Days 64 to 66

Day 64 – Monday April 12, 2010

Today was a day in transit.

I had a final leisurely morning sitting on Kate’s front steps with Alex and Anne.  I read over Alex’s résumé (résumé-reading being a skill I’ve developed at some point, as I recently learned) and enjoyed some morning political news.  It was lovely.

I headed to the Metro station shortly before noon and took the orange line to the MARC train then rode that back up to Baltimore, arriving at Penn Station just before 1:30.  Sabrina had obliged in organizing my pick-up; she, Amanda, Jeff, and Lindsay pulled up in the Vanimal a few minutes after I got outside.  We headed to Subway for lunch then back to the mansion.  Sabrina, Amanda, and I were only there for about fifteen minutes before we left again to go to Best Buy.  I got my camera back (working, yay!), Sabrina got her computer fixed (she simply needed new RAM), and all was good.  We proceeded on to the airport, where we picked up Traci from her flight in from California.  We then all headed home for dinner.

Less than two hours later, Amanda, Traci, and I were back on the road for a return to Penn Station.  We were supposed to meet Kathy, but it turned out she’d gotten a ride with her brother at the last minute so we ended up driving back with no new additions.  She got home safe about an hour later.  At that point, I was ready for bed, so I ended up sorting laundry, doing some other stuff, and preparing to sleep.  After three straight nights of nine hours of sleep, I’ll be getting less than seven tonight.  Thus is AmeriLife.

In fun news, I got to talk on speakerphone (on their end) with Rachel, Maria, and Rene tonight while I cooked dinner because I’d called Rachel and the other two were there on their way back to their spike in Delaware.  In other fun news, Melissa brought all of Team RIO back ‘I love NY’ t-shirts from spring break.  Pretty cool.

Day 65 – Tuesday April 13, 2010

Tuesday the 13^th was cold and grey.  The temperature had dropped over the weekend from last week’s low-90s record highs to today’s high 40s.  (Though the high was allegedly 54 degrees, the sign outside the mall on the drive home said it was 40 flat shortly past 4 in the afternoon.)  It was also raining on and off and I spent much of the afternoon sitting on damp mulch while weeding.  Needless to say, I was rather cold and wet by the end of our service day.

We spent the day at the Cylburn Arboretum, where we’d spent a couple of days a while back.  It was a fun place to work and Jennifer is clear, direct, and enthusiastic in her project assignment so I felt good about our return.  We mulched trees all morning, changing it up from our usual ‘donuts not volcanoes’ mulching style to make flat, wide circles of mulch about 2.5 inches deep.  Small orange flags already marked the perimeter of the circles; we simply had to spread mulch evenly to make everything look presentable and awesome.  I spent lots of time loading mulch into a wheelbarrow with a pitchfork, lots of time wheeling loads of mulch to deposit at the bases of trees, and a good amount of time raking mulch into beautiful circles around trees.  As the rain fell from the cloudy sky, I enjoyed making pretty mulch circles.  It was good times.

As is often the case, we finished our assigned task much earlier than expected.  Jennifer had thought we would spend all day mulching; we were done about half an hour after lunch.  (She was super-enthused about our morning work and kindly ordered us pizza for lunch, then joined us for the meal and laughed as she watched how we make our shopping list for the week.)  We split into two groups for the afternoon.  While some friends went with Jennifer to plant holly trees, Roy, Sabrina, Melissa, and I headed to a series of mulched garden beds to weed among the desired plants.  As mentioned earlier, I spent the next couple of hours sitting on slightly soggy mulch feeling rather chilled as I dragged out grasses and dandelions by their root systems.  We worked quietly so had lots of relaxing time to think and chill (figuratively, not only literally).  The work was good, but I enjoyed hopping in the van and blasting the heat at the end after we’d loaded our wheelbarrows and rakes back into Arboretum storage.

We headed home for PT (circuits in the ballroom) and dinner (pancakes and oatmeal for me, yummy comfort food after a chilly day).  Roy and I spent 45 minutes reviewing CAP event information – CAP being short for Corps Ambassador Program, our specialty role within the team – in anticipation of upcoming events.  We had our bi-weekly conference call with Sam, the Community Relations Specialist at the Point, this morning during work and he had encouraged the two of us to schedule events for which he might be able to join us.  We’d love to add his positive energy and knowledge of NCCC to our own expressions of our experiences in the upcoming weeks so will be consulting his calendar as we set a final CAP schedule.  Yes, we will be doing that soon.

In other exciting news, my housemate Jamie and my teammate Roy became the second and third Corps members to finish their 80 ISP hours this weekend, both completing their last hour on Saturday.  It’s pretty awesome that my house and team each have two of the top finishers and all three of us are Wolves.  Perhaps that suggests to you the amazingness of the Wolf Unit.  And 1103 and Team RIO, but you already knew those two were phenomenal.

Day 66 – Wednesday April 14, 2010

We had a schedule shift today, getting a sleep-in morning and not beginning our service day until 10:30 AM.  We began with our first trip in over a week to the Parks & People office, where we met with Abby and followed her in the Vanimal to the nearby P&P storage containers.  P&P has lots of trees near the containers, most of which are about ten feet tall with root systems wrapped in burlap sacks.  Abby was planning to have us plant a few of those around the city, but found that transport for the trees was lacking so ended up switching projects last minute.  After she spoke to the woman organizing the planting on behalf of the city for a few minutes, they decided we’ll return to begin that project tomorrow.  For today, we headed back to the Ash Street Garden (a.k.a Baltimore Free Garden) instead. 

At the garden, we worked with our favorite punk rock community gardening crew to continue preparing their lot for planting.  Last time we’d been there, way back in our first week with P&P, we’d focused our attention on the upper section of the lot.  (It’s on the side of a hill so there’s a very defined flat upper section and sloping lower section.)  This time, we worked on the lower section.  We lined the sides of the existing garden beds with rocks from a rock pile then began creating new beds extending down to the street by moving a giant pile of sticks (many of which Melissa and I had put there the last time we’d been at the garden) to the other side of the small path that runs up the lot then digging up all the grass and weeds in the ground.  We had a nice peaceful couple of hours sitting on the ground removing grass with hand tools and sorting out trash into a separate bucket.  We had three people at a special event and one at the doctor so Jeff, Traci, Sabrina, and I were the weeders as Chris hacked away at a tree root system with a pickax.

We drove back to Parks & People at 3 to get maps and papers for our next assignment: canvassing neighborhoods.  As we had the Saturday before spring break, we walked door-to-door offering people free trees for their yards.  I worked with Sabrina and Melissa this time.  Not many people answered their doors (we were knocking between 4 and 7 on a weekday), but I had one great conversation with a very cheerful man who requested two trees be delivered for him to plant himself and told me about the two trees he got last year through this same program.  I hope he loves his new flowering and shade trees.