The Sweet Taste of Victory

Don't you just love checking things off lists? Especially big things on lifetime lists, and especially when you realize that you actually rather enjoy them and want to add them right back on the list to do again? Yeah, me too. What I’m trying to say, is that Sunday’s triathlon was AMAZING! Over the last month and a half I have swam 4,375 yards, biked 73 miles, and ran 18 miles. That sounds like a rather exorbitant amount of “exercise” to me, but I have always wanted to do a triathlon, and I figured it was the sort of thing you sort of need to prepare for. The race was in Monticello, about an hour and half from Vinton, so me, Bob and Erin drove down the night before and stayed with some of the wonderful people we had met on our project in Hopkinton. The mornings before big events are always rather nerve racking, but this seemed particularly so. We dropped our bikes at the first transition area the night before, but we still had to leave around 6:15 to get all our transition things set up and catch a bus to the starting point. I laid out my towel, filled my water bottles, rolled up my socks to make them easier to slip onto wet feet, and had my helmet ready to go. Over the course of my training I had set a few goals for myself. Namely: Finish- that one was immutable. One way or another I was crossing that finish line. Once I was confident that this could happen, I decided I needed some sort of easy, attainable time goal and 2 hours seemed like plenty. Over the last couple weeks, however, when I started adding up my training times, not accounting for transitions and fatigue, it looked like it would be cutting it pretty close. At that point I decided I needed an easier secondary goal so I decided I just wanted to be in the top half of the finishers. I must be more accustomed to ranking myself academically as opposed to athletically, because when I got there and looked around at the physiques my fellow racers reality slapped me in the face that suddenly seemed absurdly ambitious. That led to my final goal: pass four people. I am happy to say that I achieved three of the four goals with flying colors. I finished, I finished in 1:54:07, and I passed 18 people in the process. I placed 141 out of 177, putting me squarely in the bottom fourth, but I have a theory on that—since this was the first ever Camp Courageous Triathlon, it seems plausible that the people who would have heard about it and/or been interested were mostly people who were already into tri’s . But that is just a theory. (Oh, and a note on the passing goal, I’m pretty certain I passed a few people in the swim portion, but I was much too busy attempting to breath to mess with counting, and I feel a little bad about counting the 12 year old I passed on the bike, but I defiantly passed him, and there were two guys that I only passed due my excellent drink while you run skills and they promptly repassed me as soon as they returned to their pace, but hey, I did technically pass them.) So here’s how the whole thing felt. The swim was scary. They let you seed yourself (so I headed straight for the back of the line) and they waited 5 seconds between each individual. That was really nice and cut down a lot on the dreaded “kicked in the face” scenario. Between the nerves and the adrenaline and the asthma and the not being able to see two inches into the water, I pretty much couldn’t breathe. I have been really proud of myself for the progress I’ve made in my side breathing, but the open water really threw me and I could only make it a few breathes before needing to stay up longer to get my bearings straight. I ended up side stroking for about half of the 500 yards (yeah, I know, real cool) but my 11:43 swim time is actually about a minute and a half faster than I think my practice swims were. I spent over three minutes in the first transition. I figured trying to get my breathing under control and my feet actually dry was worth an extra minute or so. About a quarter mile in, I tried to down shift and suddenly I couldn’t pedal. That was more than a bit disconcerting, but after clumsily swerving around for a few yards and nearly taking out a volunteer, the chain popped back into place and didn’t give me any more trouble for the rest of the race (16 miles in all). My bike time was 1:06:06, about 8 minutes faster than my last practice time, and it felt great. It was fairly flat (hmm, a flat road in Iowa, weird) and curved thru lovely fields and tiny towns. It was a beautiful day and you could see for miles and there was no place else I’d rather be. But then came the run. The bike to run transition has a pretty bad reputation as your leg muscles try to adjust to their new task. Sure enough, my feet felt like large, wobbly chunks of lead and my knees and hips like rusty hinges for the first half mile or so. Oh, but let me back up for a second. When I hopped of the bike in second transition, after a few seriously wobbly steps and some not so discrete laughing from the volunteers, my legs just couldn’t stop moving so I just tossed my bike on a rack and kept running thru the transition area. That led to a T time of 36 seconds which was, drumroll please….the overall third fastest transition time!!!! Yep, pretty much a pro. Ok, back to running. The course was an out an back run down the same road you had just biked in on. It was completely straight, with no shade, and you just ran to a sign then turned around. I’ve always been a fan of loop routes myself, but I don’t think I’d actually realized the psychological effects of the anticlimactic out and back. Almost as bad as a treadmill. Regardless, I ran the 5k in 32:29, only slightly slower than my normal running pace, and I was able to run the whole way. I assumed I would be absolutely dead by the end. I assumed I would fighting back pain and just willing myself to finish. Not so. I was still smiling and sure, I was totally exhausted, but in a healthy way not the “wow, everything in my body thinks I shouldn’t have just done that” way. That’s the response I’m used to, so this was a nice and welcome surprise. Bob and Erin also did great and we are all pretty proud of ourselves for actually going thru with it. I saved one of the best parts for last. In case you felt bad about not being there to cheer for us, don’t worry, that part was covered. Somehow we pulled some strings to get permission to take the van that far so at 6 in the morning, four of our teammates and one teammate’s roommate piled in the van with some highly encouraging posters and showed up to cheer us on. It was so great to have them standing at the finish line cheering us on and witnessing such an awesome personal achievement. It really meant a lot. It also meant that we all got to go back to Hopkinton for a lovely lunch with some of the people we had worked with. We ate pizza in the gym that had formerly been our home and caught up on all the small town happenings including the recent damn break and subsequent flood. It was so good to see them. We drove home and I spent the rest of the day working on a mural. Each team gets a chunk of wall for them to represent themselves and we chose to immortalize our beloved dashboard buddies.It's not quite done yet, but for just a couple days of work it's coming along quite nicely. It was actually rather fun to be painting again. It’s been so long, and after working on it pretty much all afternoon yesterday and all day today I’m having some serious flashbacks to my college days. I kind of miss it. At the beginning of the year we did a physical training baseline test involving push-ups, sit-ups, and a mile run. Today we repeated it for comparison and, despite yesterday’s exertion, I still dropped almost half a minute from my run time. It was a nice close to great and challenging few days. Tomorrow we have our last one day service project (I get to do trail work), the next day is graduation rehearsal and awards banquet, and by noon on Thursday it will all be over. Surreal. Alright, well, thanks for making it to the end of a really long post with lots of numbers that you probably didn’t care about.

