Susan Pratt
FCBA cyclist

Today  was magnificent.  Yes, our shirt says we bike, speak and build.  We have been biking some of the most beautiful and challenging routes I have ever been on for the past six days and speaking at some of the churches.  Yet, this day, we did our first of many builds.  It started out with two very generous gestures. John Tallman picked us from the school in a stately green Fort Sherman bus.  He drove us to the nearest McDonalds (in Kellogg), where McDonalds treated all thirty four cyclists and crew to breakfast.  There we met two new members of our group, Caleb Hopwood and Jim McCracken. Caleb will be here this weekend and Jim will be riding with us for the week. 

All satiated, we continued on to Darnell Kriederman’s home.  There was no time for rest.  We divided up into four teams: painters, roofers, sheet-rockers and insulators.  Ten of our crew painted the inside of Darnell’s house, while the other teams put up sheetrock in her basement, put on a new roof on her shed and put insulation and OSB on the exterior of her house.  With an extraordinary amount of teamwork, we accomplished our tasks and more.  We even were able to install a couple of windows.  I had so much fun.  I ended on the top of a metal roof nailing studs in order to support the insulation and the OSB.  Because the roof was wet from rain, I had the opportunity of a lifetime ... to slide down the roof, but managed to stop myself before falling off the edge.