Today I ate kale. It was delicious.
I woke up at the decadently luxurious hour of 7:45 AM, having managed a decent amount of sleep in spite of yet another unexpectedly late night of conversation. I had a more relaxed morning than usual since I had to finish packing but didn’t need to prepare a lunch for once, that usually being the most time-consuming part of my morning. Packing went quite smoothly. We each have an NTrip-issued red bag – the infamous red bag, you might call it – into which we fit all of our stuff for spike. When we pack the vans, we put in our team kitchen kit (plates and bowls, pots and pans, etc.), 11 red bags, and 11 sleeping bags (or fewer if anyone fit theirs inside the red bag) on the back row of seats. All of us fill the rest of the seats with our backpacks on the floor by our feet. The bags are nice and spacious, though they look small at first glance, and mine comfortably fit my uniform (what parts I needed – I left the shorts and dress clothes at the Point since we’re gone for under four days), PT and sleeping clothes, sneakers (I travelled in my sweet black steel-toed boots), pillow, and toiletries. I ended up with very little loose stuff – a book and my iPod for the van ride as well as my Nalgene and phone – so I feel pretty good about packing most of what I brought to the Point for our trip to Baltimore for big spike. I’ll leave some things behind (it’s a bit early in the year for a summery dress and my sleeping bag can double as a comforter) but hope to take much of it with me for a comfortable two months.
Wolf One met at our van (tentatively known as “The Beast”) at 9 AM to prepare for mini-spike. I hopped in to help pack it and fit the bags into the back seats around and on top of the kitchen kit like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. After it was loaded up, Melissa showed us all how to do a Vehicle Safety Inspection for our van. We need to submit an inspection report every week with confirmations on good working state of headlights and turn signals, oil and brake fluid levels, tire pressure, and the like. It’s fairly straightforward, but I did learn some things about checking the levels of various things which lurk under the front hood. I’ve only checked the oil in my car once or twice, so this was definitely a nice learning experience.
We finished up quite quickly so Sabrina taught us a game called Ninja (also known by Arcadia Melbourne friends as Ninja Warrior), which I had had explained to me and heard amazing things about but had never gotten to play. It is as addictive as I’d heard it would be and we played three rounds in a circle next to the van. Eventually, we tore ourselves away from the game and headed home from the end of Third Street for a few precious hours of daytime free time.
My home time was mostly spent sorting through my dresser (it’s neatly organized but I still managed to find both my missing t-shirt and my new insurance card envelope wedged between the drawers and the back of the dresser where they’d escaped from their drawers-of-residence) and hanging out with my housemates as they drifted in and out at various stages of leaving. Rene and Maria were home for lunch and Maria had promised to make kale since I’d never had it. She made a wonderful kale-onion-spice mix, Rene made cucumber salad and mashed yams, and we all enjoyed a phenomenally gourmet meal, especially for not having shopped in a week.
We met back up at the top of Third Street at 1 PM and headed out of the Village at 1:30. The Raven team sharing our project site this week followed our van as we rolled out of the point together headed for Camp Grove Point. Forty-five minutes later, we rolled up the dirt road to a cluster of rustic wooden cabins and administrative buildings. I was back at camp and it felt like home.
The Ravens headed off to one of the two cabins right on the main parking loop and we carried our bags into the big administrative building about 20 yards from their cabin. We’re sleeping in two classroom-type rooms (boys in one, girls in the other) in a big wooden lodge which also has a spacious open dining hall (currently empty of chairs or tables except the dinner tables we set up) and a nice kitchen with stove, microwave, and the like. Our beds are mattresses on the floor, but I took a nap this evening and I can assert with confidence that my mattress, paired with my NCCC-issued sleeping bag, is incredibly comfortable for sleeping. Other than the nap, I also walked around under the trees and grey, almost-raining sky (yes, it’s possible to have an almost-rain state of affairs) and felt calm and comfortable being here with my team and being back at camp (even if it’s not my camp, there’s still that feeling for me). In the later evening, I sat and read as Traci and Amanda played a bit on guitars which were residing in the closet. I learned in the van today that Amanda is great at playing the ukulele. I also texted a couple of my housemates to check in and send love because I miss them and think they’re amazing.
More later – we have PT tomorrow so now it’s time for bed.
