Days 75 to 77

Day 75 – Friday April 23, 2010

I woke up today feeling energized and ready to go after under 7 hours of sleep but a fabulous previous evening.  My body, unfortunately, had other ideas for today.  I was doing well as we headed to meet Darin at Herring Run Nursery, but spent most of the rest of the day feeling a bit under-the-weather starting once we settled in to weed the potted nursery plants.

Team RIO, fortunately, is awesome at taking care of one another.  My teammates were totally fine with me taking a couple of sick hours to nap in the shade of a tree directly abutting the nursery.  I was able to sleep a bit and felt mildly better when I returned to weeding two hours later.  I made it through another hour of service, this time alphabetizing laminated information pages about the nursery plants by scientific name, before I took another break for my second nap of the day.  Traci had suggested at the end of my first nap, which coincided with the end of her and Roy’s lunch break, that I sleep in the wheel-less wheelbarrow which was now resting on the ground.  This was the site of nap two, which was excellent.  The wheelbarrow was comfortable, I was warmer than the first time because Melissa had loaned me her sweatshirt to use as a blanket, and I woke up feeling much better.  All was good.

We had divided up for much of our service day.  Traci, Roy, and I stayed at the nursery eventually joined up by Sabrina and (briefly) Laura, our wellness counselor up at the Point; Jeff, Lindsay, Chris, and Amanda headed over to a local school to supervise middle-schoolers in tree planting; Melissa helped at the nursery and drove people around in the van; Kathy took a sick day and Buck was on a personal day.  All of us on duty for the day rejoined at the nursery at the end to clean up and gather up plants for one order a woman had come to pick up.  We then headed back to the mansion where we met up with the rest of our team for PT.

PT today was the mile run test for our physical assessment.  Being a bit sick, I wasn’t going to run a mile so I’ll do mine tomorrow.  Today, I timed everyone who did run while Kathy and I did up-and-side gators (an arm and shoulder exercise).  Afterwards, I walked two laps of the track with Melissa to round out the rest of PT time before stretching.  

Day 76 – Saturday April 24, 2010

Today was a great day.  We finally got to see some of the fruits of our canvassing labors, we had project reveal for our awesome second round spike, I ran my mile (fast), and I had a fun night out on the town with friends.  All excellent.

We began our service day at 8 AM with a return to Walter P. Carter Elementary/Middle School, the base of operations for our first two days of Tree Baltimore free tree canvassing.  This time, we got to help out at the first of the three free tree giveaway/planting days we’d been promoting via door tag distribution during that canvassing.  After helping arrange a bunch of trees for planting around the school itself by some of the day’s volunteers, we actually got to plant trees in the neighborhood!  I worked with Melissa and four guys on volunteer days from local energy companies.  Together, we loaded fifteen small trees – thirteen flowering (a mix of persimmons and serviceberry) and two shade (red maple), all between two and six feet tall – into a wheelbarrow and took them up a few blocks to the area we’d been assigned. 

Following a map and an associated list of addresses and tree requests, we proceeded to plant those trees in people’s yards around the neighborhood.  It was very rewarding work.  While the first tree Kyle (from Constellation Energy) and I planted went to a less than enthusiastic house owner, she certainly didn’t turn it away.  My next tree, which James (Baltimore Gas & Electric) and I put in, went to a very happy owner, as did our fourth (the third encouraging us to go ahead and plant it anywhere in the front yard).  Though some of the trees will certainly have lower chances of survival due to less-than-impassioned owners, we placed many in caring homes where they’ll be watered with love multiple times per month.  Out of our entire list of fifteen houses, only one person declined a requested tree while two asked for a second one.  We happily obliged.

Once we’d finished with our deliveries, we wandered through the neighborhood with extra serviceberries and red maples in our wheelbarrow offering them to anyone we saw outside on porches or in yards.  We ended up having two takers out of about five offers, which was a much-better-than-I-expected return.  The first was later the highlight of the day for both Melissa and myself at Team RIO’s daily Closing Circle (a tradition we started two days ago as an end-of-service-day reflection time).  We were walking along the street with our wheelbarrow and as we passed two men leaning against a truck, one jokingly asked if we wanted to plant one of the trees we had in his yard.  We said, sure, we’d love to!  He was, understandably, taken aback but then both he and his wife, who was sitting across the street with two friends, became totally psyched as we went ahead and planted a new serviceberry in their front yard.  They kept smiling and he thanked me profusely multiple times for us giving them this tree.  It was a very cool experience.

