Part 3: Lets do s'more.

Apologies on the long time, no write.  My time has been occupied by...

1) Hannah came to visit
2) I got sick
3) Soccer season has started back up.  We have games twice a week and practice twice a week.  no rest for the weary.  Gotta keep those middle school boys in check.

But I wont go into any of that...since we were mid-story about the epic journey to NYC/NY.

So, the 2nd morning, Saturday, Hannah and I got up and blearily hustled down to the rail.  As I recall it was still....hmmm...whats the word...COLD!  While it was indeed Saturday, NCCC doesn't really give days off to  Corps Members during disaster times.  So, I had come planning to work.  We rode the rail back to Hannah's housing so she could meet up with her team.  While they all were getting ready, I went ahead and laid on the stage of the auditorium and ate jelly beans.  Anyone ever had starburst beans?  they are so good.  Eventually, Sarge told me where they would be working, and so, I set off on foot in that direction.

the view from the stage

"But why were you walking?  Doesn't NCCC have vans?"  yes...yes they do.  But as with any organization worried about liability, they have a policy against allowing non-members ride in the government vans.  It makes sense to me, especially considering that with it being a federal program, there is likely large amount of money to be had if I were to be injured in a van accident and were to sue.  Luckily for me and my whole "visiting Hannah" experience, I am quite the capable walker.  So, I walked to the address where we were all supposed to meet up.  It began to become torrential, snow which gave me the opportunity to text Vivianna a crazy video of me yelling about snow, but really you couldn't tell how much was coming down.  Anticlimatic.

In life, sometimes you walk, while you're lost, until you see a sign...with your girlfriends  name on it.   And you take a photo of it.  And then you keep walking. 

That day, Sun 1 was working with a group called Occupy Sandy about 2 miles from their housing.  I literally showed up at the meeting place/ church as Sun 1 dismounted from their van.  We all went in, met this cool hippie man turned disaster assistant, and started talking shop about the work that was being done.  There was some discussion about who we were, where we'd been so far, and what would happen that day.  Eventually, the teams were split up and a new address was given.  Off we went again.  Me on foot.  Them in a van.  This time, thanks to one way streets, probably a bit of confusion, and my quick gate, I beat them to the house we were to work on.  We also seemed to have beaten the person who lived there, as they were not home.  We knocked and waited.  The door was locked.  We waited some more.  I began to remember mornings like this, where the work was sort of non-existent.  We waited some more.  I began cursing.  some other people got angry too.  We started playing with debris in the streets.  We made some phone calls back to HQ.  No  help there.  Finally, I talked with some neighbors (much to the embarrassment of Hannah and Vivi, who seemed very scared to talk to strangers).  The guy was staying in a hotel a long way from there and they hadn't seen him in awhile.  Finally, we threw in the towel and all walked back to the church.  Assignment number #2?

Next we were sent to a townhouse that supposedly had mold problems.  Since the van was being used by the other half of the team, everyone was walking now.  This worked better for me.  Not sure if everyone else liked it though.  We got there and were instructed to just go right in.  Everyone cautiously suited up outside while I walked in and looked around.  They all yelled at me and told me I was going to get "CONTAMINATED."  So, I stopped licking the walls...as much.  Kidding.  Apparently though, there was an NCCC training that really instilled a healthy fear of mold into Sun 1.  Understandable.  During my Corps year, a TL died from some kind of unknown toxic exposure.  The mold was 1000 times worse in Katrina houses though.  This house...it was mostly metal frames and I was having trouble finding any mold anywhere.  We sprayed and went through the motions here and there, and then finally threw our hands up and went back to the church again for another assignment.

I don't remember too much more about that day.  There was a bunch more walking.  I saw a beach.  We got a few more assignments.  Then it seemed like we had worked ourselves out of stuff to do.  I proceeded to walk back towards spike housing.  Hannah had to go back with her team for a meeting with the sponsor.  Turned out nothing was really needed to be said.  So, they then proceeded back to housing.  I stopped and got some pie in order to supplement dinner, but also so that I could eat with them without really taking any food out of their mouths.  I enjoyed the eating with Sun 1 experience.  It made me really miss Blue 6 too though.

