#29 - Habitat for Humanity

Working on a Habitat for Humanity house is another "always wanted to do that" activity that I immmediately knew had to make my 40 New Adventures list.  I love the whole idea of Habitat - the "hand up" instead of just a "hand out."  It's a great example of people helping people who are willing to help themselves. Besides, I've become pretty handy as a result of all the home improvements we've tackled over the years!

Due to several different schedule conflicts I experienced this year, I began to doubt that I would be able to a Habitat project one of my 40 new adventures. I had decided that it would probably have to slip into my 41st year, so I was pleasantly surprised to learn recently that our church group had a work day scheduled for October 30. Hurray!!

The absolute minimum age for working Habitat projects is 16, so Victoria was the only child who was old enough to join me, and she decided she would like to participate.  One unforeseen advantage of this whole "40 new things" undertaking has definitely been the opportunity to spend time with my kids doing neat activities.  I'm not the only one in the family who has been exposed to new things; the kids have also expanded their horizons, and we've had the opportunity to make some cool memories in the process.

I woke up this morning very thankful for the unusually beautiful late October weather. Victoria and I headed out to the work site, having absolutely no idea what type of labor we would be performing.  The housing development containing the work site is a brand new development in the northeast part of the city. The houses are not all Habitat houses, but a good number of the houses are being built by either Habitat or other similar service organizations. There were 4 different work groups today, and I'd estimate over 40 -50 workers.  We were assigned to different houses all in different stages of construction.

The thing you need to remember about service projects is that ALL the work you do, whether is it administrative, building, cooking, cleaning, whatever IS service. It is all necessary. So, when 4 of us were selected to clean out a huge storage container (think cargo container) and condense its contents into the neighboring container, I reminded myself to not be disappointed. True, it wasn't actual construction, but it was a very necessary task. So, for two hours we cleaned, sorted, reorganized and moved every conceivable tool, building supply and odds and ends.  When I first looked at the contents in both containers--in quite a state of disarray,---I thought, "He's crazy if he thinks this will all fit in one unit."  But, we worked hard and got the job accomplished and, I must admit, it felt pretty good to know we accomplished something so substantial. Here we are hard at work:

With that task behind us, we were able to move on to some actual construction. We were tasked with cutting and installing siding for the trim on a porch.  It was a slow process because there was a fair amount of notching that had to be cut out of each piece in order to fit corners and trim.  Then the installing was actually the old-fashioned kind of nailing, no nail guns involved!  I'm pretty good at nailing, but this project involved some bodily contortion as well as nailing.  We were working on ladders on a small porch and trying to nail above our heads.  It was a challenge, but I felt pretty good knowing I was doing a decent job. Before we knew it, our morning shift was over, and it was time to head out. 

 I really enjoyed my time working today. It felt good knowing I was contributing to someone's dream of owning a home.  I think I will definitely work future Habitat projects, and I could see this being an organization with which I could become quite involved in retirement.   Victoria, on the other hand, discovered today that she  "better marry a guy who's a handyman" (her words, not mine!). 

Here's a picture of the house we worked on.  It is scheduled to be dedicated on Dec. 19. It is quite small, but for someone who has never been able to own their own home before, it is a great place to start.

#28 - Wine Making

When I first sent out the email announcing my intentions to have 40 new adventures and soliciting help from my friends, the first person to respond with an idea was my former co-worker Dave. He offered to include me in his family's annual wine making. Dave is Italian through and through and every year he makes hundreds of bottles of homemade wine.  Being part Italian myself, and having relatives who not only made wine during prohibition, but also sold it to Al Capone and his entourage (they actually get a mention in the book Capone's Cornfields, available through Amazon), I felt like this adventure was a no-brainer.  Let me remind you, however, that I'm a wine idiot (see Adventure #2 for details), so I was a little intimidated by the whole process.

