How Not to Relax

After bicycling 27 miles yesterday, I thought I would take Sunday off to just kick back, relax, and get up at 7 AM to go pour concrete at the farm.

A friend of mine, Jaime, who runs Everlasting Marks invited me out to see the pour, hoping that by playing on my interest in building construction to get some additional help. I accepted, and met her out there. Usually, I spend my entire time trying to keep kids focused on building tire walls and not killing each other with sledge hammers, but this time I didn't need to play leader. A small group of girl scouts and a few of their leaders/moms were out there, and everything was under control. They had adopted a few sections of wall and have been coming out every weekend to build it. These were some of the most industrious 13 year olds I've seen in awhile. They spent four hours mixing finish plaster and stuccoing around the cans and bottles, and then carefully wiping all the bottle and can ends clean.

While this was going on, I and another team lead put the formwork around the rebar sticking out of the foundation of what will become the next seven wall sections. Two contractors, Jim and Don from Hunter Contracting came out and braced the column formwork after leveling them. They come out from time to time to help with the more technical stuff like major foundation pours and installing and tying rebar.

After the girl scouts and the contractors went home around noon, a mom and her daughter stayed behind with Jaime and I to pour the columns. To be honest, I hate pouring concrete. It's messy, you end up inhaling or eating concrete dust, and surprise surprise it's really heavy stuff. I am not an upper body strength kind of guy, so hauling buckets of freshly mixed concrete and pouring them into the tops of columns by lifting them above head height was a bit of a challenge. How could I complain though? I'd volunteered for this, and besides, the 13 year old daughter was throwing 60 pound bags into the cement mixer.

It took about an hour to mix and pour the seven columns, and by the end, I was wiped, filthy, sweaty, bloody, with my hands full of cuts and splinters and irritated by the wet stucco and concrete. Vinegar will dilute the harmful effects of wet concrete, but its not much fun putting it on open wounds.