Filed under: Zach | Tags: awesome, construction, habitat for humanity, Helping, kansas, lawrence, life, Road Trip, Travel, Video, Volunteerism
Today, as advertised, the Good Works Tour worked (as arranged by our host, David Baldwin) with the Lawrence, KS, branch of Habitat for Humanity, helping to finish up a house. The GWT spent most of the morning doing some light drywall work, and the afternoon working at the Habitat Re-Store, where Habitat sells materials that would otherwise be destroyed, as a fundraiser for the Habitat projects. We were fortunate enough to even meet the future owner of the home, who was volunteering on site.
In possibly related news, our next project will be building a house from the ground up using entirely recycled materials and little to no archetechtual experience. Though, if I’m lucky, the other dudes will let me use the plans for the house I designed in high school. It has a greenhouse!
Here’s the video from our ranch adventure in Montana. We work with power tools! And I get to stand on a roof! Dangerous!
Special thanks to the Baldwins for being great to us (and making one mean brisket — James & Tim), and to Ms. B for putting us in touch with her Kansas family.
Back in New Jersey in 8 days (Oh god),
- Wisedog
Filed under: Tim | Tags: ball of twine, crawker, Documentary, good works tour, kansas, lawrence, roadtrip, Volunteer
Today we drove from Boulder, Colorado to Lawrence, Kansas. A lot of people told us this would be our most boring drive, but we proved them wrong. How did accomplish this Sisyphean task you ask? Easy, we visited the world’s biggest ball of twine. And boy, was it big. Here’s a picture of how happy James was to at last meet the holy grail of twine.
Mmm twine
The best part of visiting the ball of Twine was finding it. It is located in the tiny town of Cawker, which is also home to the ‘Ball of Twine Inn’, and sidewalks painted with a trail of twine. We parked on the main street and went in search of our epic quarry, but found ourselves unable to locate it.
Of course we decided to ask the locals, here’s an excerpt from a conversation I had in a gift/antique shop.
Me: Hi, I’m trying to find your ball of twine.
Store Owner: Yep.
Me: … Umm. I’d like to know where your ball of twine is?
Store owner points the direction from which we had walked.
Apparently we had parked almost catercorner to this gargantuan landmark. Perhaps our minds weren’t ready for the bliss that is beholding the ball of twine, but you could definitely see it from our car.
After we laughed at what we had done we discussed what this meant about our navigation skills, visited the legend, then proceeded to Lawrence, where David and Jill Baldwin have graciously put us up. Tomorrow we Habitat for Humanity! Yes, some places are foolish enough to trust us with power tools.
One Love,
Tim
PS Kansas has people. Really. And flat land is impressive because of the big sky. GWT <3s Kansas.
