Full week at CHRPA

I have succeeded in completely a full week at CHRPA, and by full week I mean four days haha! I was excited to see how it would feel getting through a full week because my last week I only had to work two days. My first day went well, fixing coolers and building a stand for a cooler as well. Then Tuesday became quite a challenging day as me and Dan, an ex-VSer, got assigned to putting on a 42 foot metal roof on a mobile home. CHRPA usually doesn't do a whole lot of new roofing and 42 feet was a large venture. The roll of metal was 42 feet by 15 feet and it weighed at least 500 pounds so it was quite interesting getting it up onto the roof itself. The task was challenging but also exciting and one that keeps you busy so the hours went by quickly. Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on how you look at it, a thunder and lightning storm rolled in so we had to get off the roof, ending a bit earlier and before we were able to complete the job. The next day Dan and Amy went back to the site to finish up, while I went with another Dan to learn how to plumb gas lines. In those two days we re-plumbed a guy's entire house since there were so many leaks inside we ended up putting in all brand new pipes. We were hoping that all we would have to do is change out one or two pipes inside and only have to plumb the outside lines to the meter but it turned out to be a bigger job than first expected. It was fun for me though because it gave me more time to learn about plumbing, cutting pipe, regulations on gas lines, sealing connections and I also wasn't the one in the attic crawl space in 100 degree weather trying to put 50 foot pipes together haha. As always, I enjoyed ice cream at the end of the day and it felt so good for it to be the weekend already on Thursday night.

During the week not a lot happens in the evenings. Everyone is usually pretty worn out from their day and we all get up early so bed time seems to be around 10 or 10:30. I'm usually the last one up and I'm still in bed before 11 most nights. We had our first week of chores and house meals so that was fun to start getting into the routine of house matters. I had to sweep, mop and vacuum which is by far the worst chore but since I have Friday off, it didn't seem so bad. My night for cooking a meal is Tuesday and I decided to make stacked veggie quesodillas which my mom has so lovingly made for dinner multiple times so I knew how to make it and it was an easy first dinner. I'm not sure if I have mentioned this before but one of my housemates, Audra, is a vegetarian who also doesn't eat a lot of dairy, and meat is also really expensive to so practice living simply and frugally we don't eat meat much. In reality, we don't buy meat ever, but meat is still somewhat common in my diet because when we go over to a place for dinner they usually cook meat and sometimes we get the left overs too. So far it has been fun and interesting living without meat as a main source of calories and food and I'm interested to see how it continues to feel throughout the year. The only thing I'm worried about is if and when I get more active if I can sustain my large bodies need to energy without eating meat. I can't wait to find out.

Last night we had a little get together with four Jesuit volunteers who are all new to Tucson. It's actually the first year the Jesuit volunteer organization has had a Tucson unit so it was fun for Amy and Audra to have more people to invite into the "Volunteer circle" as last year they got together with the Presbyterian unit once and a while. It seems like there will be a large group this year as we will have us five, the four Jesuits, five Presbyterians, and one other group called ACer's which I don't know what it stands for. We have fun acronyms: MVSer's, JVC'ers, YAVer's and ACer's. Don't ask me what they all stand for.

Yesterday me and Amy, with our day off, went to a couple cool places that are a integral part of VS life. First, we went to the food bank community store or something, I don't know the exact name but because Audra works there, we get to shop there and get any food they have out free. It's pretty awesome and most of the time they have good stuff that helps us cook daily. It's not a huge selection so you can never guarantee you'll get something you need but it's a great place to stock our shelves. It's pretty awesome that it's free too and so because we have that which not a lot of other VS houses have, we make it a point to not spend all our food budget so it can go back to MVS and put into other houses funds since places like New York City have a bit of a tougher time getting affordable food. The second place we went was to BICAS, which is Bicycle Inter-Community Art and Salvage. It's this really awesome community bike store that's in the basement of a art studio downtown and it's full of bikes, parts, people and bike art. Amy volunteers there on Sunday during specific open house hours for women and transgenders. I'm definitely going to start going there, probably on Friday, and volunteering while also learning about bikes since that was a main goal of mine for this year. I talked to someone who said just come on down, say you're here to volunteer and do work-trade and I'll learn by watching while also learning on the fly. It seems a little daunting right now to just dive in since I don't have a ton of confidence in my bike mechanic skills but I also really look forward to that form of learning since it's the best and fastest way for me to learn. I can't wait to go in next week and see what it's like.

