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.