One reason for this web page is to share my experience at the Jimmy Carter Work Project with my family and friends.  The primary reason, however, is to thank my family and friends for their support, which made this experience possible.  In particular, my thanks go to Troy:  like most experiences, this one was made so much more valuable by sharing it with a friend.  But most of all, this is to thank my wonderful and amazing wife, Michelle.

The flight out was uneventful.  I arrived at 1:00, then waited at the airport for Troy's flight, which arrived on time at 2:30.  Volunteers in green Habitat shirts were everywhere at the airport, and were invariably friendly and helpful.  We took a shuttle to a parking lot, then a bus ride to the hotel - only the bus driver got lost!  We finally made it to the hotel by 4:30.  After checking in, we headed right out to the welcoming event at berth 87 of the port, since registration was supposed to close at 5:00.  We did get to register, even though we were late. Then we hung around at the Festival waiting for the event to start at 6:00.  While we were waiting, the LA Fireboat #2 gave us a show with about 10 water cannons all blasting at once.

Fireboat #2.                                                 Photo courtesy of Joe VanAndel.

    The ceremony was hosted by Paige Hemmis of the show "Extreme Makeover - Home Edition", who claimed to have learned her carpentry skills while working with Habitat.  She introduced Ricky Martin, who didn't sing or dance for us.  An executive from Citi (the bank) talked about how great Citi was for supporting Habitat.  Apparently, Citi employees have put in a combined quarter million volunteer hours with Habitat over the years, which is admittedly quite impressive.  Then they had a few politicians, including the LA mayor and a city councilwoman, as well as the head of Habitat Greater LA and a fellow from Habitat International.  Finally Jimmy Carter talked for a bit.  He told a few stories about previous builds, including the 42 people on a bus to New York for the first build in 1984, and how all 27 houses Habitat built in Miami survived a hurricane that wiped out the surrounding neighborhoods.  He also talked about 14,000 volunteers in the Philippines building 293 houses in a week, and how W bragged about going to the most dangerous place in the world (the DMZ in Korea) a few weeks after Jimmy finished building 8 houses there.

During the show, there were brief performances by a "special effects choir".  The first one was really fun, and was one they apparently did during the last Oscars.  They showed a video that was a collage of clips from familiar movies.  After watching and listening for a while, I began to wonder what the point was.  Then I realized that there was no soundtrack.  All the sound effects (trains, planes, cars, rockets, horses, machines, whatever) were being done by the choir, live.     By 8:00 we finally got dinner.  We ate with some of the folks who will be working on the same house, including the crew chief, Tom.  Actually, we have two crew chiefs, since we are working on a duplex, and the two chiefs decided to combine forces.  This build is a bit different than previous ones.  Because of the strict building codes and inspection requirements in LA (think earthquakes), they prebuilt the houses to a large extent and got them past the worst of the inspection process.  We will be roofing, siding, and painting mostly.

Opening Ceremony.

    On the bus in from the airport, we passed a street named Mesa, and I made a comment about how at least it wasn't redundantly named, referring to Table Mesa Street in Boulder.  The woman in the seat ahead of us made some acknowledging comment, and I wondered if the name Table Mesa might be more common that I had thought.  When we got to the hotel, we found out that she and her husband are from Boulder!  He works at NCAR.  Then we ran into them again at the event when we discovered that we are all working on the same house.  Funny coincidence, since there are apparently between two and three thousand volunteers involved

...on to Monday...