Dave gets his grapes from California via a garden shop in Monument, Colorado. The delivery dates vary from year to year depending on the weather. The sugar content is the biggest factor to consider, and different breeds of grapes mature at different times. I was able to observe and participate some of the latter season grapes, those used for merlot and san grigio (pinot grigio is the same thing--or really close--wine idiot, remember?).  Obviously, wine making is not a single day event.  I was able to participate in two consecutive weekends, the crushing and then the pressing.

Crushing is pretty much just that: crushing the grapes.  While Dave does own his own crusher, for this batch  he used the crusher/destemmer at the garden shop.  This particular weekend Dave received roughly 600 lbs. of grapes.  Here are some of the grapes. They are much smaller than the grapes we are all accustomed to eating.

The crusher/destemmer is a simple but intriguing machine. You simply dump the grapes in the top, the bulk of the stems are removed and dumped out the side, and the grapes are crushed and dumped out the bottom. The :magic" occurs inside the closed box portion of the machine, so I couldn't actually see how this was accomplished. I was told it was a combination of corkscrew and a "shaking" screen type device. The crushed grapes are then poured into containers in which they will stay and ferment for about a week (in this case those containers were actually plastic garbage cans). That's all there is to week one of wine making.  I did find it appropriate that the crusher/destemmer sported a tag reading, "Made in Italy."  Right on!

For clarification, the grapes and juice are going into the white bucket above, the stems into the blue one.

 This past weekend I went to Dave's house for the pressing. It was so cool!  The engineer in me was impressed with the simple yet oh-so-efffective technology involved.  I had actually been thinking about this since the crushing.  It couldn't be too high-tech of a process, since people have been making wine for thousands of years.  Sure enough, the overall process is quite simple.  The below picture shows a wine press (and the garbage can behind it contains crushed grapes). 

Basically you scoop/ pour the crushed grapes in the top, place two semi-circular discs on top of the grapes, stack wooden blocks on top until the level reaches a corkscrew mechanism which is cranked to press the wood down on the grapes, pressing all the juice out through an opening in the bottom of the press (OK, I acknowledge that's a run-on sentence).  But, here's the really cool part. When you're done pressing, you remove the wood, unlatch the two tall semi-circular pieces that constitute the body of the press, and you essentially have a "cake" of compressed grape leftovers, much like a giant wheel of purple cheese!

About half of the grape "residue' was recycled for a second run, and the other half was tossed. Because the pressed grapes are so dry, for the second run Dave adds water and sugar to the grapes. They will ferment for another couple weeks.  I asked Dave for some ballpark averages on how many grapes it takes to produce a bottle of wine. He said it varies by grape type, but for the merlot we pressed, it would take approximately 80 lbs. of grapes to produce a 5-gallon bottle of wine.

Back to the process.  The juice was transferred again to the plastic garbage cans. It will continue to ferment for another couple weeks. Then Dave will transfer it to class containers. You have to understand something about Dave's house.  He designed and built it himself, and to call it a custom house is an understatement.  When he designed the house, he did so with his wine-making very much in mind.  The custom storage units in the garage which house all his wine making equipment is just the start. The basement is the real crown jewel of this home's Italian heritage.  The basement houses a wine cellar that is a model of efficiency. There is a hole in the kitchen floor which is the opening to a tube that drains down into the far end of the ceiling of the wine cellar. Dave can attach tubing from this hole to the mouths of huge glass jugs.  This process greatly simplifies the process of getting hundreds of pounds of juice into the wine cellar.  Because these huge jugs sit on very high shelves, a simple gravity-assisted siphon system of tubing is then used to fill smaller bottles from the huge bottles once the huge bottles have fermented for a couple of months.   These small bottles are then corked and placed in the massive wine rack in the same room.  The wine bottles in the rack below are last year's batch.   Be sure to look for hole in the ceiling above the large jugs.

The final picture I leave you with captured an amusing, albeit unexpected aspect of wine making.  All of our grape "residue" was all dumped into a wheelbarrow.  Dave's dog, Pepper, loves grape residue.  He viewed the wheelbarrow as an all-you-can-eat buffet.  With all the health benefits of grape seeds and grape skins, I figure Pepper is bound to live a mighty long live!  Here's Pepper in action.