Day 24 – Wednesday March 3, 2010
Today was our first real day of projects, our first real day of mini-spike. It began, as many days do, with 6 AM PT. It included, like few days do, cutting wood with power tools, making a bench, and scrubbing rust off shower floors after mopping a big room. It was pretty awesome. Being at a camp in the off-season, it was also filled with an enjoyable amount of chillness.
We had PT with the Raven crew sharing our mini-spike (well, technically we’re sharing theirs since our location was shifted due to potentially inclement weather) in the big main room of the lodge in which we reside. It was nice not to have to hop in a van for PT for once, instead walking out of the kitchen (where I was eating oatmeal…again) and being there. PT without Sean wasn’t quite as amazing as PT with Sean, but we worked hard and ended up feeling the burn by round three of push-ups, sit-ups, and the like. After PT, we headed back down the hall to our room and Melissa and I both lay down to nap. We chose to wake up 20 minutes later at 7 but ended up pushing that back to 7:25 when the time came. It was an excellent decision and a wonderfully amazing AmeriNap.
My nap was followed by more oatmeal (yes, I do eat other foods too on occasion) and uniform-donning time before we joined the Ravens in the big main room to meet up with our site supervisor, Andy. Andy is the camp ranger here at Grove Point and deals with maintenance and trails among other things. He did a very good job putting the why in this week’s service projects, addressing the impact that making trail signs and campfire benches will have on girls in helping them not get lost (as many apparently do on the four miles of in-camp trails) and enriching the true camp experience by encouraging amazing campfires. Apparently, Girl Scouts of Chesapeake Bay serves about 10,000 girls between ages 7 and 15 and approximately 2,000 will come through this camp at some point this year. That gives a pretty big potential impact.
Andy started us off in the tool room, where we split into two groups. While half learned from a video how to make a sign using a router and letter stencils, the rest of us cleaned and organized the masses of tools, ropes, and miscellaneous items that filled the room. I helped carry a circular saw and various other items out to another room to be donated then organized all the boxes and piles of stuff in one corner into cleaning supplies, painting supplies, and other (‘other’ including such varied items as snow chains, duct tape, and small red cones).
Though the cleaning was enjoyable, the true fun began when we switched tasks to have our turn learning about tools. The other CMs started applying their routering skills to make signs while my group was instructed in how to make benches. The camp wants 144 new benches to go around the campfire sites here at Grove Point. Before lunch, we had cut wood for 10 (most of the work) and made 1. By the end of the day, other CMs had brought the total up to 10 benches completed. Pretty good for our first day on the job.
My role in bench-making was lots of fun. I worked with Allie, one of the Raven guys, to measure and cut lots of lengths of wood for the benches. We cut 20 78-inch pieces from 2x6s, 10 78-inch pieces from 2x4s, and about 60 shorter pieces from further 2x6s and 2x4s and the remains of the initial boards. We used a really great table saw (I think) to make the cuts. It had a laser line for accuracy which projected the cut onto the board. That was super-cool. Allie and I had never worked together before, but we picked up a rhythm quickly, switched easily between cutting and measuring so we could each have a chance at both, and definitely improved at working effectively and efficiently over only a couple of hours. I liked that.
After we’d cut all the necessary pieces for the first ten benches (except for one angled set which Sabrina and Kiara had done), Allie and I combined efforts with Sabrina and Nick to assemble bench number one. We had a model bench to examine, but still had a couple of missteps in aligning the pieces properly. Fortunately, we figured out our only rather major mistake early on and were able to redirect to get one excellent bench finished around 12:40. Only five minutes later, we headed back up to the lodge to meet up with our fellow CMs (once half of us were settled into routing and benches, the other half went back to deep-clean our living spaces) and ate some delicious pizza which Andy had decided to order for us. It was incredibly nice of him to order us lunch and I enjoyed yummy veggie toppings (see, not oatmeal!) on my warm meal, especially since it was a rather cold and drizzly day.
We traded off tasks for the afternoon and I remained at the main lodge to clean. My cleaning mostly consisted of two tasks. First, Roy and I swept and mopped the entire main room. Second, I took over for Amanda scrubbing rust off the floors and walls of the two Village-shower-sized (i.e. small) shower stalls with spray cleaner, a sponge, and, for a few delightful minutes at the end, steel wool. The progress was evident on both tasks, which was fulfilling. I also had an excellent conversation with Roy during our between-task break.
