Build day in Freeport

Today we woke up at 6:05am again!! Thankfully I slept so much better and actually woke up early and felt so refreshed I thought they had let us sleep in...I was wrong. After a breakfast donated to us from Panera, we headed off to our first build site in Freeport, a town just south of Brunswick that I biked to a lot for my training rides (and a lot of shopping...oops). The site was pretty far along and the place was really starting to look great. It was a three home complex that would be next to a duplex and another three home complex creating kind of a little neighborhood. 

The site manager Chad split us into groups--window installation, strapping, and styrofoam instillation. I chose strapping because it required you to climb up high on the ladder and use a power drill to place long, thin pieces of wood vertically on the sides of the house. They would be used to install the siding for the house later on. 

I'm pretty terrified of heights, so I wanted to do strapping to challenge myself (it seems to be a theme of the summer). And a challenge it was. The first time I went up to the top of the second floor on the ladder I was just going to measure how long of a piece of wood we would need--I don't think my legs could have shaken more. Luckily, I quickly got used to the height and eventually was climbing the ladder no problem. I even climbed up the three story scaffolding and sat with my legs over the side and drilled in some smaller pieces before I hoisted myself through the window. Sadly it was cloudy and drizzling most of the time so the day was pretty chilly but we stayed and worked from 8:30 to 3:30. We were able to get a lot done which was great, and we also got to bond with our fellow riders. I worked with a guy named Steve most of the time and we just got in a groove that allowed us to complete almost everything that we could. Overall the day was amazing, we ended it with a trip to Walmart and a huge push to finish painting the trailer. Not to brag or anything, but our trailer looks amazing. People driving by it might be distracted it's so good.