Care to take a walk?

Well I just walked in from today's volunteer day #2 of 3, which started for me at 7.30am this morning when Lyngso delivered 800' of benderboard and 400 stakes about an hour and a half early... good job Emily texted me because I was still in bed. Ahem!

At 9am Kessel and Mauricio showed up to start operating the bobcat and the vibrating plate machines, and around 9.45am volunteers started showing up.

Happily Mike our contractor had carved a pathway 5' wide and 400' long for us, but we needed to bury our 6" wide benderboard in 3" of dirt on either side of the path, stake it in place, then 3" of decomposed granite.

Burying benderboard isn't easy when there's asphalt or rocks in the way, so at times we resorted to raising the middle of the path instead. And man, that was some heavy work...

Everyone plugged on cheerfully though - even Alejandro and his wife who drove up from Tijuana yesterday (!) and oh, just on their weekend getaway decided to spend several backbreaking hours working on a street park project run by people they don't know (!!!)  I was completely astounded by that when I found out. Who does things like that? You people are amazing.

I went to Center Hardware as we needed hammers, and they loaned us three. Then later on Paloma and her adorable baby went and got pizzas for us all to eat from Goat Hill Pizza - yay!  Great to get support from the neighboring businesses. DPW also loaned us loads of tools which was really helpful.

However, happily we ran out of decomposed granite and had to stop with about 140' of path still to make. I say "happily" because I for one am shattered!

The path ended up being quite curvy in places - at first I was disappointed but when the rocks go in as wheel stops, and the bio-retention cells are in (four parking-spot sized areas that poke into the street to catch storm water and slow traffic) you won't notice the irregularities, and anyway - straight lines are boring.

My deepest thanks to everyone who worked on this today: Matt, Rob, Paloma, Jim, Brittany, Jordan, Eddy, Miley, Jackie, Steve, Andrea, Alyssa, Bruce, Jerad, Bryce, Kenia, Gillian, Eliot, Justin, Jordan, Jessica, Maulik, Quinton, Kyle, Jonathan, Jeffrey, Ernest, Stanley, Leslie, Alejandro, Gina, Raymond, Kessel, Mauricio, James, Bruce, Rick, and anyone else I forgot: you are amazing!

P.S. Three things got left at the site - are they yours? Describe them and I'll get them back to you. A music player, a burgundy top, and a croissant. Actually, I ate the croissant so sorry if that was yours.  ;)