Lately I haven’t felt like doing anything, and before I always thought that was boredom. I’m starting to think that I’m just tired, and not wanting to do anything is a sign that I should go to sleep.

Pictures from the trip are now posted in the gallery.

After packing up we got into the vans around 9:00am Friday morning. John told us that we had a surprise stop which turned out to be a swamp tour at Zam’s. The boat ride through the Bayou/swamp was interesting, although we didn’t see any very large alligators. Most of them were only four feet long, at the most. After the tour, we had lunch at a local restaurant and the journey began in earnest.

One of the students was in some pain, since she had pulled her hip on Thursday. She already had an injury, so this made her situation a little more severe than it might have for someone else. I don’t think she wanted to make things bad for anyone else, though, so she didn’t let on how much discomfort she was in. By dinner time, however, it was more obvious that this was a serious problem, and that something might have to be done. Later that evening, things would get worse for everyone. At about 1:00am we decided to pull off at the next exit and almost immediately one of the vans got a flat tire. We all sat on the side of the road trying to figure out what was going on. We eventually decided that the big van and the other two minivans should get to the gas station while the truck stayed with the wounded van to put on the spare.

Once we were all together again we discussed the situation and John decided that we should push on to Chattanooga, which was about 90 miles away, where we would have better luck getting the tire fixed and could take Emily (the hurt student) to the hospital. He asked me if the spare would make it further, and I said that I wouldn’t push it (it was rated for 100 miles). The big van went ahead while the rest of us drove up the highway at around 45mph. I volunteered to ride in the wounded van, so that there would be “an adult” in the convoy. We got the Chattanooga and found the hospital around 3:30 or 4:00am. The decision was made to leave the wounded van there, along with Emily and enough drivers to get it repaired once something was open and then catch up with us later on. The rest of us piled into the remaining vans and kept going.

After breakfast I took over driving. Thanks to a long breakfast and rest stops the other van was able to catch up with us at lunch time. I was happy to see my new friends again and learn that Emily was feeling at least a little better. I continued driving until around 4:00 or 5:00 and then Mira took over for the final haul into Carlisle. At was a relief to get out of the van, but I then had to drive the 40 minutes from campus to home, only to find that Angela’s car was stuck in the driveway. We carried our things the rest of the way up the hill and threw everything in the kitchen to be dealt with later. I wish I could say that I got to rest, but there were kids that wanted attention and a driveway that needed plowed. There is apparently no rest for the weary at the Steel house.

I’m going back and entering for the days I didn’t get a chance to get online, so this entry might be fuzzy…

On Wednesday the team that I had been working with got a new house, but I stayed at the original work site to help with the work being done in the kitchen. We were able to get a good deal of paneling installed, which is harder work then you might think. The work was complicated by the fact that the floor and ceiling weren’t parallel, so measuring and cutting became difficult. The folks working on the back deck got it almost complete, which was cool to see. They did a great job, considering that they were given little direction on how to build a deck. Once the back deck was done, we could start taking apart the front porch, which wasn’t being completely redone, but was just getting a new floor. The guys had a good time swinging crowbars to break it into pieces.

Thursday was spent putting the finishing touches on the back deck and installing the new floor on the front porch. The work went quickly and by 3:00 most people were free to head back to the church to clean up. We were only able to get three of the cabinents hung in the new kitchen, but it was nice to see that much progress achieved. There was some electrical and flooring work which needed to be done before we could hang any more, so we decided to call it a day, as well, around 3:30. That night we went to a local restaurant, Schmoopy’s, which had great seafood. Everyone had a good time and was looking forward to going home.

I’m going back and entering for the days I didn’t get a chance to get online, so this entry might be fuzzy…

I didn’t mention in the previous posts what other work was going on at our worksite. On Monday our team put a new plywood floor into our house. The owner didn’t have the funds to put anything on top of it, and was just intending to leave it as is, but our team leaders made the decision to use our funds to purchase her proper flooring. After speaking with the home owner, vinyl tile was purchased and laid down in the home. This was a good learning experience for a lot of the students, since most of them had never seen this type of flooring installed. I spent a lot of time working on the edges and tougher spots, and showing others how to do the same.

As we were getting ready to leave, guess what happened…one of the minivans wouldn’t start! We were quite taken aback and a little upset that a second van had died, but we had someone call AAA again and shuttled people back to the community center with the help of some of the other volunteers who had dropped in to check on our site. We were supposed to go to another orientation session and pot luck dinner with other volunteers, but John Miyahara said that there was no way we could go, being down two vehicles. In the long run, I think it was nice, since it gave everyone an unexpected chance to relax and have fun. I got to spend some time getting to know other people, Paula and Mira, the other “adults” on the trip, which was really nice.

Sunday turned into quite the adventure. After church we got in the vans to head to New Orleans for the day. A few miles down the road, the van I was in broke down. Basically, we lost all electrical power, and after looking at it, a few of us figured it was the alternator. I volunteered to wait with Paul Lee and John Miyahara for a tow truck, which ended up taking about two hours. Paul has a AAA membership, but they couldn’t find anyone open. We also tried calling the Ford road side assistance number, but since the car is out of warranty, they couldn’t really help us either. They did, however, give us the numbers for some local towing companies, and one was open, so we were able to get someone to get the car to the local Ford dealership.