Countdown Mode

In two weeks this adventure will be over. In two weeks I will be packing up my little world and saying goodbye to the motley crew who have been my co-workers, roommates, and social network for the better part of a year. Most of them, I will never see again. Most of the places I have called home, I will never return to. It is a rather odd feeling. Like I’ve been on a 10 month vacation and its time to take the been-there-done-that t-shirt and head home. Weird. I’m used to life just gradually flowing from one thing to the next, but this chunk just feels so separate, in it own little compartment. Not that the things I have learned this year won’t be carried with me, they will, but more like how you take things back from a weekend retreat, not from a year of your life.
Anywho, since this probably isn’t making any sense anyway, perhaps I should just move on to what I’ve been up to for over a month. Yeah, sorry about that. I got…busy?
We only have three work days left on what has turned out to be one of our very best projects. The staff is great, the kids are adorable, and the horses are, well, everything horses should be- big and majestic and oh so wonderfully smelling. I love them. I realize now that perhaps I never did completely get over that particular obsession. Who knew?
Here’s a run down of a general day for you: we leave for work anywhere between the hours of 6:30 and 8 and drive for just under an hour. Most days a few of us grab the fly spray and a halter and head out to the pastures to spray down the horses (there are about 20 of them and this may actually be my favorite part of the day- so peaceful, so bucolic). We grab the five or so horses for the morning classes, give them a treat, groom them, and tack them up ready to go. Horseback riding, simple concept right? Nope, not in this case. I admit, when I first learned that for each rider there needed to be four additional volunteers (an instructor, a horse leader, and two side-walkers to help hold the student in place) I was a bit of a skeptic. I mean, I love riding as much as anybody, but if it is that much of an ordeal…..? Clearly I had no clue as to the power of therapeutic riding. The horse essentially provides a moving surface that forces the rider to engage muscles to stay balanced, so before long kids that barely had the strength to keep their heads up start building muscle and gaining motor skills. It helps with balance, it helps with core strength, it helps with attention span, and it’s even been know to help students make that jump from nonverbal to verbal. Pretty powerful stuff. Even in the few weeks we have been here, we have seen visible progress in several students and we have had so much fun in the process. There are usually about 3 or so hour-long classes a day, and then often a large group visit (often including the adorable minis), and then for the rest of the time we get to be farm hands- cleaning the barn, mowing, cleaning water troughs. We are turning into quite the fence builders as well. The farrier came one of our first weeks there, and thanks to my inquisitive nature, I actually got to help trim a hoof. Turns out its softer than I thought…or the clippers were sharper.
Outside of work things have been going pretty well too. I didn’t even tell you about Trek Fest did I? Man, I’m an awful blogger. Who lets such awesome material like rural Iowan towns who self declare the title of "future birthplace of James T Kirk" go to waste? Me apparently. I’m shocked that I also haven’t even written to brag, complain, or panic about triathlon training. Yep, its in ten days and no I have come no where close to being able to complete all three events in a twenty four hour period. Up until this week I was feeling plum pleased that I’d been consistently completing the 500 yard swim, 16 mile bike, and 3.1 mile run all in the same week. I mean, for someone who doesn’t believe in exercise, that’s really pretty impressive. And when I think about how a couple months ago I could only swim about 5 lengths of the pool before I needed a substantial break, and I can now swim 20 or 30, that’s some definite progress. But now that race day has crept into the 10 day forecast, the reality is setting in and I’m more than a little nervous. Surely it can’t be that much worse than the half marathon I didn’t really train for…six years ago. Wow, I can’t possibly be as old as I apparently am.
Today was my first day back to work after a three day vacation. I realized I hadn’t used any of my personal days and it seemed such a shame to let them go to waste. Sunday night I headed off for a little one night solo camping trip. It was great. Rained most of the night and off and on throughout the day, but I still got in a several mile hike, much reading in the hammock, and several campfires with great meals cooked on them. And probably the best nap I’ve had in years. All in all it was a great little get away. The second day was devoted to relaxing on campus, and the third, reluctantly, was given to responsible things like working on my resume and trying to get things in order. Not quite as fun as the first two, but at least it was productive. Seeing as how two weeks from right now I should be heading up the drive at my parent’s house in Oklahoma, it was probably a wise decision. Wow, I think we are finally up to date.

