Staple Guns and Flat Tires

On the Habitat build site with Rotaract

Every Bike & Builder is required to do at least 10 hours of sweat equity on an affordable housing construction site before their trip, so this weekend I had my first build day with Habitat for Humanity of Missoula. They squeezed me in for a morning shift with a group called Rotaract, a Rotary-sponsored service club for young adults. The group of UM college students had recently completed a month of “flocking” – covering people's front yards with plastic pink flamingos – to raise money for the Make-A-Wish Foundation, and they did not hesitate to welcome me into their own flock.

The house all wrapped up in Weathermate

After a brief safety spiel (summary: don’t do a job that makes you uncomfortable, wear a hard hat when working under someone) we broke into smaller groups to complete two projects – constructing railings for the second floor build operation and wrapping the house with weather guard. I opted for the latter (pun intended), which entailed wrapping the house “nice and tight like a Mother’s Day present,” as the site manager described it. I got to spend a fair amount of my time on a ladder swinging a heavy-duty staple gun hammer tacker, a tool that would make my office tasks a lot more exciting. I became very familiar with un-jamming the staple guns with a pair of pliers, a frequent occurrence that slowed our progress a bit. Nonetheless, by lunchtime we had wrapped all but one section of one side of the house.

In addition to meeting the Rotaract group, I got to work side-by-side with two soon-to-be Habitat homeowners, including the one whose house we were building. A teacher and mother of two, her previous rental unit had been rendered unlivable in the Missoula avalanche this February that buried three people and took one person’s life. She had been accepted into the program before the avalanche, which proved to be quite fortunate for her and her children. I’ll be building with Habitat again in late May and am hoping it will be at the same site so I can witness the progress on the house. I hadn’t been on a home construction site since a college service trip to the Gulf Coast after Katrina, and I found the experience to be just as rewarding and enjoyable as I remembered and hoped for.

Flat tire fail

After the build, I joined up with a former Bike & Build leader named Liz who was in town for the weekend and totally DTR (Down To Ride). In fact, she was the alumni who I did my alumni interview with when I was going through the leader application process. Planning to ride 65 miles, Liz and I headed down the Bitterroot bike path on a perfectly warm, calm and overcast afternoon. Just a few miles short of our turnaround point, I blew a flat and found a tack stuck through my tire and puncturing my tube. No big deal – had I not accidentally left my spare tube and patch kit in a different bag in my car. That’s something I’ll only do once. I hopped on the good bike and rode 8 miles down to the nearest town with a store that had spare tubes. After hitchhiking a ride with a lovely woman who let me throw my bike in the back of her truck, I arrived triumphantly back at the spot where Liz waited with my bike. Then I realized I had bought the wrong size tube and we were back at square one. Also a mistake I'll only make once. With a two-hour ride back to the car and daylight dwindling, I ended up calling my friend Leah to come rescue us. While we waited, Liz and I chatted about all things Bike & Build, and I found the experience to be good practice for the summer ahead – be prepared for anything, stay cool when stuff goes wrong, and for god sake carry a spare tube.