Alabama thread!

The minimax Silverado will be more fun though

 

My dad grew up in Clanton and my mom in Jemison. My folks just moved back about 6yrs ago when my dad retired. And yes, Mark lives off a dirt road. We get to his house from the back road that goes from 31 in Clanton(Wayside Baptist church) to Thorsby(comes up by the high school). You turn left right there at the church in the big field where they use to fly radio controlled airplanes and it's down there a stretch.

 

You boys are too polite and spry in the morning...so with that said...

 

Well, it's technically my "night" time

 

I've done garage door work for Mark

 

You get a pass then, haha.


Baby Bamatoy update. We went to baby doc yesterday, wifey is just over 37 weeks today and everything is looking normal..(whatever the hell that means). I thought the sleepless nights happened AFTER the baby got here, not the weeks before AND when baby arrives! Wife has been a trooper through it all though. Just started to really swell and become that truly miserable preggo. Still looking on schedule for an early June delivery as of now but a real late May baby is still possible. Anyway, ready for baby girl to get here to at least give me an excuse for no sleep nights!

 

I've been super impressed with his work and price. If I can't find someone local, I have no problem continuing to give him my business.

 

Anyone interested in a Glock 22? My baby hands don't work well on double stack guns and I am just wanting something different. Would love to trade (+ a little cash maybe) for one of the entry level ARs (S&W, DPMS, etc)

 

Morning gentlemen!




In @gixxerphil case, Evening sir!



I haven't heard back from the welder yet but I'll let you know when I do

 

Ok, Haiti Post #2. Sorry for the delay guys.

So you've seen the pictures and the information from our trip getting to our compound in Haiti. Now I will start with how our week went and what we did.

That afternoon when we arrived at the compound we took a walk outside of the walls to go see some of the area and where we would be building the house. A couple of random pictures of the area.


This is a mausoleum for the Haitians:


A mud/stick home:


You can see the newly poured concrete pad in this photo where we would be putting the new house. The family was currently living in the little home beside it, but they were only being allowed to live there temporarily and needed to get out, hence why we were building them a home. The white structure behind used to be the outhouse but they now use it as a trash burning pit. This picture was actually taken day 2 when we started moving the panels over as you can see the truck on the right side with Buddy and Bobby unloading. The Haitian by the trees is Wilking and he helped us build the house.


Monday night when we were hanging out in the compound we came up with a plan of action on how to handle doing the building and sort of learned what everyone's strengths/weaknesses are (like I can run a skillsaw like a boss, but don't expect me to get on a ladder lol). The weather was perfect, usually around 75 degrees with about 15mph winds at night and I swear with the fan right at the head of my bed I slept like a baby. Best sleep that first night than I've even had at home in weeks, it was crazy.

Wake up Tuesday morning, and we eat breakfast at 8am and start work at 9am. This is just unheard of for me since I'm a 5:30am'er back home. So I ended up waking up each morning about 530 or 6 and having to make myself go back to sleep. For breakfast if I remember correctly on day one we had what I called "Omelet Casserole", basically just omelets that looked like they were just mashed up, bacon, and juice. We also had coffee each morning.
Can't remember if I posted this picture but this was the meeting/eating area:



At 9am we started building. I had assumed before the trip we would be doing a cinder block building, but it was actually made out of plywood and 2x4s. Our plan was to pre-fab the wall panels at the compound, and then transport them to the house site and assemble the house there. Here are some photos of us building the pre-fab panels. The panels were 4' by 8' with the front of the house having an additional 1' of height to provide a sloped roof. The house dimensions are 12' by 20'.



This is one of 3 of the window panels we built, we made the windows 2' x 3'.




Some of the women on the medical team wanted to learn to use a nail gun so we let them join in on the fun.



Wednesday we took the panels and tools over and started assembling. The wind was so bad we had to use boards across the top to keep them from falling over.


Me and Jacob cheesing while everyone else worked.


You can see the slope of the side walls in this photo, and also Jacob awkwardly in the window.



Buddy wanted a sexy photo for his wife so he posed for the camera. You can see the louvers we actually built into the front wall above him. They have no ventilation/airflow or anything so we thought these were a good idea for some additional natural airflow.




