She's Going the Distance/She's Going for Speed

Greetings from Portland!

AmeriCorps NCCC Class XVII: Pacific Region was inducted on Thursday, November 4^th at a short ceremony on campus. We clean up nice in our “AmeriTuxes” - white polos, black BDUs, and our steel toes.

                                                             Pod 4: Legit Corps Members!

An hour after the ceremony was over, Silver 5 and 7 were pulling out of McClellan on our way to Portland! Well, more correctly, to Roseburg, Oregon (about 7 hours into the total drive), where both teams were stopping for the the night. We made excellent time and got to see an amazing array of scenery during our travels. The most notable was Mount Shasta, pictured below. This picture does not properly portray how it loomed over us when it sometimes appeared directly in front of us. I will be stealing pictures from my teammates who used real cameras, but this pic is courtesy of my phone.

One of the coolest parts about seeing Mount Shasta was watching what was going on around it. On one side you saw what's pictured above: the tall, gold “grass” and the occasional tree (and California's attempt at fall). The other side was much more reminiscent of fall in Central New York – brighter colors and in far greater quantities. It was so great to see since I had been feeling like I had missed out on fall. Luckily for me, Portland's seasons are slightly behind those of the east coast. Their rainy season is most of our winter, and if they get snow it won't be until late January: fall is only just thinking about wrapping up out here. Victory!

We arrived in Portland on Friday afternoon, bringing the California sun with us. After eating and visiting one of our work sites we arrived at our SPIKE housing. It's incredibly nice as far as SPIKE (or even normal) housing is concerned. While it's a little cramped for nine people, we're making it work pretty well. It's unfurnished save for two couches, which works to our advantage because of the open floor plan and lack of furniture. The 9 cots we brought with us are spread out between 2 bedrooms and the common area, and the kitchen sometimes feels bigger than the kitchen we had back on base.

Our work weeks are Tuesday through Saturday, which means our “weekends” are Sunday and Monday. We went right to work on Saturday, providing assistance to the regular volunteers and learning our way around one of the sites. More on this later, as our group will be splitting up between two build sites: one in Gresham and the other more towards Portland for the remainder of our time here.

Saturday night was our first night to relax in...well, a long time. A few of us took advantage of this by riding the light rail into Portland to see what we could see. Our first stop was Ground Kontrol, as recommended by Josh. I have never seen so many video games in one place in my entire life. There were some games there that brought me back to my rink rat days, race driving games, and even a 6-player X-Men game that of course we had to play. Great fun was had by all, and I'm sure that we'll be stopping back there again.

And the rain did not deter us from waiting outside of Voodoo Doughnuts for 45 minutes (which, I'm told, is kind of a short wait). Every person got a different doughnut so we got to try 7 of Voodoo's great creations. I opted for a Mexican Hot Chocolate: a chocolate doughnut with cinnamon sugar. It also contained significantly more than a hint of some sort of pepper (chili, perhaps?), which totally made it for me.

We then went on a quest to find Powell's Books, a 4-story bookstore, but opted to save that trip for when we could spend more time there. In our travels we stumbled upon the Tugboat Ale House, an awesome micro-brewery. It's a small place, but it's obviously well-visited seeing that it was crowded the whole time we were there. I liked the cozy atmosphere: nice booths and other seating arrangements, small tables, and there was only one bar-tender for the whole night. While there wasn't any live music, the Tug Boat had an awesome variety of board games to play. It was a lot of fun to be able to relax and tell stories outside of forced NCCC bonding/reflection times and activities. No matter how engaging and helpful they are, it's a whole different feeling when everyone is out of the “A” and socializing of their own accord.

Yesterday, after an awesome physical training (PT) session, our team went to a dedication ceremony for four Habitat homes. It was great to see what the houses looked like in their various states of completion and gave us a good idea of how much work needs to be done on the houses we worked on the day before.

And today, our Sunday, has so far been spent in a very relaxing manner. I spent over 2 hours at Trade Up Music just playing a whole bunch of random instruments. It's great to know where a good used music store is, especially since Victoria was nice enough to give me her Daytripper! I practiced intense self-restraint and only purchased a few picks, a capo, and a small chord dictionary. My visit to Trade Up was not my first reminder of how much I've missed playing music not only during my time in NCCC, but even over the past few months. Thanks, Victoria, for the guitar because now I have an outlet for this. My poor teammates have been forced to listen to me rock out to the radio during van rides simply because there has been no other musical option. Hopefully this will subside as I start to play the guitar more =)

One other thing! We found Stumptown Coffee Roasters, apparently a Portland must-see. I recommend it for the coffee, but not for sitting for long periods of time typing blog updates. Other team members found another great cafe that apparently has awesome chairs. I look forward to updating from there next time.

Miss you, family and friends! Hopefully I can update this more regularly now that we're about to get a more normal routine. If not, get mad at me. I'll deserve it.

Cheers!