This Wonderful World

Today held a lot of beauty. Sure there were boring meetings to go to, end of transition chores to do, documents to sign, testy people to deal with, but between all of that…beauty. Some days just have an air of whimsical magic about them, but there rarly seems to be anyone around that sees it too and cares to share in that laid back sense of wonder, so I think I will attempt to describe some of it to you. It’s hard to say what makes some days truly different, just a heightened sense of appreciation perhaps, but today I felt it. It all started while I sat under a tree and read. I looked up into the pristinely blue sky through a filter of remarkably verdant leaves and couldn’t help but marvel at the colors. I played with fat black ants as they conquered one leg and then the other. I stared into the countless gills of the fresh crop of mushrooms and wondered what secrets they held. This was the first consistently sunny day we’ve had this week and I got to watch as my lovely lavender physically reacted to the sun’s warm rays and perked up from its mopey mood. This evening I went for a run and felt my feet fly over the earth to beat of some well crafted music. I breathed in the life-filled air, and tried to pick out the individual flowers contributing to its heavy sweetness. I ended the day in the usual way with a gratifying stop at the swing set. I watched my feet pop up into the twilit sky and then followed them back to sand until they were out of sight and then soared above the bar like no human should be allowed to do…over and over the grains of sand would get bigger and bigger then go until I was dizzy from the constantly shifting perspective. I gazed out over the freshly mown lawn and watched the fireflies illuminate the horizon with their magical, mysterious dance. It was dark by the time I strolled back home, wrapped in the peace of a day well spent. I can assure you, it was not the hours of work I put in that gave it meaning. Oh no, that came from those moments between responsibilities when I was allowed to just be present in the time and space I was in Today I was privy to more beauty than any mortal should be graced by, yet I’m haunted by the fact that though it is always around, so rarely do we have the time and desire to truly see. My prescription for making your day just a little bit better: just take a moment to look around, choose an object that catches your attention, no matter how unique or mundane, and just stop for a few seconds to relish its individual, inherent beauty. Yes, you may seem a little odd if you choose do this mid-sentence or in the middle of the street so choose wisely, but I don't think you'll be disappointed.