This weekend is packed full of activities so before I know it's going to be Monday but that's ok because time flies when you're having fun. Today we are having a work day as a house and doing some yard work, and other non-chore related clean up jobs that need to get done to make our house a bit nicer. Then we are going to Dan's house, another Dan an ex-Vser who is throwing a little party for starting school. Then tomorrow it's ultimate frisbee at 8, breakfast and then going back up into the Catalina's for a hike for Kristina's, an ex-Vser who still works at CHRPA, birthday. I'm excited for all the festivities and also look forward to next weekend which is Labor Day, which means no work on Monday which means a four day weekend for us CHRPA folks which means we might go backpacking! We talked about it at work on Thursday and I hope people were serious because I really want to go. We'll just have to wait and see.

Cheers, Daniel

(P.S. thanks for the card Leon, Wanda and Jalisa I got it yesterday and it made me miss you guys and Oregon.)

First Weekend in Tucson

So my first weekend in Tucson was an exciting one, we went camping up at Mt. Lemmon at a place called Spencer Canyon. It was a fun drive up the Catalina's where you gain about four thousand feet in elevation in about 20 miles. We had an old Dodge van and we were all a bit skeptical if it could make the trip up to the top but the sweet baby made it fine. We left early... kind of early on Saturday morning, and got up to the campsite around noon. The campsite was pretty interesting, it was a different sort of campground set up then I was used to. The sites were scattered haphazardly throughout the uneven terrain and then people either used miny parking lots or just parked along the road and walked down to the site. Different, but it's Arizona, a lot of things are different, ha.

The really awesome thing about the Catalina's is that because it's so much higher than Tucson, the climate and terrain is way different. There is actually a lot of trees and wilderness along with the temperature dropping at least 20 degrees. A lot of people say it reminds them of Colorado...I wasn't quite that convinced as I still felt like I was in Arizona but it was a very welcoming feel coming from Oregon.

Driving up the mountain we realized that we really did not plan ahead much in terms of spending our time since we did not bring any games or plans for activities. After arriving and setting up, we ate some lunch and brainstormed about what to do for the next 8 hours. We came up with driving up a little further along the road where there is a cool town called Summerhaven at the top of Mt. Lemmon and then a hike on our way back. Summerhaven was a small and interesting town, with kleptic gift shops and a couple cool restaurants it seemed more of a summer retreat then a tourist hot spot. Even so, it was still fun to explore and walk around. They have music on the mountain every Sunday in the afternoons during the summer so we plan on going back up there to see that sometime soon.

Heading back we decided on a hike trail head called Sunset Trail. It seemed intriguing enough and was on the Tucson side of the ridge so I hoped to be able to get a good look down into the valley. At first I was bit disheartened because the first half mile of the hike was walking along driveways of lodges, but eventually it turned off and actually felt like a hike in the woods. We decided to do about a four mile round trip hike ending at what was called Murphy's Gulch, which we were all excited about because you don't often get to see running water in Tucson. The hike was great even though I was in my vans which I would not really recommend for hiking, although climbing on rocks they almost seemed to double as mountain climbing shoes haha. Getting to the gulch at the end of the hike was amazing and it was literally like a grown ups play ground to me, water, big rocks everywhere, hills and trees, I obviously went exploring wherever something interesting met my eye. As I mentioned before I was hoping to get a look at the valley so I went up, as a lot of you know, I like going up, always going up to the highest point I can see. So I went on an adventure, going up to tallest peak I could see. Once I got there....disappointment ha, too many trees and more ridges. The only view I got was looking the other way to an opposite ridge with super sweet houses on top. Check my Flickr to see a couple more photos of the trek.

