Spring Break in Review Part 1
My recap of Spring Break 2004 will be a multi-part update because of the sheer volume of stuff that happened. For anyone who doesn't know this year instead of spending my spring break at home relaxing or in some tropical locale, I decided that my time and energy would be better spent participating in the Alternate Break program put together by Discovering Vocation. I gave up my spring break so that i could go to Charleston, South Carolina to help build houses with Habitat for Humanity. Just knowing the people who were going, i knew from the beginning that it would be a fun trip, but i had no idea how much fun. This trip was one of the best times of my life. Not only was it a wonderful time, but it was also doing something good for other people.
Spring Break for us didn't start until 10pm Sat night because we were waiting for people to come back from various other activities. But we got on the road for Charleston at just about 10 with a plan to drive through the night while rotating drivers/navigators every 2 hours. That plan lasted until the third shift, when Skip and i started driving. Various stops had pushed back our switch time to 5 instead of 4, but when that time rolled around Skip didn't stop. I kept going because i was fine driving so i wasn't concerned, but when 6:30 came up it became apparent that certain people needed to use the facilities. With a quick phone call we decided on a place that looked good to make a bathroom stop. Later we determined that we had a retarded triptik because the exit that we thought had bunch of stuff really had nothing and after driving for a few miles we had to pull off the road and reconfer to determine a better stop further down the road. After a little bit of off-roading with the van on my part we stopped at a gas station that we thought was open but the attendent wouldn't let us in because it was 6:50 not 7 when the place opened. Finding open bathrooms in the early morning hours is not the easiest thing to do, but we were able to deal with it and were on our way through the mountains of West Virginia. Breathtaking views and 5% grade were the standard for the next few hours. Plus 2 tunnels trough the mountains. Several more stops occured before we arrived in Charleston at about 5pm Sun; 19 hours after leaving Alma and 14 hours after i had started driving at 3am. I still don't really know how i did it because i had gotten up at 11:30 on sat and slept only for about 30 mins in the van, but i was the marathon driver for the drive down and that was my goal. Plus i kept a quick pace which help make up for some long stops that we made. And i learned that speed limits are apparently optional in the south; the speed limits on most of the highways are 60-70 with the occasional 55 in certain areas. I was keeping a fairly consistant 75 through any limit, but was still getting passed by nearly everyone on the road including semis and police cars. At one point i was doing 80 in a 65 and an unmarked cop car blew past on the left doing probably about 95. Not that i mind because we were able to get away with a lot of speeding but i thought it was kinda weird.
Anyway after we found our way to the James Island Presbyterian Church, we were greeted and shown our housing for the week. The chuch leases a 2500 sq ft house across the street. Beautiful house and just about right for the amount of people we had. 18 people spread between 4 rooms. Plus a game room and we had access to the church's gym. The somewhat limited sleeping areas made for some odd sleeping arrangements. There were foldable mattress pads provided so we could put out sleeping bags out. The room i was in had 7 people sleeping in it and it was probably about 10 by 15 ft. Bill and Sarah were on one side, Skip was on the couch in the middle, Kim and I were on the opposite side, and Dan and Vicky were by the door. In the living room next to our room, Nate, Janet, Robin, and Scoo were all on the floor by the fireplace. Upstairs, Kristeen and Dominate Heather were sharing the master bedroom, with Cole, Jen, Kelly, Heather, and Emily sharing what was probably a 12 by 12 ft bedroom. The only problem with the arrangment was that sleeping next to Kim meant that i woke up when she did and she was the one waking everyone up. So i was the second one up every morning. Which really wasn't that bad except for the couple times that she wanted to shower early and got up around 6:15. Each morning we had to get to the site by 8:30 so we were getting up around 7 in order to get everyone moving out the door in time. It was a fight most of the time to get people moving out the door.