We returned to the school at noon to help pack up the giveaway event, loading extra trees into the back of a Tree Baltimore pick-up truck and folding up tables.  We had hoped to be done with our service day then – Abby had projected a short day and Melissa had our project reveal planned – but we ended up with one more task to test our AmeriFlexibility.  The Ash Street Garden folks had traded supplies for sweat equity with the Loading Dock.  They needed extra hands to help hold up their end of the deal.  We spent the next two hours at the Loading Dock shoveling and redistributing dirt and mulch in the front parking lot.  We moved piles of each from the lot itself into the new bordering landscaped plant installation.  One guy from the Ash Street Garden was working with us, but he eventually turned all his attention to his truck battery, Chris functioning as his knowledgeable helper, when his truck sputtered and died with a bed full of mulch.

Around 3:30, after an hour of post-work rest at the mansion, Melissa texted us to come meet her outside because our project reveal was ready!  We ended up spending the next 45 minutes working our way through a very cool reveal.  Melissa had guided a spool of heavy-duty string (though she said yarn works best) from tree to tree in the forest, winding it around some and tucking folded paper clues in the string-tree intersections.  Our task was to link hands (traveling together, as if we were in the Vanimal) and work our way through the course as a unit.  Some of the clues had challenges (e.g. give each person’s middle name, nobody providing their own) while others had hints at our next project (e.g. are we ready for a Monday to Friday work week?).  We rotated through who was in front, circling the chain around so each leader could join the back after reading out a clue, so everybody got a chance to share one paper aloud with the group.  Kathy and Roy had the honors of reading our final project itself at the end.  I’m so excited for it!  We’ll be working with United Saints in New Orleans, Lousiana!  Yay NOLA!  Yay construction!  United Saints’ mission is to help rebuild and build houses in the First Street parish of New Orleans as part of the greater Hurricane Katrina recovery effort.  We’ll be helping out on all types of tasks, from painting to gutting to drywalling, across multiple project sites.  Both the service work and everything else about the project sound absolutely amazing.  Also, we’re incredibly psyched to be headed to New Orleans.  It’ll be fantastic.

 

Major event four of the day (or three, depending on your counting system) was my mile run for our monthly PT assessment.  I headed over to the track with Melissa and Buck to complete the test I’d sat out yesterday.  It went incredibly well; I finished in 7 minutes, 47 seconds.  This was the second mile I’d run since middle school and the first under eight minutes in that time (my initial PT assessment mile having been 8 minutes, 5 seconds).  Brandon (aka Buck - don’t get confused) ran the last lap with me, which was quite nice.  I enjoyed hearing his commentary on pushing through certain markers (only 200 to go) and starting a sprint as we turned into the last bend.  It made me realize that my mile is now pretty much even with my 2K erg time-wise, lending ease to comparisons between the two.  Fortunately for me, only one involves running.

Event five was a fun evening in Fells Point with Traci, Buck, Roy, and Sean (from Wolf 5).  Melissa had ungrounded the Vanimal at the end of project reveal so we decided to take it out for a night on the town.  Buck, Roy, Traci, and I headed down around 7 and enjoyed dinner at a vaguely tropical-themed restaurant overlooking the harbor.  Sean got his team to drop him off amidst other errands and joined us after dinner.  We all wandered around for awhile, stopping in a music store for a bit where Sean and I tried on many pairs of ridiculous sunglasses, then settled on walking about twenty minutes to Inner Harbor to check out ESPN Zone (Traci and Sean had never been).  A relaxing half hour there preceded our return to the Vanimal for me to drive us all home.  Good way to spend a Saturday night.

Day 77 – April 25, 2010

I feel comfortable stating that our ISP today made this day one of my highlights of this service year.  There may need to be about a hundred highlights by November, but this will certainly be one of them.

Eight of us – Traci, Kathy, Sabrina, Lindsay, Jeff, Buck, Chris, and myself – headed down to DC this morning for the Climate Rally, a big Earth Day week concert event on the National Mall.  The local Baltimore contact for the event, Pearl, had approached us with postcard fliers last weekend at EcoFest and said they were still welcoming volunteers.  When we saw that Sting, John Legend, The Roots, and Passion Pit would be there, we decided immediately that this was a must-do ISP.  Pearl had coordinated a charter bus down to DC for the event (people were bussed in from all over the region) so we were set with free transportation.  We were even provided with metro cards to ride from the bus drop-off at Stadium-Armory over to the Smithsonian station.

After a van ride to the bus, a relaxing bus ride (during which I listened to my iPod for the first time in weeks as I sat in the fourth row back, right side, aisle), and Chris’ first ever subway ride, we stepped out onto the National Mall and found the volunteer tent.  We were happy to begin our ISP with the distribution of free bright yellow t-shirts for us to wear as volunteer identification.  Yay free t-shirts!  We then got a tour of the event from three young volunteer coordinators as we learned our duties.