Getting back to the campsite I started a fire in preparations for dinner: tin foil dinners, yummy. We ate dinner, talked about house chores etc. and bonded (the point of the trip) ha. We filled the after dinner hours with talks of MVS, the house and random stories that would always pop up. Once it was dark, we began getting cravings for s'mores so it was time to break em out. We had about 10 to 15 minutes of good roasting time before ominous clouds began rolling in and it started to sprinkle. The sprinkling turned into dripping, dripping turned into raining, raining turned into pouring at which we decided to retreat to the tent, then the pouring turned into drenching, and finally the drenching turned into a full fledged thunder and lightning torrential storm. It was more a two season tent haha. It was definitely some of the loudest thunder I've heard in a while and the lightning felt like a camera flash going off two feet in front of my face. Though it was really fun for me to be in a lightning storm in the woods at dark inside a tent, the downside was that the tent we were in was not a four seasons tent. So it resulted in us contemplating whether to just pack up camp and spring for the van, I wanted to pull it out though and I was confident the rain would stop eventually. Thankfully I was tired enough to fall asleep on a damp floor in too small of a sleeping bag without a sleeping pad and thankfully it didn't rain all night. But though I was able to fall asleep, I definitely was not able to sleep very well. The bottom of my bag got fully soaked and so my bag went from too short to way way too short. I ended up pulling off the fetal position all night to keep my feet from getting cold and wet and somehow was able to make it until light without freaking out or having a nervous break down ha. Once it was light, I got out went to the van, laid back the seat, turned on the heat and breathed in the peace and calm of relaxation. It only took about 15 minutes for the rest of the crew to join me haha. We decided to break down camp and head home for a warm breakfast, showers, and real beds.

This Sunday has thus been spent laying around the house, and the pool, napping, snacking and doing just about anything we want since we've been up since 6 am. We all plan on going to bed early tonight and I definitely am excited about my own bed since I didn't nap at all today. It has truly been a lazy Sunday, but I have fully enjoyed it. Though the weekend camping trip was a bit of disaster, I had really good time. I always enjoy adversity, if nothing goes wrong when you go camping then it's boring, and this camping trip was by no means boring. Overall, my first weekend in Tucson was swell and it was fun to get to know my roomies better and to get out in the wild. I'm looking forward to my first full week of CHRPA and all the new things I'll learn. We also figured out a cooking schedule so I'm excited for my first house dinner come Tuesday night. I can believe I haven't even been here a whole week yet and it seems like so many things have happened already. Hope all is well with everyone reading this, I think of you often.

Daniel

Post #2

You want to hear the best thing about working for CHRPA? Yeah that's right, I get Friday's off...Oh and we get ice cream everyday after work. With those two perks I don't know if I'll ever be able to leave. So with two days down I have officially fixed a large section of leaking roof, 2 water coolers, repaired the floor of a water heater, put in a new section of floor in a mobile home and fixed the handles on a shower. I can truthfully say I have already learned a lot, sweated a lot, drank a lot, and am fully sore throughout my body. I could not ask for a better time.

Eventually with my day off I'm looking to volunteer somewhere else, hopefully at a bike shop or maybe a soccer organization but I'm giving myself a few weeks to get settled in and find some connections. Today's rest was definitely welcomed and I have enjoyed sleeping in, writing some emails, reading and will probably head to the pool in a bit.

The first weekend should be a fun one since we are going up to Mt. Lemon in the Catalina's and camping. I can't wait for that and will be sure to write up a little something when I get back. For now, I couldn't help but post a little something more about CHRPA and the great time I'm having. I think right now I have a giddy addiction to blogging and to all the new things happening in this new and exciting place so my entries may be pretty frequent. But don't get used to it as I'm sure the excitement of writing on a blog will wear off and I will become accustomed to Tucson making me more busy and everything feel less new.

As for now, I'm enjoying my time fully and though I do miss the feeling of going back to Goshen, (not school), I'm glad I'm in Tucson. I have heard soccer is a pretty popular sport round here so once I find out some more and let the weather cool off a bit I am excited to get involved in some sort of league or pick up schedule. For now, people from the church play ultimate frisbee every morning before church on Sunday so I look forward to joining in. Wish you all the best and I think of everyone often.

