We woke up at the Church of the Bretheren after a great night sleep. We packed our bins as we had to put our stuff away for the day. Then we enjoyed another great host breakfast of oatmeal, fruit, and yogurt. Once fed and the host was clean we headed to the build site. We took to van loads and right before the second one left the alumni from yesterday came by with a spare tires, wheels, and a whole Saper bike for us and mainly Steph to borrow for the next few days if we need it and she feels up to riding. It is AMAZING how great a community all Bike and Build riders past and present become.
When we all arrived at the build site we found that the Habitat here had bough a whole street and was building it all off with Habiast homes. I can only imagine how supportive the community will be. It reminds me of the 72 homes on 7 acres in Jacksonville Beach where we first volunteered. It is almost like we went full circle.
We then broke off into groups and my group spent the day putting up walls for one of the homes. It's kind of nice to be able to put them up and see the walls rise really quickly, we kind of chested though since they had already build the walls and we just had to physical lift them.
Around noon we enjoyed a lovely lunch of pizza, apples, and cookies. It's nice to be in a big city again where pizza and such are really a thing. We are a good bit and then many of us had a little bit of a ciesta-esk nap before beginning our afternoon. We didn't have as much to do after lunch. I spent a bit of time helping one group do yard work to deal with rain control and then went back to the wall raising. It was a great day and a ton of fun.
A large part of the day though was the arrival of Natalie a little after lunch. It truly is a sign the trip is coming to a close as she is here to join us for the last few days and then to drive the van into Monterey so all of our leaders will be able to join us. It was fun to see her though, to share our stories, here past stories, and here present stories from other routes.
After the build site we went back to the host for the afternoon, by Justin, Dave, and I headed back out. We had to go by a bike shop so Justin and I could replace our brakes since both were worn a lot on the hill yesterday. While at the shops we also began to pick up bike boxes we can use to ship our bikes home. We need to start collecting them since if we all ship our bikes getting 29 bike boxes at once wouldn't work out well.
After we returned it was my chore groups turn for what was probably our last laundry day. We loaded up the laundry burrito tarp in the van and headed out. Once everything was in the machine we did as we always do while washing clothes, we bough a few tall boys and sat outside to drink them. After we loaded the clothes in the dryer we headed back to the host for a quick but delicious potluck dinner and presentation. We then ran back out and picked the finished laundry up before having a team meeting.
The team meeting covered our usual highs and lows as well as details about our last few days and bike shipping. We the spent time doing the allocation of our $50,000 in grant money before most people called it a night. I cleaned up Jenny and hope she will be good until the end of the trip. I also shed a bit of wait off of her since a few tools and spare supplies I carried most of the trip, shouldn't be needed in the last few days. However since I removed them I bet that means I will need them... we shall see, tomorrow we head off to Pleasanton.