Bins and watermelons

As I sit writing this blog entry, I am acutely aware of the whirlwind that is Bike & Build. I am in a room on the main floor of the church at which we're staying, surrounded by an explosion of clothing (wet & dry, clean-ish & very dirty), gear, tarps, incredible amounts of food (a crate of watermelons, a box of pita chips, tubs of frosting, cookies galore -- thanks mom & dad, and other odd assortments of goodies), coolers, sleeping accoutrements, shoes & other what-have-yous. Everyone has left for the night for we have a day off tomorrow, meaning no curfew. I chose to stay in, however, preferring the solitude of the space (yes, I am an only child), and knowing that I have a ton of B&B work to do tomorrow, the least of which involves re-packing my bin.

And here we get to my favorite item of the summer. Yes my bike is awesome, along with all of the assorted bike gear I have collected, but my current focus is my bin. 68L, green & heavy duty; it's what I am living out of for the rest of the summer, and I love it. Sure, it may be excessively heavy and compact, and it may also explode everytime I pull the straps off of it, but it is still very much worth the trouble. In 2007, I decided to move to northern California taking with me only items that would fit in my two-door Honda. Getting furniture and the like was a pain in the rear, but it was incredibly refreshing, literally and spiritually, to get rid of all of the crap in my life. Bike & Build, and the aforementioned bin, allow me to experience this on a small scale.

In other news, we are in Chapel Hill, and we had our first build day today. We completed and put up all of the outside walls and nearly all of the inside walls. It was incredible. I also learned how to take down scaffolding, at least the kind on one of their job sites. Finally, I got a short tour of the neighborhood in which the house we worked on is being built. It was actually in Hillsborough/Fairview, and by the end of this year, Habitat for Humanity of Orange County will have completed something like 30 houses in this one neighborhood. It was very evident how Habitat had turned the neighborhood around, and that was inspiring.

Tomorrow, I'm going to stop in at a coffee shop and work on some B&B stuff, including (hopefully) uploading some pictures. In the meantime, thanks to everyone for the support and for keeping up with my blog!