Cheers, Ralphie

First Days in the Desert

So I have arrived in Tucson, Arizona! Finally, my wait is over and my MVS has officially started. I flew in from Goshen on Monday night and got picked up by two of my roommates, Amy & Ana and my leader Sue. I had already met Ana in San Antonio as both of us are the only first year VSers in Tucson this year. It was nice meeting Amy and Sue after talking on the phone and email throughout this past summer. Upon arrival at the VS house, I met my third roommate Audra. Currently it is only us four in the house as the fifth roommate and final woman Miriam is not coming until late September. All the girls are super swell and we are getting along quite well for it being only my third day in town. Both Amy and Audra are graduates of Goshen so it is no surprise we mesh well. The night I got in, I was initiated in not just the house but also our "community pool" as the girls took me swimming at a neighbor's pool who lives within walking distance and lets us use it anytime. I could not have asked for a better first night then cooling off in a sweet pool, under the stars while relaxing after a long day of traveling.

Thankfully, Sue and CHRPA gave me Tuesday off so I was able to sleep in a bit, get my room situated and unpack my two suitcases of clothes. Sue and her husband Mark then took me out to a Mexican lunch that was delicious and overly filling. We got to know each other a little better and I also got to learn some good things to know about VS and hear about our schedule and the really awesome things we'll be doing throughout this year. The rest of the afternoon I spent with Ana because she does not start work until next Monday. We drove into downtown, I saw some of University of Arizona's campus, went to a super cool bookstore, checked out a bike shop and walked around a main street called 4th Avenue. Just a step below NYC's 5th Avenue I'd like to think ha. I got a bike map and heard about some community rides that I am definitely interested in checking out. I am currently in the process of deciding if I want to ship my touring bike, or the single speed I built this summer. It's quite the pickle but I'm hoping to salt it soon.

Today, Wednesday, was my first day of work. It continues to feel strange that everything I do, or experience I will be doing or experiencing for an entire year. Being around the house, or being at work it is going to take a while for me to fully realize that this is not just a week long service project or a month long stay but a long term residency. At least long term to me, I do know a year is not actually not that long. But today was my first day at CHRPA and I met all the co-workers, majority of who are ex-VSers. Amy works at CHRPA too as well as Miriam when she comes, but me and Amy went over at 7 am in the morning to start the day. We start at 7 am in the summer to stay out of the heat a bit, but once fall/winter comes around we move back to 8 am. I my first day was with Dan, a former VSer and we spent all fixing a leaky roof and broken water cooler. It was hot, sweaty and tough work but I could not have had a better time. I drank probably 7 or 8 quarts of water, and it still seemed difficult to stay ahead of my thirst. It was a long first day, but I had a good time, learned a lot and also got to know Tucson better as we drive a lot to get to the houses and hardware stores.

Now, some things you may be wondering, as I did when I got here too. First, why is the blog called Ralphie in Tucson? Well, it all started in San Antonio when the leaders handed out name tags to help us all get to know each other and me, who likes to be unique and there being four Daniels, wanted to create, jokingly, a new name for myself. Hence, the name Ralphie was manifested. It was fun for the week as most people already knew my name to be Daniel, but some enjoyed the joke calling me Ralphie. Fast forward to today, my first day of work, and at CHRPA there are two Daniels, both who are older and have worked there longer so I was asked if there was something else I'd like to be called. And what did I say? Yep, Ralphie is what I said and so from now on I am known as Ralphie at CHRPA and other random spots around Tucson. We will just have to wait and see how far it spreads. Another thing you need to know is that a water cooler is what people use down here as make shift air conditioners. It takes water, soaks filters with it, then blows air through it, naturally cooling the air and then cooling a house. The downside to this fairly cool idea is that they mix water, metal and electricity together so they can be a bit dangerous while also being quite a high maintenance product.

I'm sure there are many other questions people may have about my time here, Tucson, my job or other things I can't even think of so please let me know what they are and I can answer them. I put my email and address over on the right below my picture and "About Me". If you have a quick question or just a small inquiry I'm pretty sure you can comment on this post, otherwise feel free to email me.

Ralphie in Tucson, spread the word.