Make and Difference Day (and Other Old News)

We got back from Mendo on Friday and the next day was Make A Difference Day! Every AmeriCorps contingent (not even just NCCC. Literally every AmeriCorps member) observes Make A Difference Day. The Sacramento campus spread out and went to community gardens and trails for fuel reduction and beautification. Silvers 5 and 4 were sent to Northridge Elementary School in Fair Oaks, a short drive from our campus. We met our awesome sponsor, Missy Benke, who welcomed us with baked goods! The weather took an unfortunate turn in the afternoon, but we still got a lot done. Our teams actually exceeded Missy's expectations and we were able to pull out a bunch of weeds from the back of the school and restore

In NCCC we're told to keep track of everything we do (called “quantifiables”) because people (read: congresspeople) like it that way. I also like numerical sums of our activities so here are the quantifiables for our day at Northridge:

34 tree roots dug

500 sq. feet of grass dug out

22 transplants

1 ton of vegetation removed

50 snails saved! (pic on facebook soon)

8 holes filled (we filled holes because kids were tripping on them)

4 shovels snapped

1 rake snapped

2 pairs of work boots damaged

Missy was very appreciative and cannot wait to start planting in the new garden area we cleared for her! She really likes experiential learning and will enjoy using the garden to teach her students not only about biology, but math, chemistry, and nutrition. She has put us up on the wiki she set up for her garden project, which you can read about and view here! Despite the rain that day we accomplished a lot, and really enjoyed working with Missy.

After our long day at Northridge our team leader, Jeff, took Silver 5 out to dinner! As we suspected, Jeff used this opportunity to reveal where we would be going for our first round project – Portland, Oregon! We'll technically be living in Gresham, but it's only a short metro ride into Portland proper. Our team will be working with Habitat for Humanity Tuesdays through Saturdays starting on November 6^th. Each person on Silver 5 will be leading a group of volunteers by the end of our orientation period, which is incredibly exciting! We'll be collectively trying to finish 8 houses by Christmas which is a pretty significant amount of work. Unfortunately, we won't be doing any of the heavy-duty “from the ground up” kind of construction, but we'll be doing a lot of smaller projects such as installing doors and working on cabinetry. I'm really excited for that though because these skills are easily transferable to, ya know, the rest of my life!

The nine of us will be living in a two-bedroom apartment upstairs from a Habitat office, which will prove interesting. The good news is that we'll have access to a kitchen, laundry, and wireless! That, and hopefully I can obtain a bike in Portland seeing as how it is THE MOST bike-friendly city in the U.S. right now. How I'll get it back to Sacramento is a bridge I'll cross when I come to it.

Mendo

Camp Mendocino was awesome! It's about a four hour drive from North Highlands in the middle of a redwood forest (which is not as legit as some of the redwood forests further north, I'm told, but it was impressive nonetheless). The road down to camp took 40 minutes to travel due to the fact that it's basically a one-lane road with a small shoulder; to say the road meanders is an understatement; and the main things to avoid (besides the sudden drop-offs along the sides) were logging trucks, which could be very unfriendly. Luckily all of our drivers are masters of the 15-passenger van and we didn't have any issues!

Once you get down there, the camp is beautiful. The Noyo River runs through it as do the “Skunk Train” railroad tracks. To see the train come through was pretty neat and it definitely reminded me of the Adirondack Railroad and it seems to have a similar purpose.

Our accommodations were nice: open-air cabins and bunk cots. It got cool at night but it was never uncomfortable.

Tuesday was spent getting acclimated and Wednesday was spent working on a service project. Each team was assigned a different project and Silver 5 was lucky enough to get the awesome task of building a rock retaining wall! The wall is going to house a raised garden that the campers will take care of and even harvest from. We collected the rocks, mixed the cement, and got to lay the rocks out. We didn't get to finish it due to the size of the task, but there was another team who finished it up for us during their stay the next week! Here are a couple of pictures from our part of the wall building:

The rest of the time was spent doing team building activities and both high- and low-ropes courses. I had never done a ropes course before and it was pretty great! The highlight was definitely the zip-line going downhill through the woods and over the creek. We also journeyed to see The Great Tree, a 15 minute walk along the railroad tracks from camp. Pictures don't really do it, or really any environment we've found ourselves in so far, justice. However...

                                                                                                         Me with The Great Tree. So big!


                                       
                                    The tree is slowly devouring the steel cable that used to hold up...


                                      
                           ...this bridge that used to cross the creek. The tree clearly won that battle.

All in all, a great four days! It was nice to get off campus for a few days and it was even better to get to be able to go somewhere so beautiful. Though I must admit, it was pretty nifty to be able to turn my phone on Friday and not see "searching for service".

No Phone

Our team leaders are not kidding when they call our little world out here the "AmeriBubble". It feels like I was in Clinton months ago but as of a week ago I hadn't even landed in Sacramento yet.

The flight out was gross. Somone (I do not know who) canceled my flight and never told me about it! So when I showed up to check in, the flight I had been switched to was just leaving. LAME PLANE. So my trip turned out to be: Syracuse to O'Hare (where I experienced a wicked long layover (which had me flashing back to when friends and I were stuck there after Midwest Conference 2008)), O'Hare to Phoenix and finally from Phoenix to Sacramento. I rolled up to McClellan Air Force Base a little after 1am local time (4am EST, for those of you keeping score at home). I wasn't too tired the next day because we got to "sleep in" til about 6:30am but it still felt like sleeping til 9:30am for me.

