Framing and the arch

June 16, 2013

Build day in St. Louis, MO

This might have been my most favorite build day so far! Even though it was unbelievably hot outside with little shade or cloud protection, we did some awesome things with the houses. Getting there we split into groups of 10 and each started working on a house. The house I was working on already had one wall up but it still needed the other three. This kind of work putting up the walls is called framing. To start, we continued and finished making the second wall and in a very public moment, we lifted the whole thing up and into place. It was awesome.

 

Afterwards a few people started working on making the other two walls while I helped do some nailing along the side of the house. The hammer and I got to know each other very well today. I'm sure my hand and arm will be very sore tomorrow from all the work. For lunch, we all could eat one slice I pizza each since we didn't have enough. It was painful and I was so hungry. Finishing up the day in the heat and hunger was hard but we all pushed through and were able to get all four walls up on the house! It looked super sweet and it was cool to know that we helped with it. 

After the build day was over we headed back to UMSL for showers and dinner. A Bike & Build alum from a couple years ago that lives in St. Louis made us dinner and came to hang out for a bit. Afterwards a group of us went downtown to the arch. We had seen it from far away when we crossed the Mississippi River, but that did not do it justice at all. We took the metro and got off a few stops before it to walk through the downtown a bit. I couldn't stop taking pictures of it it was so cool looking! We even got to go up to the top of it in these futuristic type pod things. It was amazing from up there. It's hard to believe I'm actually in Missouri right now. I'm doing so many amazing things that I probably would have never done otherwise on this trip.