Levees

New Orleans build day #4
Some of us began the day with a rather unique opportunity.  We met up with Jamie Wine and Texas State Senator Rodney Ellis for a biking tour of NOLA bike infrastructure. We rolled around town and learned a lot about the different neighborhoods and parts of the city.  Jeremy is part of Bike Easy, a cycling advocacy group operating out of New Orleans. I wish I could have had much more time to talk with both about cycling and policy, but we needed to get back to the build site.  I  started out the day working with the last few bits of siding for the side of the house. We finished that pretty quickly, then moved on to unfinished bits of the roof. That lasted us until lunch. I planned on stopping by La tacoria de coyote, a taco truck on St. Claude, but I left my wallet up on the roof and didn't feel like getting it. Instead, I went with Sonja, Alyssa, Eddie, Coleman and a few others to check out the "make it right" community. This group of houses were sponsored by Brad Pitt and other donors. They all have crazy architecture which really interested me. We rode around a little bit in the area. The houses are right by where the Levees are that broke during the aftermath of the hurricane. we returned to the site, where we went back up onto the roof. We prepped the area, but there was no more siding left to put up, so we helped with the soffit on the front porch. We biked straight from the site to Global Green's headquarters in NOLA. They let us all take tours of a prototype house they created for the lower ninth ward. Only half of us could fit in at a time, so when we weren't touring we walked up the levee and looked out at the Mississippi river. The house was very interesting, but it seems cost prohibitive for such a poor area. We returned to Camp Hope where a delicious meal from P.F. Changs was waiting for us! We stuffed ourselves, then had our third family meeting. I love listening to everyone's highs and lows for the week. The majority of us had the same low; Monday night. People's highs were much more varied. I think mine was something about the 3 states in 3 days thing :) Anyways, it was late when we finished and we all went to bed.