Almost immediately after finishing shower-scrubbing (the ‘almost’ being that I changed out of my shower-sprayed uniform first thing), I headed to the kitchen to make dinner with Sabrina. We prepared rice, chicken, and vegetables. We have room for improvement in buying enough dinner makings to feed eleven people, but everyone ate well. I personally enjoyed a delicious sweet potato with my meal (instead of white rice), which made me happy.
The rest of the evening was quite relaxed. We had a meeting to fill in our guidelines on a team charter – Melissa already had the unit-set outline of discussion points (e.g. team first, communication, respect, conflict, work ethic) – and discussed each of our specialty roles so we all know who helps with what. A few people then headed off on a health-and-wellness run while the rest of us had free time. I ended up having a very good conversation with Sabrina about camp, nutrition choices, and many other things. After that, I read happy texts from a couple of housemates enjoying their mini-spikes then wrote so I can get some sleep before another big day. Filled with new experiences and accomplishments, this first official project day was a definite success.
Day 25 – Thursday March 4, 2010
I won a battle royale today. My opponent: a rusty shower. My weapons: a sponge, a handful of steel wool, and some rust removal spray and powder. Its key strength: experience – many, many years of maintaining rust. My defenses: a pair of cleaning gloves and, for much of the time, a rebreather to keep me in less chemically air.
We didn’t begin work until 8 this morning so I got to sleep in a fair amount before our second full mini-spike day. This was good because I proceeded to use that new energy to scrub all the rust off the most rust-filled shower I’ve ever encountered. The shower and I fought from 8:30 to 2, breaking only for a half-hour lunch (this, like cricket, was a refined battle) when our sponsor Andy ordered us pizza again at noon. It was so nice of Andy to do that; it’s an incredibly giving way to show the site’s appreciation for our work.
After I finished cleaning the shower, I mopped up the floor and cleaned off the floor rust then headed next door from the administrative lodge to a small house named Seagull. I joined Melissa, Sabrina, and Roy in painting the walls of Seagull white; they had done a ton already and we got through most of the second bedroom (it’s a one-floor set-up with two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a common area, and a kitchen) before we breaked for the day just past 4. I mostly worked on painting the wall into the ceiling; they had decided that we’ll cut the ceiling into the wall later after we paint the ceiling a creatively-named version of off-white (satin, perhaps?). I had a nice conversation with Melissa as we worked together on the second bedroom while Sabrina and Roy finished up the first. I enjoyed our talks about privilege and about teambuilding exercises she’d gone through during TLT (Team Leader Training).
We returned to our lodge for awhile then Melissa took me out to drive the van. I need to complete a ‘rookie hour’ and a driving test in order to be van-driver certified. This driving gave me a good chance to begin to get adjusted to being six feet off the ground in a significantly-wider-than-my-little-Honda vehicle (an automatic, no less!) as I will be whenever I drive for the next nine months. It was strange to be driving 50 miles per hour after walking or being driven through VA property at 15 to 25 MPH for the past three weeks, but I did adjust to that eventually too.
We had been spread out around camp task-wise for the day – painting Seagull, doing trail maintenance, cleaning a cabin, scrubbing the shower and bathroom of our lodge, working on signs and benches at the tool shed – but all came together for dinner. Jeff and Brendan had made fajitas and their many component parts were delicious. We had such options as meat (beef and chicken), beans, lettuce, cheese, salsa, and a fresh pepper-onion blend. I chose some favorites and liked the variety which allowed meal personalization.
After dinner, Melissa had us each fill out a form which every CM will complete. The ‘Individual Learning Plan’ had questions about our personal, social, and Life After AmeriCorps thoughts and goals at this moment in time. The form encouraged reflection on what we bring to our tasks and teams and what challenges we anticipate facing. We’ll fill out a new one each round and it’ll help us track progress and continue active reflection throughout the year. Each will be read by our TL and UL so they can help guide us and keep us focused on our goals.
Once we’d had some time on our paperwork (I’ll be finishing my form after writing this), we did a teambuilding exercise involving beads and a web. Wolf One sat in a circle and we each selected a few wooden beads from a jar. I chose one of each color: dark brown, light brown, and off-white. Most took a handful of eight or nine beads. Melissa then brought out some hemp string and explained the exercise. She began making a connected web by holding one end of the hemp and passing the rest of the ball of string to someone across the circle. We each answered the question, “How did you get to be here today?” then offered as many interesting tidbits about ourselves as we had beads, up to five facts. I was the only one with under five beads, but a few other people only thought of two or four so I fit in with my three facts. After we’d completed the web, we each cut the string where we held it then took the piece we had passed to another person and made that piece into a bracelet with our beads. It was a very good exercise.