Because of the waiting, I didn’t get to see the 9th ward again, which I was really looking forward to. I was able to find out that they had cleared a lot of debris from the last time we were there, so the area looked much cleaner. Some of the houses have also been demolished, so there are more clear spots than before.

Hanging out in the French Quarter was also fun, again, but I sort of missed the person that I hung out with last time. Dinner was an excellent sweet potato crusted catfish at a restuarant that I can’t remember the name of.

Today, Monday, we had our orientation in the morning, which lasted longer than we anticipated. They asked if anyone had any electrical and plumbing experience, and I raised my hand, along with one of the students, Ryan. John Paul, the coordinator here, was very happy with that, which I took as an ominous sign. After we were ready to go, we were told that there was a job here that we wanted us to look at. One of the workers at the site has a broken water heater and it needed a new thermostat. Ryan and I weren’t too sure that we could really do anything, but he just wanted us to try, so we took a look at it as best we could. We couldn’t get it working, but I think that we figured out that there’s something wrong with the gas line coming into the house, and not with the hot water heater itself.

Once we got to our work site I was told to look into an electrical problem in the kitchen: the light fixture wouldn’t turn on. I took a look at it and after checking with a multimeter to verify that power was getting to the switch, I decided that a new switch was in order. After replacing the switch (and receiving a nice shock in the process), the light wouldn’t turn off! I double checked and it turns out they bought a three way switch, which I guess won’t work by itself. I would put another one in, but there’s a gas leak in the kitchen, and John Paul doesn’t want any more electrical work done until that is taken care of, which I’m in agreement with.

The rest of the day was spent trying to find things to do. We had a very large crew for the amount of work that needed done, so some of us spent a lot of time just sitting around. It’s really quite a shame, but there’s little to be done about it, especially once you’re already at the site. My hope is that there are other jobs lined up for us later in the week, otherwise, I think that most of the students will get very discouraged by the experience.

I haven’t had a chance to upload any photos, yet. Maybe later this evening after dinner.

We left Carlisle at 4:30PM on Friday, on our way to Dulac, Louisiana. The convoy consisted of one large passenger van, three mini-vans and one truck with a trailer. Since the passenger van is a rental, it can only be driven by those over 25, of which there are four of us, so that pretty much set where I was going to be for most of the trip. It’s been nice getting to know some of the people on the trip on the way down. On the last trip, I took the first shift in the truck with Michael, which cut down on some of that interaction.

I drove from about 10:30 to 3:00 or so, which worked out pretty well for me. Since I don’t normally have caffeine anymore, I was able to get a cup of coffee to keep me going through that time. Of course that made me have to pee more, which led to an awkward “road side pit stop”.  All in all, though, the drive was largely uneventful, and we arrived in Dulac at 4:00PM, eastern time, so the trip took 23.5 hours.

We are staying at a community center which seems to have been hosting relief workers for some time, now. There are two rooms setup with bunk beds, and when we arrived there were sheets on each bed, although they are short on pillows (I, along with most others in our group, have my own). It’s a little weird, because there are other groups sharing the space with us. A church group from California arrived early last night, and there was some confusion because there weren’t enough beds for the women. The rooms are to be segregated, but that rule has apparently been broken for them. The rest of the community center includes a gymnasium and some other small rooms and kitchen. Our group will be making its own meals in the Church’s kitchen across the street.

Last night we all decompressed and hung out around the center. The trip leaders drove to the next big town, about half an hour away, to get supplies for dinner. The local grocery store was practically destroyed in the hurricane, and hasn’t re-opened yet. We had a nice spaghetti dinner and a brief meeting before going to bed.

Right now I’m using the Verizon internet access through my Blackberry, but apparently they do have wireless available, although I need to find the “station manager” to get the password. Hopefully I’ll be able to get that at church this morning and then upload some photos after we return from New Orleans tonight.

I setup a wiki at wiki.gburg.net. I’m working with someone that is more involved with the Battle of Gettysburg community in the hopes of getting a decent user base together for the website. I should also probably contact some professors in the area (specifically at Gettysburg College) to see if they might be interested in using it as part of their course work. I know from experience that the only way a website like this will work is if there is a real community around it to sustain it.

As part of setting it up, I wrote a PHP script to create individual pages based on a spreadsheet that I have of the monuments on the Battlefield. Mediawiki doesn’t have the ability to import generic pages, so I wrote the script to take data from the spreadsheet (in comma separated value form) and create the XML document style that Mediawiki expects to import. It took a couple of attempts to get it right, but in the end, I was able to import the document and all of the pages were created.

I also installed the Google Maps extension for Mediawiki, which allows you to put a map on wiki pages. The spreadsheet that I have of the monuments includes GPS coordinates for about 150 monuments. For those monuments I included the code for the Google Maps extension, and their pages now display a map with a marker showing their location!

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