Building Bleachers

Last Friday was the annual volunteer day at work for a girl scout camp up in the mountains. It's always one of my favorite things to do at the end of each summer. The camp is about an hour's drive, and it's situated right at the edge of Rocky Mountain National Park. I've been 6 or 7 years now, and the weather is usually pretty beautiful. The leaves on the aspens are usually just beginning to turn. This year, however, things were a little different. For starters, it was only about 45 or 50 degrees. Usually it's in the 70's. And of course it was raining. I'm amazed whenever I go into the mountains at how quickly the weather can change. Over the course of the time we were there, the weather literally changed from rain to overcast to sun and back again about 3 times. Funny stuff.

One of the things that makes this volunteer day so fun for me is the chance to build things. I always sign up for the construction projects; they're the most fun. When you get a bunch of IT geeks trying to build real stuff as opposed to the virtual stuff they spend most of their time building, it can be quite comical. This year we built bleachers to go near a horse arena. All we had to go off was a hard-to-read plan that had been copied blurry. The plan wasn't that good anyway, so we added a few of our own ideas to the project. I have to say, though it took us quite a while to actually get started (and more than one "oh no, let's do that again" moments, the two bleachers we made actually turned out quite well. Since we were concerned that the original design wouldn't support all the weight needed, our additions ensured that there wasn't anyone who could sit on these guys and break em.


The final product. What's a perfect day when you can be in the mountains using power tools?