Today was our second build day. This meant an extra 30 mins to sleep in! Our host provided breakfast, but for the first time we were actually able to help cook. Everyone walked over to the build site a couple blocks away. It was actually a complete build site with the family already moved in since September, but the whole backyard was waaaaaaay overgrown. A bunch of people went to help at the local ReStore because there wasn't a lot to do at the house and the chance of poison ivy hindered some people from working.
There was a huge pile of gravel in the driveway, but at the time, we didnt think much of it. We began pulling weeds and whatever else was growing in the backyard using a bunch of wheelbarrows to move the waste out the front dumpster. Things were going well when I noticed a group of people beginning to dig along the side of the lot. Turns out the water run off from the lot pours out mud an leaves dirt in the neighbors driveway, they were threatening to sue, so we were putting in a way to capture this extra water. We had to dig a trench all along the lot, 3 feet wide by 2 foor deep, about 50 feet long. That was bad enough with all the clay and roots in the ground to get it all dug out. After lunch we began moving gravel into the trench and running pipe within the gravel to catch the water. We used wheelbarrows to move the gravel from the front to the back. Out front there was a team of people with shovels loading each wheelbarrow. We all continuously rotated around doing the various jobs, because they were pretty exhausting. By the time we were done, we moved 30 tons of gravel.Showers were much appreciated tonight.
Before dinner we had our first town hall. We do these every Saturday, and basically we go around and each say our high and low of the week and then discuss whatever issues we're having as a group. We talked a lot about chalking and general riding in groups things. We ran out of time to finish before dinner. Dinner was great as usual. Pasta, garlic bread, the works. The sauce had a ton of veggies and other flavors in it. I asked the cook what all was in it, and he used some italian word which roughly translates to "Italian whore," basically meaning they put everything in it. Desert was strawberries and nutella as well as some ice cream.
One of the program directors, Natalie has been hanging out with us for the past few days, so she was telling stories about bike and build. Since we had so many leftover bananas, a group went to walmart and got ingredients for banana bread before dinner. We began making it, jamming to some 90's hits of course. We ended up quadrupling the recipe. When we got to the end, we added chocolate chips and some nuts;then we realized we had a bunch of food leftover that was going to go bad/uneaten. Cookies, granola, muffins, brownies, basically anything went into the mix. If that wasnt enough, the bottom of the pan was lined with bananas, and then another layer in the middle....and then more on top. I don't like bananas so I didnt try any of it, but everyone really liked it; probably because all of the sugar in it.
At the build today, I was going to use my GoPro to do a timelapse of the backyard. I had it all set up and it was running perfectly. When I got back tonight to look at the pictures and turn it into a video, I learned I didn't format the SD card ahead of time. This meant we were unable to see any of the pics and had to clear all of them in order to format it. Currently we are trying to recover them on Daniels computer, but there are somewhere in the neighborhood of 2-4000 pictures, so it's going to take all night to recover.
Tomorrow is a 70 mile ride. I was told it has been rerouted from what it was in previous years in order to avoid a couple big climbs on the way out of town. I'm really hoping to get caught in a rainstorm soon, but it's not supposed to rain until after dinner tomorrow.
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