I hope I get the chance next year to sample the fruits (haha, pun intended) of our labor. Thanks, Dave, for a grape new experience (haha, intended again!).

#27 - College Visit Road Trip - Baylor University

I can't believe that I'm already at this stage in life, but I just returned from taking my daughter, Victoria, to a college visit.  One could argue that since I went on college visits when I was in high school that this doesn't count as a new experience, but I say it qualifies for a couple reasons: I have never been on a college visit as a parent, and I have never been to Baylor University (nor have I been to Waco, Texas).  Baylor is a mere 880 or so miles from Colorado, so we did what our family does so well: road trip!

Only Victoria and I made the trek.  Craig played Mr. Mom back at home. He goes on next month's college visit to George Fox University in Oregon (no, they're not driving).  I was thrilled that Victoria was able to help with the driving duties.  We stocked up on our staple driving foods: Pringles and Twizzlers, and we headed out early Sunday morning.  We have longtime family friends who live in Plano, so we planned on making that our first stop and then heading down to Waco early Monday morning for the official Sic 'Em Visit Day. It was a 12 hour drive to Plano, and we really had a good time.  Victoria is great company, and Texas is immeasurably more pleasant and scenic to drive across than Kansas! We arrived in time to have a short visit with our friends, turn in for the night and head out early Monday morning---just in time for horrible thunderstorms to worsen an already horrific morning rush hour in Dallas.  I managed to survive rush hour, and we made it about two hours.

The Baylor campus is beautiful and impressive.  That's more than can be said for most of Waco!  The school had an well-organized visit day planned. Several hundred people were in attendance. After opening remarks we broke up into tours groups for a lengthy walking tour of the campus.  We had lunch in one of the dining halls, visited the bookstore and then attended a "sample" academic lecture.  We gathered again for closing remarks and the day wrapped up around 3:00.  Victoria and I then drove over to check out the football stadium, the track and field facilty and an off-campus snow cone shop that we were told we "have to go to" by a friend of Victoria's whose sister is an alum.

Overall I was fairly impressed by Baylor. My impressions were that Baylor strives very hard to create a sense of community among their students, they surround the students with a strong support system to help them succeed, and they recognize the importance of having fun while still challenging and stretching students.  Ultimately, however, what matters is what Victoria thought of the school.  She's the one who has to decide if it is the right fit for her.  She liked it, but she's also still at the "overwhelmed by it all" stage of selecting a college.   So, who knows if Baylor is in her future, but we sure enjoyed our visit.  Here's a little bit of Baylor trivia for you to enjoy:

• Baylor hosts the largest intramural dodgeball tournament in the country.
• Baylor recently received its largest single gift donation ever: $200,000,000. It will be used to build a cancer research facility.
• Baylor houses two live bears (their mascots) on the campus, Joy and Lady. They didn't do anything other than sleep while we were there.
• Baylor is the longest continually operating university in Texas.
• Baylor is a "flyer-free" campus. Groups do not post flyers for their events. Instead, they write the pertinent information in chalk all around the walkways on campus. The rain eventually washes it off, so no mess is left. Look closely on the below picture for the chalk announcment.

After a two hour trip back up to Plano, we spent another evening enjoying a visit with our friends, and then early this morning we headed back to Colorado.  Our trip totals clocked in at 1769 miles, 29.5 hours total driving time, no speeding tickets (hurray!),  and too many skunk encounters to count.  It was an insane amount of driving for three days, but it was a great overall experience.  I won't have too many more road trips with Victoria before she leaves the nest.  The fact that she takes the PSAT tomorrow makes the reality of if all that much more obvious. I rarely get much one-on-one time with any of my kids, so this was actually a treat.

