planning problem, and when we got there, a couple of rather important things became apparent:
1) We didn’t have a Sam’s Club membership
2) Sam’s club doesn’t give you bags to put your purchases in
3) We sure as heck hadn’t brought any extra bags
But, in classic Silver IV manner, we fixed everything on the fly. Nicole, our teammate from NYC, was an excellent distraught young idealist and talked the manager of Sam’s Club into letting us make the purchase without a card (we ARE supposed to have cards as AmeriCorps members, we just hadn’t been issued them yet). We purchased a few big, reusable grocery bags to put the food in, and the rest we packed into our clothes bags. I had refried bean cans and goldfish mingling with my socks.
But that’s the end of the crises. We made it over onto the island just fine, and spent the first day being driven around to see the 1 square mile city.
It’s beautiful here. I’m sitting at our picnic tables, fifteen feet from out sunken firepit so my headlamp doesn’t disturb the team. We’re all just sitting in silence. The stars, though I’ve been told they’re not as numerous as they could be, are gorgeous. I definitely wish you could see it. Our campsite is completely secluded on the top of one of their smaller mountains. We’re about five miles from the small city of Avalon, with permanent tent structures, bunks, running water, and a fridge, stove, etc.
I wish I could turn down the moon, it’s so damn bright. Earlier we found sports equipment in shed on the camp, and spent a half-hour hitting rocks with bats and golf clubs, throwing around volleyballs and footballs.
----Journal---Journal---Journal---Journal---Journal---Journal---Journal---Journal---
Awright, I'll do more tomorrow, I want to sleep. We start at the boys and girls club tomorrow.
---Journal---Journal---Journal---Journal---Journal---Journal---Journal---Journal---
The trip here was insane. So much action and just generally cool stuff has already happened. The start of the trip, where we all gathered up at the van, was tight-strung with energy, and the first ten minutes in the van was all yelling and laughing and good vibes, being late but not really and leaving campus for the first time on the first SPIKE.
So the first interesting thing that happened occurred when we arrived at our living arrangements at the Best Western Hotel.
But I don’t want to skip stuff. The trip was good, I listened to the ever-reliable ‘pod, we drove through mid-California to the coast, stopped at subway, and made a lot of sarcastic remarks.
Ok, interesting thing number one. When we stopped at the hotel, we did it strategically, because we were planning on putting 11 people in a room booked for four (thus saving oodles of cash we could then use to eat). So, I got out with our leader (Vlad) and another teammate (Laura) and we went to check in. Buuut, when I hopped out of the van, I forgot my headphones were on. My ipod yanked after me, the headphones jerked out, and it clattered neatly into a storm drain.
I took my typical route in calamity and ignored the problem. I find issues much easier to deal with when the emotional elements are ignored (MY MUSIC! NOOOOO!), and we went inside to check in. Later, I came out with a teammate, and managed to stick most of my upper torso into the drain. It wasn’t a grated drain, just a 6”x3’ slit in the curb which dropped about four feet to a cement slope that drained the water into the sewers or wherever it goes. The good news was that I could see my ipod, and there was no water to be seen. The bad bit was I couldn’t quite reach it, because trying to fit any more of my body into the drain brought some serious creakage from my ribs.
But, thank goodness for Jason (our unofficial cook), we had some cooking tongs. With said apparati, I was able to nab my ipod and save it from the clutches of the LA waste-treatment system. A shout-out to the old-fashioned ipod minis which can bounce off anything and not break.
The second crazy thing was the general process of fitting 11 people into one hotel room. This was no master suite neither, it was two queen beds crammed into a room, with an attached bathroom. There were three people per bed, and no space to walk on the floor. I was pretty comfy with my therma-rest, and even managed to call dibs on an outlet to charge my phone.
All the while we were all slightly concerned about whether or not the hotel would call us out on booking a room for four and then parading 11 people laden with gear through the hotel. I would like to take credit for solving that problem, if there ever was one. I went back down to the lobby after we all got up to the room to check on parking arrangements for our van, since it couldn’t fit in the garage. When I got to the lobby, there were two elderly ladies checking in with the receptionist, so I stuck my hands in my pockets and waited. However, while I was waiting, one of the ladies made a comment about “hiring one of those young men” to help with their baggage, and gestured in my direction. Being a good American lad, I laughed and asked if I could help. Long story short, I ended up loading up a cart for them and trundling their luggage up to their rooms. The women were apparently friends from elementary school traveling and sight-seeing across the west coast. Carol and Caroline, and Caroline was traveling with her husband.
They were really nice people, and I got a chance to talk about AmeriCorps NCCC as I put their bags in their rooms. One of the women tried to put a twenty dollar bill in my pocket, but I told them I couldn’t and wouldn’t anyway, policy and morals and whatsuch. Why would I sign up for NCCC if I wanted money for helping people?
The reason I take credit for ensuring the hotel didn’t care about us piling into a room is because I volunteered to help these women right at the front desk and was very obviously being a good Samaritan. Brownie points for the overbooked room.
The next interesting thing was a classic Silver IV crisis. We needed to go shopping for food while in Long Beach, so that we could bring it to Catalina with us and avoid paying lots of dough on the island. So we headed to Sam’s club to buy bulk. Unfortunately, we have something of a planning problem, and when we got there, a couple of rather important things became apparent:
1) We didn’t have a Sam’s Club membership
2) Sam’s club doesn’t give you bags to put your purchases in
3) We sure as heck hadn’t brought any extra bags
But, in classic Silver IV manner, we fixed everything on the fly. Nicole, our teammate from NYC, was an excellent distraught young idealist and talked the manager of Sam’s Club into letting us make the purchase without a card (we ARE supposed to have cards as AmeriCorps members, we just hadn’t been issued them yet). We purchased a few big, reusable grocery bags to put the food in, and the rest we packed into our clothes bags. I had refried bean cans and goldfish mingling with my socks.
But that’s the end of the crises. We made it over onto the island just fine, and spent the first day being driven around to see the 1 square mile city.
It’s beautiful here. I’m sitting at our picnic tables, fifteen feet from out sunken firepit so my headlamp doesn’t disturb the team. We’re all just sitting in silence. The stars, though I’ve been told they’re not as numerous as they could be, are gorgeous. I definitely wish you could see it. Our campsite is completely secluded on the top of one of their smaller mountains. We’re about five miles from the small city of Avalon, with permanent tent structures, bunks, running water, and a fridge, stove, etc.
I wish I could turn down the moon, it’s so damn bright. Earlier we found sports equipment in shed on the camp, and spent a half-hour hitting rocks with bats and golf clubs, throwing around volleyballs and footballs.
----Journal---Journal---Journal---Journal---Journal---Journal---Journal---Journal---
Awright, I'll do more tomorrow, I want to sleep. We start at the boys and girls club tomorrow.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)