Owensville, Indiana

Day two in St. Louis may have been even hotter than day one. We had a 445 wakeup call to try to beat the heat at the construction site so I was actually working by 6am. Wouldn't you know it, on the hottest and most humid day ever, we were roofing. There was no escape from the sun on top of the house so within the first 20 minutes, without even doing anything, I was soaked. St. Louis habitat for humanity is the most impressive I have ever worked with. The city used to have a population of 900,000 but that quickly emptied out a while ago and dropped to 300,000. St. Louis was hit pretty hard with the housing collapse so many homes fell into foreclosure and disrepair. The city is on the rebound a little bit with the population climbing back up to 400,000. However there are so many run down homes, and many blocks where people don't even live. This means habitat is getting land very cheap as there are ample lots available with the city and banks willing to sell to whoever will take it off their hands and maybe fix it up. The St. Louis chapter of habitat slated 34 new home construction projects this year, with 17 currently going on. We were happy with this news because it meant plenty of work for the group and minimal down time. We worked on a block with 5 habitat homes side by side, splitting up into small groups of about 6 with a construction supervisor. From there we measured, cut, and secured all the sheathing for the roof and some of the external trim. At the end of the day, there were some complaints from other groups, but I guess my group's supervisor, Garth gave us a lot more freedom and smiles than other group's supervisors. He told us what to do in the morning and we ran the show. It was so nice to have a task and autonomy and my group really came through and all did an awesome job. We drank about 6 gallons of water collectively in the process, but I'm sure we sweat out much more. The sun was so brutal and unforgiving we finally had to pitch a canopy tent on the roof over our cut table right before lunch. We had a professor and expert in housing law come talk to the group over lunch about the foreclosure crisis. Everyone was real hot and tired at this point and we found it difficult to stay awake. We perked up however when ice cream cones started to get passed around. I learned later that it was Ted Drew's frozen custard which is a St. Louis institution, but I couldn't taste any difference between that and vanilla ice cream. Adam, the other rider from CT has family that lives in St. Louis so they has us all over for a delicious BBQ of brawts and burgers which tasted great when I finally woke up from my nap on their couch. Ok so I was more passed out than napping, but constant heat will do that to you. When we finally got back to UMSL, it was around 10pm and all I wanted to do was sleep. Our mail had finally made it to us and I was delighted to see 3 parcels with my name on it. My mom sent me her version of a blog, which was just a written out letter detailing everything her and Ray did all week. It was a good read and nice to slip back into a piece of home, but Linda you're spending way too much on postage. Tara and Erin sent me a delicious box of muffiins and cookies. Ok, so the boxes were really just full of crumbled baked goods by the time they got to me, they were still delicious. Blueberry muffins are one of my all time favorite foods so even though I just got back from a BBQ where I had given myself a food baby, I couldn't resist just one muffin. But that first muffin was so good I had a second. Then barely able to keep my heart beating, I called it quits and saved the rest for breakfast for the group. The surprise package and winner of all time best compilation of anything I've ever gotten was from Mary Beth. She wrote me a multiple page letter responding to points in my blog and telling me how proud she was of me. It was one of the best things I've ever read, partly because it was so unexpected, and it brought a bigger smile to my face than the first peak at the St. Louis arch did. If that wasn't enough, I also got a deck of cards, two seperate card games and a bunch of Clif bars. PS MB, blueberry crisp is my favorite flavor so you really did a bang up job. Hands down the best best best part was the blue camo bike bell that I rang for ten minutes straight and then attached to my bike. I love mail days!

Wow were these a busy two days. I haven't had muh time to reflect because there has been so much going on, but I will share the St. Louis saga soon. For now it's off to bed to get rest for a 430 wakeup call and a 99 mile ride. Bring it on third straight day of 110 degree heat index.

This blog got a little messed up, and this city is supposed to be St. Louis, as you can probably clearly tell from the pictures. I hope they tell the story because as I got so busy with adventures, I fell behing in blogging and have forgotten many cool things I'm sure I would have said. The ride to St. Louis was hotter and sweatier than any one previously. I drank 100 oz of water and 144 oz of Gatorade just on the ride alone. I wanted to reach the gateway to the west so badly that I led my group out at 23mph at times, a pace very hard to sustain or keep up with. They had to tell me a couple times when I was outfront to slow down. But, since we didn't have a day off in St. Louis, I wanted to get there early to have plenty of time to explore. When we got to the mighty Mississippi and I got my first look close up to the arch and the skyline, the sore legs were totally worth it. I was like a giddy school girl as the biggest smile and sense of joy overwhelmed me. Seeing just a famous landmark was only more rewarding because it signaled an important point in the trip. We had biked about 1600 miles to get there through some wild conditions, and finally we made it to our first monumental stop. I've seen pictures, I've read books, but nothing prepared me for the beauty and glimmer of such a large structure. As we crossed the Mississippi and I saw it flow, I thought about just how hard it would have been for Huck and Jim to make it down in a raft. I wanted to pay homage to Mark Twain and go on a riverboat tour, but the steamboats were all shutdown for the day because the river was flooded. Instead I settled for buying hukleberry flavored taffy in the oldfashioned store inside the base of the arch. What a good decision that was. I ate it all the way up to the top of the arch, a very good $10 investment for the view, pictures, and stories that came from it. After the arch, we rode our bikes to the City Museum. We got a group rate of $6 per tickets which I thought was a waste in the first 20 minutes there, but then decided it was another solid spend. See, the City Museum is like one big acid trip. One day a very rich man decided he was going to start attaching things to his wall. He bought out an old shoe factory and just startign going nuts. The results are the pictures you see with this post. Around every corner are hidden treasures of wild danger. Crawl space, slides, and millions of things to touch are all over the place. I don't know how this place doesn't get the pant sued off of it because kids were getting hurt left and right as they are encouraged to climb all over everything, but it's nice to see a bit of freedom and personal responsibility in a world that is so consumed with worry of liability. Because one of our riders knows the manager of this place, we were given roof access, where there were bonus things for us to enjoy like a rooftop ferris wheel and huge slides. It's nice to be a little kid trapped in an adult's body because I can still enjoy all of this. It just stinks I'm a little fatter than a 6 year old and couldn't fit in all the caves and crawl spaces I wanted to. When we got to our host site at UMSL (University of Missouri- St. Louis) we unloaded our stuff in classrooms across from the gym in the Mark Twain building. There were some guys playing basketball so instead of showering like everyone else, I hopped in and played with them for a half hour before dinner was ready. Boy was I tired at the end of this day.