We’d been told we’d be working in the areas of crowd control and logistics.  Our actual duties fell more along the lines of “be a presence”.  The goal was basically to have volunteers, police, and first aid stations accessible at all points of the rally, which stretched across a fair deal of the area between the Washington Monument and the Capitol.  We were part of that volunteer force, equipped with little knowledge but plenty of enthusiasm.  What did we know?  Where there were bathrooms (everywhere), how the event was eco-friendly (the stage lighting and giant display screens were soy-powered; the sponsor tent section was run on solar and wind power), and what to say about the schedule (there isn’t a public one, but we do know that The Roots will be playing 4 times and Sting will be performing at 6:30).  Once informed, we were encouraged to spend the day wandering the event and simply enjoying it.  Perhaps one of the least difficult tasks ever in this case.

Sabrina and I checked out the sponsor village at the beginning of our shift.  We didn’t make it back as far as the four NASA tents (to which I directed a group later when asked), but I had a great conversation with the people at one tent about worldwide population growth and said growth’s rate in and impact on developing and developed nations.  I felt like I learned a lot.  Kate, living in DC as she does, was able to stop by late morning, which was fantastic!  We walked over to meet her at the Metro stop and went to sit together by the stage as the early bands got going.  We ended up running into Raven 4, in DC for a final day before moving to Vermont tomorrow for the end of their spike (rounds split between multiple projects are fairly common), and hanging out with them for awhile.  Afterwards, I took a lunch break to walk with Kate to Starbucks for cold beverages.

I returned to find that Sabrina, Traci, Jeff, and Lindsay were now wandering around some other part of the city attempting (rather unsuccessfully, as they were lost) to complete an off-site task for one of the volunteer coordinators.  It sounded like they were supposed to meet someone near a Metro station but had not been given the clearest instructions; they ended up walking for some time before returning to the rally.  Still at the rally myself, I found Kathy and sat with her and one of the Ravens in the shade for a bit then moved closer to the stage, where I soon found Buck and Chris (thanks, cell phone, for helping me meet up with friends in crowds).  As the three of us stood together, a guy approached me from a nearby blanket and asked, “What team are you from?”  It turned out that he had been a TL at the Point last year (for one of the Raven teams) and was at the concert with last year’s Programs STL and Wolf 1 TL.  Yes, AmeriFriends do stay in touch outside the bubble.

I considered going over to introduce myself to the guy who was Wolf 1 TL, but I was soon distracted.  Kathy joined us and she and Buck went to sit down so she could rest her leg while Chris wandered off momentarily.  As I contemplated whether to sit with them or stay comfortably standing, John Legend came onstage to perform a song with the group that was out there.  That made that decision easy.  Since my teammates were all set with friends, I took the opportunity to use my impressive crowd-weaving skills and go watch John Legend up close.  I made it to about the eighth row of people standing packed together by halfway through the song.  Twenty minutes later, I (and the clump of volunteers I stood near) were in the fifth row.  I stayed there for the next hour and a half – this really was following their instructions by keeping a presence and schedule questions were less pertinent as the major concert part kicked in – and was so glad I did.  I got to listen to James Cameron speak about Avatar and the environment and hear from the awesome guy who founded Earth Day 40 years ago and from Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA), who sponsors lots of climate legislation.  I also got to see and hear (and feel, thanks to the intense sound vibrations in the ground) some phenomenal musical performances.

The Roots did indeed perform a bunch of times, first on their own then with most of the other artists there at one time or another.  They were fantastic.  My hands-down favorite, though, was John Legend.  He sang and played on the piano for a good twenty minutes in the course of the concert.  His main performance, towards the end, was with The Roots.  He and they are releasing a CD together in the fall and they performed one of the songs on it, a cover of ‘Wake Up (Everybody)’.  It’s one of my new favorites.  I’d never even heard it before today.

The concert and the entire rally were phenomenal.  Not only did I provide some direction to inquisitive attendees (though I was asked three times as Passion Pit performed who they were and didn’t find out until a bit later), but I got to learn lots and saw John Legend and The Roots perform from five rows back.  And they were very awesome.  Very awesome indeed.

I headed out as Sting was introduced to meet up with my team, fortunately finding the group easily since my phone battery had died an hour earlier.  It turned out they were all meeting up right then, which was perfect; I had totally missed the message because my phone struggled to send or receive data within about thirty feet of the stage (and then the battery died).  We returned home late, not leaving DC on the bus until 8.  Melissa met us with the van at the bus drop-off outside Johns Hopkins, we had a fun dash to the Vanimal in the pouring rain as thunder crashed overhead, and we headed home for a later dinner (for some of us, anyway) and a good night of sleep.  Fantastic day.