Wednesday concluded with us having all the wall panels up and attached to each other, and also squared up PERFECTLY on the concrete pad (meaning the inside corner to corner dimensions were exactly the same, never in a million years would I have bet that would happen). We also had all of the panels attached to the concrete pad.

I snagged a picture that night with Rosie, she was Ricardo's daughter. Ricardo is the one that runs the compound for Joe.

 

Since I chose not to tag you while you were gone.....(good guy right here, you're welcome)

@stronghammer that is good stuff brother! I wish I could afford to do stuff like that. As been said before, everyone needs to do something like that at least once just to see how good we really have it. Proud of you for this endeavor!

 

Haiti Post #3.

Before moving on to Thursday's events, I'll talk a little about how some other stuff went.

For lunch everyday we had sandwiches, with ham, turkey, bologna, mayo, cheese, lettuce, tomato, etc. We had pringles for a side item, and also a Haitian specialty Pikliz, pronounced pick-leez. Basically, it's spicy coleslaw. I don't even eat coleslaw back home, save that crap for the rabbits, but pickliz is delicious, and spicy as hell.

For dinner we had a variety of items. We had spaghetti, we had cheeseburgers, we had grilled chicken. We had pancakes for breakfast 2 days. We ate as good as I do back home! I thought I would lose a couple pounds but I probably put some on! Joe pays them well to run the compound and cook and such so they are able to go to the nicer grocery stores and buy food that most Haitians don't have access to.

We were told the average daily wage rate for Haitians is 2$ a day. To give you an example of something in the grocery stores, the eggs were about $6.50/dozen. This is why they are forced to buy from the markets on the streetsides and just whatever food they can get from each other.

At night we played a lot of cards, from Rook to Shanghai Rummy to BS. We played different team building games. Ricardo enjoyed playing me in Chess because he couldn't seem to find a way to beat me, and he liked learning. We also had a short 5-10 minute devotional each night. The best part was always just having conversation with the locals and learning more and more about them. I won't list everything I learned, but if you have any questions let me know and I'll answer if I can.


On to Thursday. So we took a day off from building because the medical crew was actually traveling to a children's home about 2 hours away to provide medical attention and they needed us guys for crowd control. We were estimating about 120 to be there to receive medical attention.

Here is where we ran the clinic that day:



We had an in-patient table setup, 3 doctor/nurse practitioner stations, and a pharmacy (the elevated portion). I ended up working in the pharmacy with the women there since at one time I was a pharmacy technician. Each area had translators that helped us accomplish the tasks. The estimated 120 ended up being 190 patients that day. It was amazing.

This is the bus we had to have to get all of us to the clinic and man it rode like a dang bouncy castle. I got motion sickness that morning.


That was all we did Thursday so here are a few more site seeing photos that I don't remember exactly when I took them.

This is where we would be having church on Sunday.




Random donkey tied to a tree with homemade saddle. Don't ask questions about animals please, they definitely don't get treated as well as they do in the USA.


These are a few pictures of the wealthier homes in the area. We never found out how much it would cost but the Haitians we worked with told us it cost more money than they would ever see. These homes had electricity, plumbing, and real windows. Not sure about A/C.

 

I did notice that you didn't do that, and you move up to the top of my list just for that haha!

Thank you man, I was thankful to have the opportunity and so glad I got to experience all that I did. Pictures and words do not do it justice.

 

@stronghammer thats some great stuff. Been sharing with my son.

 

thank you! glad you guys are enjoying it. it really was quite the blessing and such a joy to be a part of, I just wish I could share more than photos and words as they just don't do justice.

 

Still waiting for part 4 where like 100 people were introduced to "if it fitz it bakes"...

 

that part won't be coming.

 

Lost in translation? Ive checked my subtitles on a few videos and they are pretty close

 

I'm not promoting your YouTube in Haiti where most folks don't even have access to toilet paper.

 

I kid sir. You did well; im proud to call you the guy that started a youtube channel with me, provided a bit of inspiration for the name, did literally nothing else and immediately backed out when you found out i was semi serious... Brah hahaha