Updates Galore

Oh, where to begin... Last time I posted we were just about to leave for Kentucky. Wow, that was an adventure- all be it a rather calamity filled one. We knew disaster relief projects required an extra level of flexibility, but within a few hours of arriving, we had already learned that they only had housing lined up for us for the first 8 days, they didn’t have anyone lined up to be on site supervising (and none of us had ever gutted a house before), and there seemed to be quite the confusion about work orders for the houses (they are signed by the home owner and indicate whether the power and gas are shut off and things like that and we are required to have them before entering a house…and no one knew anything about them). The first couple of days were quite chaotic. We did a lot of hauling piles of debris to the roadside, but after they found us a supervisor who knew what he was doing things started running a bit more smoothly. But here’s the thing, we didn’t have enough work. The flood had happened almost a month prior to our arrival, but there was clearly still a lot to be done. Most of the lack of work stemmed from lack of organization and poor planning on the sponsors part, but many homeowners seemed convinced they were handling it okay by themselves and others had already reached that in between phase where they were just waiting to rebuild. The other main issue was the required uniform. When touching moldy piles of putrid, waterlogged debris, AmeriCorps policy dictates that pretty much every inch of skin needs to be covered. In general, I would agree that this is a good idea. However, when doing manual labor in 90 degree weather with 90 percent humidity, wearing thick black coveralls, gloves, boots, and a respirator tends to cause a whole other set of safety concerns to arise. It got a little miserable.About 5 days into it, we got the word that due to the sketchy planning by the sponsor and the general lack of work, AmeriCorps was pulling us. We finished out the week then made the two day trek back to Iowa. It as trying, people were grouchy, and it wasn’t anything like we had expected but overall I’m so glad we got to go. The work that we did do was clearly important and appreciated, I met a lot of wonderful people and fantastic dogs, I learned exactly how strong my gag reflex is, and I got to see a beautiful part of the country that I had never seen before. All things considered, it was a pretty good experience.
We got back to campus and had a couple days off before starting our third project of the round (to give you some perspective, two projects in one round is abnormal, three is unheard of). After spending one of those days building a retaining wall at a YMCA camp and a few hours stuffing envelopes at a library I finally reached my goal of 100 Independent Service Project hours. 80 are required to graduate, 100 gets you the Presidential Service Award. So glad to have those out of the way; my weekends should be much more fun henceforth.
These last two weeks my team has been working in Cedar Rapids with an organization called Weed and Seed and it has been wonderful. They have a lot volunteers/staff from one of NCCC’s sister programs called Americorps VISTA (same general idea but it is individual and nonresidential and focuses on eradicating poverty) so it was great to get to hang out with people our age and hear what their experiences had been like. I spent the whole time hanging drywall and turns out I love it! I got fairly decent at it too…finally something that obsessive precision actually matters at. The last day we got to start taping and mudding which was awesome and I really wish we could have stayed and finished the process, but I guess it is time to move on to other things.
Those other things, as it turns out, are pretty much the best case scenario for our final project. The last month and a half of my AmeriCorps adventure will be spent with an organization called Miracles in Motion which happens to be an equestrian center for people with disabilities. Yep, this formerly horse-crazed girl will be spending every day caring for horses and helping people experience the joy and freedom of riding. Almost too good to be true. To make it even better, the facility is in Swisher which is about an hour away from Vinton so we will be staying on campus. The commute will be a pain but that means my own room, internet, a kitchen, and access to helpful things like résumé assistance.
Living on campus also means access to pools, bikes, and places to run. This is important because the next update is that on August 1st I will be competing in my first ever triathlon! This has been a lifelong goal and while spending a weekend helping out at a place called Camp Courageous we found out they were hosting a tri. It’s the weekend before graduation, it’s in support of an awesome camp for people with disabilities, and its only a couple hours away from Vinton. Two other teammates are doing it as well and it will be great to have that one extra achievement to look forward to right at the end of our long and trying year of service.
And that brings us to the final and indisputably most exciting of the updates. I finally have a post-AmeriCorps plan and it is unbelievably awesome. A few years ago I heard about a place called Dancing Rabbit ecovillage. It is an intentional community devoted to sustainability and basically just living lightly on the earth. I admit, at first I thought it sounded intriguing, but mostly just weird, but the more I read and the more I thought about it the more incredible it sounded and I just kind of knew in the back of my mind that one day I would have to go visit. I knew they had a work exchange program for when they had new buildings to construct (all with natural building methods) where you go work and they provide room (usually a tent site) and board (a place in a one of the food-coops…pretty much everything consumed is grown there) so several months ago the thought crossed my mind that perhaps that would be an option for after AmeriCorps. A couple weeks later, their weekly newsletter mentioned something about a culinary internship at the bed and breakfast there in the community that would include all sorts of food preservation and making things from scratch. I read the description and it was a dream come true. My eventual goal is to own a bed and breakfast, I have seriously considered going to culinary school, and I love gardening and making things from scratch. I applied and low and behold, I got the job! So, a week or two after I get home I will once again be packing up, and this time heading for northeast Missouri. I’ll be there for a couple of months, living in a tent, and working in the Milkweed Mercantile. I’ll be helping in the b&b, organic café, and green general store and though its not a job in the sense that money is exchanged, the things I gain so far as knowledge and experiences should be absolutely priceless. I don’t even have words to describe how excited I am. I'm not entirely sure what to expect, but I also know that it would be utterly foolish to let an opportunity like this slip by. I'm still not sure where life will take me, but based on all these fantastic components of late, it is shaping into something quite remarkable.