Before dinner, Hannah, Meaghan and I went and explored the Moravian Cemetery.  The place was gigantic.  Interesting factoid...you can see it from space (i cant actually verify this, but it was dang big).  Strange factoid...the security wire on top of the fence was faced to keep things IN the cemetary.  Creepy.  After dinner, we played Settlers of Catan.  If you know, then you know.  If you don't...well, you're not missing too much.  Its a fun board game though.  I miss the simple AmeriLife a bit.  Work, eat, sleep, and spend the occasional laid back time playing board games or reading.  Good times.

Eventually, I headed back to my own spike housing in preparation for another day of work.  3 nights without robberies.  I was beginning to feel at home on my side of SI.

Part 2: Lets go get some stuff done!

After arriving and successfully making it to my safehouse on Thursday night (see previous post), I woke up Friday morning to sun coming in my window.  Stepping outside though, I realized it was "Holy Cow" cold.  I walked to the corner market and got some food for breakfast and lunch.  I thought it was strange when I spent exactly $15.  I asked the guy if there was no tax around here.  He replied by shaking his head strangely and scoffing at me.  Ahh...northern hospitality.  At some point Hannah called me and gave me the address they would be working at.  Thanks to advances in modern technology, I was able to just put the address in my phone and it showed me a map of how to get there.  After a 20 minute train ride and about a 10 minute walk, I came upon a house in the coastal plain of Staten Island.  Walking up to the gate, I saw a masked figure covered in Tyvek bent over looking in a bucket.  After a moment, I "pssssstt"ed at them, and then came to realize it was Hannah.

The specific house we worked on that day had 2 levels.  The upper level wasn't so bad off, so there was some minor spraying and scrubbing to knock off the outer layers of mold.  Sun 1 had been taught to mix Cascade with Borax to create some kind of home-brew mold treatment.  After spraying, the process involved a little bit of scrubbing..and voila, mold treated.  In theory you could come back in and paint or drywall over it and things would work out.  The biggest problem was that the sprayers kept malfunctioning.  There was one big sprayer, but it kept clogging.  After struggling with hand spray bottles and other methods not working so well, I got angry, took the big sprayer outside, and began to disassemble to find the problem.  Then, I got more angry, and finally just put my mouth on the opening and used my lungs to blow out the clogged hose.  My lips will probably fall off sooner in my old age because of it.  Oh well.  Its not like I was sucking gasoline through a fuel line or anything (i have seen this done in rural Mexico).  Just a little laundry and dishwasher soap.

The other highlight of the day was meeting a local lady who let us into the house next door to get water out of the spigot.  Before we did that, the project sponsor had supplied them with bottled water to fill up the sprayer.  So, getting access to running water was way better.  She also told us all about the problems the area had experienced.  Apparently, they had built the roads up over the years so high that many houses were below the grade of the road...by more than 4'.  So, when the storm surge came in, these houses just filled with water and became two story swimming pools.  She talked a lot.  And then we suited up to get back to work.  And she stayed and talked more.  And more.  And basically, by the time she left, I felt like I had been living in that neighborhood my whole life.  I knew the whole oral history of coastal SI.

Finishing the day out a little early, we decided to head into Manhattan.  The whole team rode the ferry together and then we split a little bit in NYC.  A few of us went to eat at a loud New York pub.  The only difference was that the restaurant was subterranean and the diversity of the clientele was unlike I had ever seen.  NYC is a mixture of the whole world.  After dinner, Hannah and I split away and wandered around a little bit in the area of the ferry.  We saw a really cool potato famine memorial.  We saw a really cool vegetated wall inside a building, but weren't allowed to go in to look at it (angry signs were everywhere).  There were lots of glass fronted buildings with very interesting lobbies.  Manhattan has excellent lobbies.  And then it was back to Staten Island.  There was work to be done the next day.  Saturdays and Sunday and are often work days in NCCC when doing DR.

After hearing I had a real bed that I was sleeping in, Hannah decided to come stay with me instead of sleeping on her army cot.  So, when we got off the ferry, I told her about how we were going to be walking through a possibly shady neighborhood.  No smiling.  No eye contact.  Basically try and look angry and ready to fight at any moment.  that was the tactic I was using.  And it worked.  No being robbed.  Two nights in a row.  Probably because it was too cold out for crime.