We finished up well past 8 and are now relaxing for a bit (there’s some Catchphrase and movie-watching going on here in the main room, the only videotape anyone could find being ‘Gordy’) before we head to bed early for another pre-PT night’s sleep.
Day 26 – Friday March 5, 2010
Our last day of mini-spike was a most enjoyable one. I was very tired when we began PT at 6 AM but had woken up a bit by the time we regrouped at 8 to start the work day. Lots of my teammates wanted to work on benches or drive around on the off-road vehicle doing trail maintenance so I had the undisputed selection of painting with Roy.
We headed over to Seagull, the house we’d been painting yesterday, to continue where we’d left off on the walls. Four Ravens joined us to help paint but soon ended up switching to a different building across camp to paint its ceiling. Mulu, their TL, was nice enough to let us stay and keep working on the project in which we were already immersed.
We painted walls – mostly trim and shelves – all morning. Traci and Jeff stopped by for a bit and we chatted about what AmeriGossip was circulating around the Village as they taped off the baseboards and doorframes in the second bedroom (the one in which I painted shelves much of the morning). Later, they headed out as Amanda and Lindsay joined. Those two came and painted in the bedroom and adjacent bathroom with me and we had fun bonding time as we recounted random anecdotes from our lives outside the AmeriBubble. We all worked productively until lunch, finishing a good deal more of the small house. More work remains, but I’m happy with what we were able to get done in only two days of painting.
Lunch was particularly easy to make today since we’d had pizza for the past two days so had all the lunch items we’d purchased, plus leftovers from dinner the previous night, available to us. I enjoyed sitting on the freshly-mopped (thanks to Lindsay and Amanda’s pre-painting work) floor of the big room in a circle with teammates eating our assorted foods. I also enjoyed wearing my coveralls for that. Two days into having them, I’m fairly obsessed with my coveralls. They’re super-comfy and awesome.
After we ate, we packed up the kitchen (we had already packed our bags after PT), did some final cleaning, and headed out to the van to load in our red bags. I started showing Lindsay how the red bags fit into the backseat around the kitchen kit like pieces of a puzzle, but she lost patience for the amount of squishing and shoving it takes to make this particular puzzle fit so I ended up doing the bags myself again. When I’d finished, I commented how enjoyable I find that particular task and Brandon offered that I can probably have it as an (un)official role. If offered, I would accept.
Rolling out of Grove Point at 2 in a fully loaded sweet black van, we headed back to the Point and were home before 3. I spent the rest of the afternoon greeting my housemates and swapping stories as they returned from their various adventures then, after a slightly burnt dinner of onions, green pepper, and kale (I gave Jordanna her first kale-tasting experience!), ended up going grocery shopping with Jordanna in the evening. She was going to shop with Casey for our final week of CTI, but Casey’s team returned late from spike so she was unpacking her van when we headed out to the grocery store at 7. We thought we were shopping for 3 days and Jordanna and Casey would shop for the final week on Monday, but we found out upon arrival at the store that we’d be shopping for the full final week instead. Even Gretchen, one of our unit STLs who was driving us to the store and would hypothetically know these things, wasn’t sure until we got our allotted balances how many days’ shopping we were doing. Jordanna and I ended up with $299 to spend and had only reached $193 by the time we hit the fruits and vegetables section at the very end of the store. We ended up at $289 after filling our cart with loads of apples, bananas, oranges, peppers, and other produce (lettuce, tomatoes, kale, yams, two pineapples, and the like) and returning to other parts of the store for a couple of last-minute extras. We knew we were under budget but stopped because we felt our food needs for the week would be fully satisfied. It’s good that we stopped because it would have been difficult to fit anything beyond what we got in the fridge or pantry when we got home. (It was already enough of a challenge as it was.) Now we have tons of yummy treats to make us happy for our final week at the Point before the end of first round. This makes me happy.
It’s late, so I’m off to bed to rest up before our ISP tomorrow. I’m excited to be heading down to Baltimore with Jamie, Jordanna, and other friends to work at the Loading Dock. Jamie’s TL Sadie did a full round project at the Loading Dock as a CM last year. I look forward to being able to take my team there for ISPs to continue the NCCC work this year while we’re down in the city for first round. It’ll be fun.
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