On Monday, we had an orientation with the Charleston Habitat for Humanity people at their office and then we took a tour of the site that we would be working at. If you've seen the pictures you know that we were tasked with starting the floors of houses that were 6 to 7 feet off the ground. After seeing the site, we off to our first activity; a tour of the Boone Hall Plantation. A definate educational expierence that changes of the things that i thought about slavery. Some of the ways that slavery was handled are very different from what we learned in school. After leaving the plantation we stopped at Arby's for dinner and then went to downtown Charleston for some shopping. However, no one realized that downtown evidently has winter hours because everything was closed and had closed between 4 and 6 pm. So with nothing to really do our different groups wandered around downtown. The group that i was with found a beautiful catholic church that i believe was over 200 years old. Inside there were many paintings on the walls and ceilings depicting the stations and gospel writers. But i am out of time now so stay tuned for part 2
Spring Break for us didn't start until 10pm Sat night because we were waiting for people to come back from various other activities. But we got on the road for Charleston at just about 10 with a plan to drive through the night while rotating drivers/navigators every 2 hours. That plan lasted until the third shift, when Skip and i started driving. Various stops had pushed back our switch time to 5 instead of 4, but when that time rolled around Skip didn't stop. I kept going because i was fine driving so i wasn't concerned, but when 6:30 came up it became apparent that certain people needed to use the facilities. With a quick phone call we decided on a place that looked good to make a bathroom stop. Later we determined that we had a retarded triptik because the exit that we thought had bunch of stuff really had nothing and after driving for a few miles we had to pull off the road and reconfer to determine a better stop further down the road. After a little bit of off-roading with the van on my part we stopped at a gas station that we thought was open but the attendent wouldn't let us in because it was 6:50 not 7 when the place opened. Finding open bathrooms in the early morning hours is not the easiest thing to do, but we were able to deal with it and were on our way through the mountains of West Virginia. Breathtaking views and 5% grade were the standard for the next few hours. Plus 2 tunnels trough the mountains. Several more stops occured before we arrived in Charleston at about 5pm Sun; 19 hours after leaving Alma and 14 hours after i had started driving at 3am. I still don't really know how i did it because i had gotten up at 11:30 on sat and slept only for about 30 mins in the van, but i was the marathon driver for the drive down and that was my goal. Plus i kept a quick pace which help make up for some long stops that we made. And i learned that speed limits are apparently optional in the south; the speed limits on most of the highways are 60-70 with the occasional 55 in certain areas. I was keeping a fairly consistant 75 through any limit, but was still getting passed by nearly everyone on the road including semis and police cars. At one point i was doing 80 in a 65 and an unmarked cop car blew past on the left doing probably about 95. Not that i mind because we were able to get away with a lot of speeding but i thought it was kinda weird.
Anyway after we found our way to the James Island Presbyterian Church, we were greeted and shown our housing for the week. The chuch leases a 2500 sq ft house across the street. Beautiful house and just about right for the amount of people we had. 18 people spread between 4 rooms. Plus a game room and we had access to the church's gym. The somewhat limited sleeping areas made for some odd sleeping arrangements. There were foldable mattress pads provided so we could put out sleeping bags out. The room i was in had 7 people sleeping in it and it was probably about 10 by 15 ft. Bill and Sarah were on one side, Skip was on the couch in the middle, Kim and I were on the opposite side, and Dan and Vicky were by the door. In the living room next to our room, Nate, Janet, Robin, and Scoo were all on the floor by the fireplace. Upstairs, Kristeen and Dominate Heather were sharing the master bedroom, with Cole, Jen, Kelly, Heather, and Emily sharing what was probably a 12 by 12 ft bedroom. The only problem with the arrangment was that sleeping next to Kim meant that i woke up when she did and she was the one waking everyone up. So i was the second one up every morning. Which really wasn't that bad except for the couple times that she wanted to shower early and got up around 6:15. Each morning we had to get to the site by 8:30 so we were getting up around 7 in order to get everyone moving out the door in time. It was a fight most of the time to get people moving out the door.
On Monday, we had an orientation with the Charleston Habitat for Humanity people at their office and then we took a tour of the site that we would be working at. If you've seen the pictures you know that we were tasked with starting the floors of houses that were 6 to 7 feet off the ground. After seeing the site, we off to our first activity; a tour of the Boone Hall Plantation. A definate educational expierence that changes of the things that i thought about slavery. Some of the ways that slavery was handled are very different from what we learned in school. After leaving the plantation we stopped at Arby's for dinner and then went to downtown Charleston for some shopping. However, no one realized that downtown evidently has winter hours because everything was closed and had closed between 4 and 6 pm. So with nothing to really do our different groups wandered around downtown. The group that i was with found a beautiful catholic church that i believe was over 200 years old. Inside there were many paintings on the walls and ceilings depicting the stations and gospel writers. But i am out of time now so stay tuned for part 2