# 26 - Working Concessions at USAFA

This past weekend was the Air Forces vs. Navy game, and I got to be at the game---sort of.  (BTW, let's just ignore that pesky little detail that Navy lost. I think it was just pur, kind-hearted charity of the part of Navy. They figured after trouncing AF for 7 years, it was time to throw them a bone.).  So, why was I there?  I was there to earn money for a mission trip to Haiti next year.  (Insert commercial: Craig and I, and hopefully, Aubrey are all going to Haiti next year on mission trips with our church. The fund raising has begun. If you would like to contribute to our trips, we'd appreciate the support. You can mail checks to Sunrise United Methodist Church, 2655 Briargate Blvd. Colo Spgs, 80920)

Our church has a contract to run one of the concession stands at Falcon Stadium.  I remember my mom working concessions at our high school football games to earn money for my sister's marching band.  We had a large high school (roughly 500 students per graduating class,) and she often commented about how busy it was working concessions.  Now, upsize that to a sold out crowd of over 45,000, and you really do have busy!  I was told my all of the concession stand veterans that I was in for an adventure, and they were right.

While kick-off wasn't until 12:30, we arrived at the stadium at about 8:30 a.m. The crew not only sells the concessions, but prepares everything. "Preparing" includes counting every imaginable item for inventory: cups, hot dog buns, nacho boats, bags of peanuts, bags of M&Ms...you get the picture.  We prepare the hot dogs, nacho cheese, popcorn, etc. We had a working crew of 15, and only two of us were newbies.  Everything ran like a well-oiled machine, and we had all of our prep down about a half hour before the doors of the stadium opened. That gave most of us the chance to sit and take a break for a few minutes while we watched the parachutists and band practice on the field.  That was truly the last pause we would take during the game.   

Once the doors opened, a few customers started trickling in. It was nice to ease into the process. I was mainly a soda-filler, but everyone does whatever is necessary to keep things moving well. I was also frequently a runner for more hotdogs or nachos or whatever else needed to be done.  Before I realized it, there was a steady stream of people, and then shortly we were in the middle of a full-fledged rush on the concessions stand---which just continued for hours. Oh my goodness -  I don't even know how to convey how busy we were!  I almost felt anti-social at times because I was so busy filling cups with ice and soda that I sometimes didn't ever look at the customer.  It was just ice, soda, lid, ice, soda, lid, ice, soda, lid.  And let me tell you, I even filled two cups at a time!! I was a model of efficiency!  I think the best way to explain the crazy pace is to say that I honestly didn't even have time to look at my watch. I wondered now and then what time it was, but you can't turn your wrist to look at your watch at the same time you are filling up soda! When the crowds started to dwindle and somone finally announced the time, it as already 3:30p.m! To give you a little idea of the volume of sales we did, we started out the day with 864 hot dog buns in our inventory.  A couple hours into the game, the academy representative had to bring us additional buns! That's a lot of hot dogs!

Here's a picture we were able to snap before the rush began (notice that I'm all decked out in Navy attire, including Bill the Goat tattoos on my cheeks):

Despire the business (or is it busyness?), it was a really fun day.  I was able to get to know some people from church that I didn't previously know, and they were all wonderfully dedicated workers.  It was also a little bit of a trip down memory lane, since I worked in a snack bar in high school.  It had been quite a few years since I dipped a ladle into a big pot of nacho cheese and served up a really unhealthy boat of nachos. 

After the stand closed, we had a good hour of clean up to perform.  EVERYTHING must be cleaned and inventoried once again.  As with setup,  the seasoned veterans did a wonderful job in directing the newbies, and if I had this cleaning crew come work in my house, our house would sparkle in about a half hour. We left the stand at 4:30 p.m, a full 8 hours after we arrived.

So, the net result of all my hard labor?  Well, I have yet to find out the exact total of sales. We make 15% of all the sales, and then we split it among the team members.  Based on past games, team members usually earn just over $100 each.  While I'm happy to have had the experience and to get my missio fund-raising off the ground, that was no doubt the hardest I've ever worked for $100!