Change of Plan

My team and I were supposed to be here in Hopkinton for the the rest of the week and then move back to Vinton and commute to work in Cedar Rapids for the next three weeks. However, last night we found that we were being reassigned to go help with disaster relief. Disaster relief projects are kind of the dream job for NCCCers- not that we hope disasters happen, just that if they do, we hope that we will be the team that gets sent. So tomorrow, we will hurriedly cram a weeks worth of work into one day and tie up as many loose ends as possible. Tuesday morning we will head back to Vinton and by early Wednesday morning we will be on our way to Kentucky. We assume it will be mucking and gutting, but at this point all we know is that we are going to Mercer County in the wake of terrible flooding and will be there for at least two weeks and hopefully less than a month. Don't know a town, don't know where we're living, don't know the duration, don't know the state of things. Kind of exciting, huh? I was really looking forward to those three weeks of living on campus in my very own room, but I'm sure this work will be both challenging and hugely rewarding. I've never been to that part of the country and I'm excited to get to experience it...just wish it was under different circumstances. But yay, I'm off to save the world!

Autonomy, and the lack thereof

She was right. She told me I wouldn’t be able to move my arms the next day, but I’ve weed eated so many times before I just didn’t believe her. Sure enough, around six in the morning as I resituated on my little camping mat, something was clearly not right. My arms simply did not want to move and when they finally did it was with the all the reluctance and complaint of a rusty gate or an overloaded pack mule. I guess my former weed eating experiences weren’t for four hours straight and hadn’t come at the end of three consecutive days of painting. Oddly enough though, I don’t regret a minute of it.
I know weed eating is probably not the kind of thing most people would be excited about, but I think I can explain. I guess the best place start is the very beginning, so here goes.
There are many milestones in life that mark your progress as an individual. I’m sure they are different for everyone, but for me, sandwiched between staying home alone for the first time in second grade and learning to drive at sixteen, came yard work. It was sometime around middle school and I’m not sure what made that responsibility so much more meaningful than other household duties. Maybe it was because I was used to it being my dad's job, or maybe it was the simple fact that I was now deemed old enough to be trusted with large, powerful machinery. I didn’t necessarily like the work, but it made me feel grown up.
Moving ahead about a decade, after college I had a full two years of being “a real adult.” I lived in two different rent houses during that time and though I always had roommates, I tended to be the main one in charge of yard upkeep. Now, I do love being outside, and I don’t really mind most yard work, and I’ve had a lot of experience so it usually made sense for me to do the mowing and whatnot. But if I’m honest, the root of my volunteering for those jobs had more to do with…pride? That’s probably not the right word, but every time I mowed I felt like I was being responsible. When I would drive down the street and see that I was capable of keeping a house looking as presentable as the rest of the families and retired folk I felt mature, accomplished, like I was doing okay in this big, daunting world of adulthood.
It took me a while yesterday to figure out why I still didn’t mind the task when the weeds being whacked weren’t actually on my turf, but I think it all boils down to autonomy. I currently live, work, and travel with ten other people. I haven’t had a room to myself in seven months, let alone a whole house or a yard. I don’t have a car. On the rare occasion that we eat out, I don’t get to decide where we go. I don’t have bills to pay or utility companies to deal with. I don’t get to choose what grocery store we shop at. I don’t even get to pick the toilet paper. All these little things, most of which I have historically categorized as chores not privileges, are all the things that went together to comprise my independent, autonomous life. They are small things that seem so unimportant but add up to determine so much about who you are, what your life looks like, and how well you are stewarding what you’ve been given. Just to clarify, I am so glad I joined AmeriCorps and most of the time I’m grateful for having been temporarily released from all those ceaseless, mundane decisions. But every now and then, I am confronted with one of those former symbols of independence and I remember what it was like when I had more responsibilities than simply waking up on time. I remember them, and I remember that I was good at them. My ducks were more or less in a row and there was plenty of space between them to grow and add new interests. I was making my way as a real live grown up.
I don’t know if any of this scenario made sense to anyone, but if you’ve ever come across something you used to be responsible for but no longer are and realized you were still capable of the task, perhaps you can sort of relate. In three more months I will be plopped back into the real world and I’m sure it will once again seem overwhelming and a bit scary. But right now, though it leaves me tired and smelly and sore, I am happy to weed eat for as long as is needed because in that small act, I find the reassurance that I have what it takes to face this world alone and not get lost in the unavoidable tangle of weeds and responsibilities.