We've accomplished quite a bit in less than a week. We were separated into temporary, alphabetically assigned teams ("pods") and I loved both my pod (Pod 4!) and my pod leader, Vaya. Most introductory activities are done in pods so we sat through many long training sessions together: Red Cross courses like CPR, First Aid and Disaster Relief along with NCCC courses about our policies, projects, and expectations. We ate and cooked meals together, lived together, and got our uniforms together. And there was a wonderful display of pod 4 love last Saturday during the pack test.

The pack test is taken by anyone who wishes to be a part of a Fire Management Team (FMT). FMTs are AmeriCorps members who will be trained as full-fledged wildland firefighters: their main duties are responding to fires, enacting perscribed burns to clear fuel (brush, etc.) for potential fires, and burning away invasive species of plants that damage the natural forest environment. To pass the pack test you must walk (not run) 3 miles in 45 minutes while wearing a 45lb vest. All 5 people from pod 4 who took the pack test passed (myself included!) in part because of the love that Vaya, Laura, Cassie, and Danny showed us from all the cheer and sign-making/waving they did for us.

We have since broken up into our permanent teams and now I'm a member of Silver 5, one of the 4 FMTs on the Sacramento campus! There are 28 teams total (four units: Silver, Gold, Blue, and Green with 7 teams each) and pod 4 was broken up among them, which was harder on me than I anticipated. For some reason our pod just clicked really well and I'll actively miss all of them when we move into our permanent rooms near our new teams. Silver 5 is awesome though, and we'll all get a chance to get to know each other this coming week when all of the Silver unit goes to Camp Mendocino, about 4 hours north of us, to do service work. I'm really excited to get going and do something other than sit in training sessions. Not that they haven't been informative, but I'm pumped to just get moving!

I'm not sure where most of my projects will be yet, but I'm positive that my second round project (4 rounds = 4 projects this year = 1 project every 2 months-ish) will be in Sacramento. This is because the training that the FMTs will receive is given right on our campus. I'll be glad to get to know Sacramento and have a home away from home versus a place I go back to between projects. My first order of business is to secure a bicycle (obviously).

Hopefully there will be project related things to post in the near future! And look out for pictures (particularly of our work at Camp Mendocino) sometime after next Friday. Also, I will have no phone service while at Mendocino so if you text me, please know that I'm not responding because I don't feel the love; it's just that the love doesn't reach my phone.

Much love to 'Cusians and Clintonians alike! Question or comment as you like, but know that questions and comments kind of make my day =)

Cheers!

Prologue

Soon I'll be landing in Sacramento, CA to start my 10-month term as an AmeriCorps NCCC (National Civilian Community Corps) volunteer! It feels like this all happened fairly quickly and, well, that's because (in some ways) it did.

I applied for AmeriCorps NCCC in December of 2009 after hearing that my friend, Molly, was having such a positive experience during her term. I was drawn to the hands-on nature of NCCC as well as the potential for travel. I received and returned all the necessary paperwork, had a brief just-so-we-know-you're-not-a-psycho phone interview in January, a legit phone interview in March, and then heard through the Facebook grapevine that I wouldn't hear anything until the end of May.

The end of May came and went, so I had written it off until I got a call in early August from one of the NCCC representatives asking me if I wanted to leave for the Vicksburg, Mississippi campus within the next two days. I had to say no for a number of reasons so I was completely shocked to get an email a few weeks later saying that I had the option of accepting a spot on the Sacramento campus. After polling trusted sources and so much internal debate I accepted my position with just over a couple of weeks until my departure date, October 7th.

I'm excited to have this opportunity to learn, help out, and travel! Hopefully this blog will be a decent way to keep in touch with friends and family on the Right Coast during my time out Left.

A few bullet-points about the program:

• I'm in the Pacific Region, meaning that while my "home base" is Sacramento (where we'll receive most of our training), my campus serves the following states: Washington, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, Oregon, California, Alaska and Hawaii (plus the Pacific Territories, but only in emergencies).
• After the initial month-long training bonanza we'll be sent out on 4-ish "spike" projects for the remaining 9 months of service with each project lasting anywhere from 6-8 weeks. These projects can be anywhere in our region and relate to a number of issues including: "rural and urban development, energy conservation, infrastructure improvement, disasters, and environmental stewardship and conservation".
• The campus will be divided into permanent groups of 10-12 people. These groups will go on spikes together and remain together for the entire term.
• Each person in NCCC will end up serving at least 1,700 hours before the term ends in late July, 2011.

So, California or bust! I fly out of Syracuse at 815 this morning (10.07.10), a mere not many hours from now. I suppose it's time for a nap.

Also, just to clarify: the blog title refers to the fact that one of my favorite bands, CAKE, is from Sacramento. Hooray! Keep an eye out for CAKE-related tidbits in the future and I'm not just talking about their upcoming album.

Cheers!