I got to remember how satisfying it is to hammer away on a lightwood framed house. They went up amazingly quickly, even though the leader of the Providence chapter told us it was a race to see how slowly (and carefully) we built the walls.
The leader (whose name I can't recall ...) had made a short presentation to us the night before about the Providence chapter. I remember asking the question whether or not they built multi-family or higher density residences other than single family homes, and he replied no. They needed to be able to build them using volunteer (ie unskilled) labor, and those types of buildings required skilled framers and construction workers. Also, they needed someone to design those buildings. At most, they can do duplexes or houses that share a wall at least.
I found this to be rather disappointing, and realized it was only possible in a country such as America where the ideal is to be the owner of a single family home which gave rise to the suburbian sprawl and resultant waste of arable and/or undisturbed land, and unnecessary transportation costs. I really hope that when I start working in a firm, I'll somehow be able to influence others around me to try to design either mixed-income developments or other form of affordable housing that will benefit more than one family at a time.
In any case, the warehouse was beautiful, and I kept thinking of awesome redesigns of the space as offices or lofts:
Cooper Lehrer, a former Bike and Builder, came to talk to us about his trip after dinner tonight. I thought it was going to be pretty cut and dry, but he ended up being a hilarious speaker. The comment I will come away with is: "Don't be that guy that tries to force atheism onto the naive Prostestants who are providing you with shelter and food."
We start riding tomorrow !!!!!!
3 comments:
I am glad that you did not hit your nails at all.
Good luck and enjoy your trip!
LOL... Then again, coming from the Midwest I'm sure you're at least somewhat experienced w/ how religious some people can be.
That's an interesting observation about America's ideal for a single family home. I think it also has something to do w/ the fascination of having a yard and garden. Then again, greedy humans always want mansions. ^_~
Have fun on your ride!!!
Yeah, it's all in the American dream...the same reason we don't carpool or share lawn mowers with our neighbors. It's better to own your own for the social reasons than to share for the planetary concerns...
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