A day on the mountain

For our first spike project my team, Sun 1, was sent to Boulder Colorado. A lot of members call our house the Amerimansion, but it’s not that big when thirteen people are living in it. It’s an old frontier house bought by the Open Spaces and Mountain Parks. That’s who I’m working for this round. They are known for buying up land around Boulder to keep as is, instead of someone else buying it and building a huge house. They also go to farmers who have a lot of land and make purchase offers on it, but give them a good deal in return. For example, our house was bought by the Open Space program from the Eisenberg’s. They were an older couple who shortly passed away after everything was final. There are five bedrooms and three baths, so not too bad living compared to some other teams.

We are working for Open Spaces and Mountain Parks. Our sponsors are very fun to work with. It makes the days go by fast. Our primary job is clearing out ditches so water can flow easily. Some ditches go for about a mile long, but with thirteen people working together it gets done fast. The tools we use are loppers, little saws, and shovels. Chautauqua Mountain putting chopped down ponderosa pine branches into a wood chipper. About mid way I noticed an eight point buck running around with its mouth agape and grunting since it’s the rut. About a half hour later it a mule doe came bounding through the area with the buck right behind her. It’s always nice seeing the wildlife, although I’d rather be seeing a mountain lion, or elk haha. Something exciting instead of the usual deer. Our team cleared the open area pretty fast with the other three main workers. It wasn’t completely done, but we can finish it within another half days work.

Last weekend we went down to Pearl St. The architect who designed it also designed the commons in Ithaca. Pretty small world. My roommate and I got our picture taken with these two panda bears walking around haha. I have no idea why they were there, but our guess was some bored college students. The University of Colorado at Boulder is an amazing campus. That Sunday night we got a little bored and decided to play some house games. First up was twister, which got a little crazy. Then we did the limbo, I came in second haha. The final game was pin the tale on the donkey. Hard to believe we’re all 20-24 years old haha. I really like living in the house with everyone. I’m used to a big family and this is exactly what it’s like. I’m getting pretty excited to go home for Christmas to see everyone though.

Thanksgiving is Thursday and our sponsors supplied us with a ton of food. A lot of people in the office also baked us pies, and bought other supplies. It was very generous of them. Our team was invited up to Calwood to spend it with Christina’s team, Sun 4. It’s about a half hour from our house, and they have a huge kitchen and dining hall that will fit all of us better. So the plan is to take up all our food and prepare is there and stay the night. It’s going to be weird not having Thanksgiving with family, but I know I’ll remember this one for the rest of my life. Hopefully my pie turns out as good as moms :)