Painting Palmdale.

Speaking of getting high from the previous blog post, I'm pretty sure we all got high on paint fumes today. Our task with Palmdale was to paint the interior of a house and lay hardwood flooring throughout. We worked with their youthbuild program which is a school designed around community involvement through hands on building. Kids learn math and science and English, but they also work on homes together. After hearing a lot about youthbuild the whole day, I started to admire what a brilliant concept it really is. I would love to start my own youthbuild where ever I end up after bike and build because nothing gets through to kids like a little physical labor. This building we worked on was a youth center that was being converted into affordable housing for someone to live in. Every couple of years Palmdale buys a home, makes it a youth center and then converts it while they buy another home to make a youth center and continue the process. Inside, the riders taped and edged all the walls and covered the interior with beige. Painting was difficult because we were doing it on walls with speckled crevices instead of smooth Sheetrock. For lunch we were surprised with an ambush of water balloons from fellow riders. They filled up two boxes with balloons (which shame on them means they were skipping out on work in the morning) that were put on either side of the backyard. It turned into a battle between sides and I scooped up 5 balloons at a time in my freakishly large hands as I let them rip on any target. After the build, only a couple people decided they wanted to get clean. We rode to the local pool that was closed to the public because of funding but open to us. We played on noodles for a couple hours and soaked up the sun along with the fast chilling wind. Upon return to the host, everyone was working in their talent show act for the night. Descriptions can't really do the show justice so I will just have to hunt down video to post on here. However, I will say that Chris Phillips wins for his remix rap of "I'm on a bike." I can't recall a time when I have ever laughed harder. Ross failed at the gallon challenge and projectile vomitted a half gallon of whole milk in the middle of MK's mandolin serenade. Wiser made the best haikus to fill transition time. I never knew a Japanese poetry sequence could be so hilarious. Also, ten bonus points to Brandt and MG for their personal version of the ambiguously gay duo. That took a lot of guts to say those things to eachother in public and touch eachother like that. No judgement passed fellas.