#35 - Volunteer for Habitat for Humanity

I've been meaning to do this for a long, long time and the opportunity finally presented itself this last Saturday.  The timing was bad, coinciding with a brief heat wave and a ramp up in workload at the office,  but I went ahead anyway, not knowing when the next opportunity might present itself.

That's me way down on the end >>>

I should probably back up a bit.  For some time I've been of the opinion that I should probably be more engaged in some mode of volunteerism.  While I think adopting Leo qualifies me for at least a few brownie points, it doesn't probably meet the criteria for community service.

My last major volunteer activity was the Chaparral High School Grad Night, setting up the gymnasium and constructing sets for the all-night post-graduation party.  While it was only a little over a week of construction and manual labor per year, it was a LOT of labor, so I figured it met at least my minimum moral obligation. 

Grad Night was a good fit for me as a volunteer; lots of hands on activities, physical labor, not too terribly intellectually taxing, requiring minimal social skills, it provided an opportunity to employ my abundant (but somehow always inadequate) array of power tools and, in the process, bleed on lots of things.  Consistent with the notion that no good deed goes unpunished, one year the Grad Night project even landed me in the hospital.

Sadly, my last foray into the Grad Night space was the year of Jacob's crash, so he did not even attend the Grad Night of his graduation.  (That's coming up on three years ago already, BTW.)  That, as it turned out, was also the last year for the Chaparral Grad Night as we knew it.  It turned out to be too expensive and way too much work for the few volunteers who really ran things, so now they've opted for Disney trips or God only knows what.

So, on to new avenues of community involvement.  Framing houses for Habitat seemed like another good fit.  Let's face it, I'm not the type to counsel trouble youths: "You know Johnny, I've always found that there's no problem too big for alcohol."

My introductory framing session was this last Saturday morning.  Early morning.  6:30AM in Jurupa Valley.  Which meant an O'dark-thirty wake up call and hour drive, which is not a fun way to start the weekend.  The Habitat organizers check you in, collect your waiver of liability, serve up some donated Starbucks coffee, give a brief prayer (that volunteers not bash each other with flailing hammers), issue tools and then offer some brief training.  There are professional framers volunteering their time to coordinate things and keep the volunteers from doing any permanent damage.  It looked a lot like they were herding cats.

While probably necessary given the number of novices swinging hammers, the mandatory hardhats and safety glasses were a pain in the butt.  I'd be bending over driving nails, blinded by sweaty googles, swinging the hammer with right hand and with the left catching the hardhat that was forever flying off my head.

I cannot remember when I have ever driven so many nails, but I have a pair of nice blisters on my hammer hand proving that I participated (and that I am a pussy.)

All things considered, it was hot, sweaty and actually quite enjoyable.  It was pretty amazing actually; big empty concrete slab and piles of lumber at 7:30 and by 10:30 all the walls, exterior and interior, were nailed up and raised.  The site is not too far from my office, so I'll have to drive by once in a while to see how quickly the rest goes up.

Rather than bore you with more of my babbling on about the project, you can check out more info and pictures at http://www.habitatriverside.org/42112-walls-raised-at-crestmore/1368.

The only really weird part was doing all that construction without a single beer.  That is clearly not like me.