this is everything i wanted to write during the week, but my lack of net access (go figure the only church in the area to have WEP on their access point - and the one with a PBX my modem wouldn't get a dialtone from - would be the one we stay at) kept me from getting online. my audioblog would have been nice if i remembered the correct mailbox number. someone else has two long stories read by me on their blog. :) but you can check the gallery still for more pictures.
we left about 7pm on saturday in three vans, divided up by houses. team hasselhoff was steve bragg, b, nate, nate's boy patrick and me. team reynolds was steve dethloff, brad clark, chip and tony. team selleck (later estrada) was greg rosenau, ed morrow, jeff miller and dan waites.
the drive down was fairly uneventful, albeit long as crap, my shift was the 11 to 3 one. it was dotted by bouts of Jurassic 5, some live Phish, STP, Bad Religion, as well as dodging the roman candles dropped on the highway by reynolds' van and getting hit by an oil balloon on our windshield (which required degreaser to remove) at 2:30am.
when bragg took over i slept til about 7am when we stopped at waffle house for breakfast. i dropped again after breakfast and woke up at 10:15am as we pulled off I95 onto State Route 100. we headed down, found the Habitat offices we needed to be at for the meeting at 6pm, then went the opposite way down to A1A and the atlantic coast.
the feeling of just being there was immediately exhilarating, the 'i'm in florida with nothing to worry about at all, and i get to spend at least this afternoon simply decompressing without having to think about work, younglife, finances, etc' thing. it was like an umbrella that i continually returned to throughout the trip, to remind myself of what the reality of this week was - a void of responsibility besides loving my friends and building a house. not that responsibility is terrible, because my life would be a wreck without it - dethloff and i talked later in the week about people that become beach residents that don't ever do anything, they just work low-paying jobs, eat, and hang out on the beach. a life devoid of substance. but it's nice to retreat to a substance-vacuum, at least for a little bit.
so we hung out on the beach, greg got attacked by a jellyfish, we buried nate in the sand and i took a long nap. we got up and headed to the office for orientation.
three other schools there: ohio state, university of maryland - baltimore college, and washington-jefferson. about 70 people total. it was a nice big number to build the houses. the staff was cool. we rolled over after eating to the church where we stayed, a large, rich baptist church about 15 minutes from the offices.
we got there and went in to catch the tail end of their ice cream social / fundraiser. immediately my 'exclusionary church' alarm went off when i got the familiar 'oh crap, college kids, all they want to do is screw things up' look from the 'i'm-in-charge-come-in-and-worship-our-lord-and-give-us-money' dude. i later got to hear a fun conversation between him and the maryland college advisor where he 'knew it was a good idea to give the keys to the church to her, because who can trust these young college kids to be responsible'. argh.
the place was great for letting us stay, let me be clear, and we're grateful. but i walk into any church like that - rigid, inflexible, demanding, devoid of grace - and i get ticked. this joint was not a hospital for sinners, nothing about it said 'please come in, we want you here, we'll accept you or anyone just as you are'. it didn't speak of simple reconciliation to God. it didn't make me feel welcome. it made me feel like, here are a bunch of people who care ONLY about their rules, and are so fearful of straying outside of their self-constructed Christian prisons, built in the name of a righteousness they are still trying to earn, that the simple concept of freedom is alien. it's a shame that the dying world is seeking freedom from the pain in their lives, and the place that should be waving freedom's banner for all to see is instead stuffing it into a closet so they can feel better about saving themselves.
it's especially hard for people who have been burned by this mindset - not just me but most of the guys on the trip - to walk into a place like that and not immediately feel cynical. i sure did, obviously.
anyway. we stayed at the church that night, slept well, and got up for work the next day at 7am.
day 1: went out to the job site, two blank concrete slabs, one with wall diagrams drawn on the ground. we divided the big group into 8 teams and split between the two houses. my team (b, chip, and two other people) worked on building walls. i knew my way around tools, mainly from hanging out in the barn back home, working on our deck, boy scouts, etc... but there was clearly an expansive world i was unprepared for. we worked all day, ate lunch (pizza and mcdonalds) and finished up at 3, by which time we had walls and braces up. i was lost on how we would get these things DONE in four days.
we went and showered at the local hospital/YMCA, where all of us had from between 3pm to 5pm to shower with three showers for men and three for women, all while sharing them w/paying customers. fun stuff, but boy scout camp showers train you for situations like these. afterwards we returned to the church and ventured north on the Palm Coast Parkway to St. Augustine. We got there in about 30 minutes, parked, and just walked around looking for a place to eat. it was a beautiful little town i liked right away - small-town-esque but not overload, surrounded by enough civilization to make me comfortable. split by water, with a big drawbridge and some sailing / marinas. imagine Lake Town from the Hobbit in modern day.