Hoptown

(one of the nine buildings that house the museum)

For as long as I can remember, I have hated the idea of having to lock your doors. I mean, leaving town? Sure, might as well lock them. Spending the night in a house by myself? Locking the front door isn’t going to kill me. For everything else though- going for a walk, napping on the couch, hanging out in the back yard- it just seems awfully sad to feel you have to lock them. I’m pretty sure I was still in middle school when I decided that a world where doors needed to constantly be locked was not a world in which I was willing to live. If acting as though I didn’t live in such a world had negative repercussions, I would deal with them as they came and the rest of the time just be abnormally trusting and hope for the best. Well my friends, I am happy to inform you that I seem to have found a whole community of like minded people and come to find out, this seems to be the norm for small towns in general. Who knew? In fact, there are all sorts of delightful cultural quirks I didn’t know to expect. Some are a bit on awkward side, some are downright charming. Here are a few we’ve encountered so far:
-They don’t use addresses. It’s more like “oh yeah, the second house past Ann’s.” or “go to Roy’s barn and turn right”
-People are, hmm, concerned? Example: one of our girls was taking a nap in the grass and someone stopped to make sure she was okay. (we found out later that the lady was convinced she was drunk, which she wasn’t. Apparently snoozing in the grass just isn't done around here.)
-Four of us went to church Sunday and the librarian we met the day before decided to draw even more attention to our very obvious presence and made us introduce ourselves in the middle of church.
- there is no cell phone service (I think three people get some reception, but I am most definitely not one of them.)
- We walk three blocks to the city pool for showers. You have to pull a rope to make the water come out and it comes out in more of a giant misty cloud than a shower of water. On the bright side, it does seem to cut down on shower time (and frequency in many cases) and thanks to the steady Iowa wind my hair is usually half dry by the time I get home.
- to keep us from having to drive seven miles to a Laundromat in the next town over, a couple people have offered to let us use their houses. “Yeah, the backdoor is always open, just come on in whenever you need to.” I think we’ll stick with the Laundromat.
-So far we’ve been given some chocolate covered rice crispy bars, 3 loafs of lemon bread and some orange bread, a May basket, several batches of cookies, some deviled eggs, a cooler of lemonade, some cheese, and tickets for the whole team for a breakfast at the community center put on by St. Luke’s church. We have been here for four days.

It’s really been quite an interesting experience. I think this may be a bit like being a celebrity- everyone knows something about you, you know nothing about them, you can’t go anywhere unnoticed, and everyone wants to give you things. Weird, but actually quite nice.
I think the project will be a lot of fun. So far our time here has been spent scraping paint, cleaning exhibits, and painting a one room school house, a train depot, and a large room that over the last hundred years has been lime green, peach, purple, pink, yellow and is now a nice bluish grey. I hope we can get all the cleaning and painting out of the way quickly so we can move on to the more exciting things like working on the exhibits.
In other news, I got a bike! There’s a guy in town who gets old bikes, fixes them up, and sells them really cheap out of his garage. When you get tired of it or out grow it, you can bring it back and he’ll give 5 bucks back towards a trade in. Its old and could use a little tuning, but pretty great for a $20 bike. I’m really hoping I can get it back to Vinton. We’ll see.
The other big event was the Free Willy movie night. I think I mentioned we are living in a gym. It actually hasn't been too bad. We sleep on camping mats or cots and you can hear everything, but it's actually kind of nice having everyone in there together. The guys sleep up on the stage and the girls live behind the tarp/curtain and the rest of the space is just open area. (view from the main door)
(view from the stage. The doors on the right are the two bathrooms and the kitchen is there on the left.)

Anyhoo, our gym came complete with a giant popcorn machine, a very old VHS projector, and our “wall” is a large tarp- all the makings for a wonderful night at the movies. I'm sure Free Willy was only the first of many such happenings.