we ate at a sweet little irish pub we came to love called Ann O'Malley's. the owner was incredibly friendly, straight from Ireland, and we jukeboxed it up and had sandwiches. afterwards we walked back to the car and headed home to sleep.
day 2: got up, went to the site. i really didn't do jack on this day due to extreme frustration from the night before - when we started putting particle board sheeting up on the walls and had to spend 40 minutes tearing them down because our supervisor Lenny told us to put them up wrong. so i wasn't super motivated. brad, b, chip and i did do an entire wall of sheeting ourselves, correctly, and then started cutting out doors and windows. mainly tried to stay out of the way of the roofers, and later went over to help a bunch of our guys on the house 2 shed that bragg had adopted as his project.
after work we determined to find ourselves fresh seafood. we rolled back down A1A to the flagler beach area and found a place recommended to us by the YMCA staff called... well crap i can't remember. i think it was The Flavor. had some fried grouper. good stuff. we waited around on the boardwalk along the beach for 30 minutes beforehand, talking to Bob, a Habitat volunteer who came down from Chicago to Flagler just for this project. he was the man, had some great stories and lovely language. after dinner we headed back to the church and played some hold'em.
day 3: work was a little better that day, i spent pretty much all day being marginally useless at the shed. by the end of the day, though, my conscience had caught up to my lack of work ethic and beat its' skull in. i determined i'd FIND some project tomorrow if no one would give it to me.
we headed over to the Y after work, showered, and then headed to another church that was giving us free dinner. which is when the Selleck van (an '03 Grand Caravan) was rearended by a moron in a huge truck, which plowed it into the Reynolds van. woo, two out of three rentals in an accident. fortunately it wasn't our fault, which meant Enterprise was exceedingly cool to us. the church came out to pick up a bunch of the guys to drive them to dinner and a few of us stuck around to go pick up another car and to talk to the cops. we headed back to the church to get the rest of the guys and get lasagna and cake forced on us (yeah i put up a big fight on that one) by some awesome old ladies.
we then headed back to our church and went out to a movie. strangely enough the nearest theater was a solid 45 minute drive down SR100 and then I-95 to Ormond Beach, north of Daytona. some saw Dawn Of The Dead. some of us (me included) watched Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. best film of the year so far (if you don't count ROTK). absolutely stunning and excellent.
day 4: motivated by my conscience's victory over laziness, i went to do some roofing with nate, tony, and miller. we worked with a cool volunteer worker named mark who led us the whole day. it was relieving to get some direction. i follow orders well in unfamiliar environments.
by the end of the day we had accomplished much. the houses' outsides were near done, ready for shingles, siding, wiring, plumbing, drywall and carpeting, which the 'professionals' would do. it was quite a feeling to walk away from that site knowing i'd been a part of that crew.
that night we went back to st. augustine for the most action packed night thus far. we hit up a bar called Scarlet O'hara's (Gone With The Wind themed, adorable) and had some ribs. we played a little minigolf in a crazy little place called White Bird (by far the most ghetto putt putt i'd ever done, even more so than Custer's in Western Hills). we competed by van and never figured out who won. despite competing, though, it wasn't very stressful like minigolf usually is.
afterwards me and b and dethloff and bragg and tony and chip went back out to Ann O'malley's to hang out some more. the next 36 hours would be amazingly relaxing for me, and we stayed out til 12:30 or so and came home to bed.
day 5: woke up at 10, drove out to daytona beach with ed, chip, greg, miller, tony and dethloff. i spent from 12 to 5 eating sandwiches, sleeping, playing Metroid and sleeping more. i did nothing, and it was everything i hoped it would be. the rest of the guys joined us from tourist junkets in St. Augustine that afternoon and we went to a little restaurant i remembered from being in Daytona in 1996 with the family called Down The Hatch - coincidentally where tony had been last spring break and enjoyed himself. interesting service, fun conversation, good flounder. we headed back home satisfied, but first, drove down the 'strip' and yelled stuff at the real spring breakers that were out getting their mack on.
yesterday we woke up at 8:30 and left the church after cleaning at 10am. we took a different way home, up 75 through Atlanta, so we could stop off and see Nate's woman in Tennessee and get dinner. the detour took a little bit longer than we'd expected, so we ended up there at 9:15pm and ate til 10, then took off, and we ended up back in the nati at 3:15am.
i don't have a lot of these memorable experiences with large groups, mainly because i'm usually fearful of taking big risks in large groups. it was very unreal to be a part of something like that, a crew of guys like this that (i think) liked me for who i was, that i didn't feel the need to perform for. it was good to go on one last trip with my boys and cram a million memories in my head to reminisce about in the decades to come. it was a clear milestone for me, the end of my era as a college kid. a great place to end it, i think.
sorry this was so long. i can't believe you read it, but thanks for caring :)
