Life in Portland Area

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Alex goes to a private school, Portland Christian Elementary School (or just PC as they say, which confuses me as I think of computers when I hear PC). Here is a picture of the front of the school. It is a very prestigious school, but they do what they can to save money. They require parents to either contribute 10 hours of volunteer service per term or pay an additional fee. This term, Ryan, their maintenance guy called and asked if I could help with their playground. It had been a very slow week for me as I only worked 15 hours so I agreed.
The week before I only got 24.5 hours and applied for unemployment. It turns out that if I work less than about 19 hours I qualify for unemployment. It is a sliding scale such that I get $189 if I have no work and somewhat less the more I work (but my benefits last longer than the basic 13 weeks). The first week of unemployment (if you qualify, which is under 19 hours for me), you don't get anything, so working 15 hours was pretty good. Got me qualified without much under $189, my new minimum weekly pay. The first thing we did was dig out the old soggy dirt around the playground equipment. We dug down about a foot.
That was a lot of work, but we used a tractor with front end loader to help. Here is a short video (5 seconds, about 120K, 40 second to download) of the tractor 'digging' up dirt.
We took the dirt to a fenced in area on the property where they used to have a playground for very young kids. It is not in use now, so we just left the soggy mud there.
Then we put down 'cloth' to keep the drainage from filling with dirt and put drainage pipes into the deeper ditches we dug. There were 11 parents, one older boy, and the maintenance person from the school. The parent in the green coat was the only woman. Amongst other things, she drove the dump truck and trailer with the gravel and, later, chipped wood.
Here is the dump truck and trailer that she drove with the gravel in it. We worked on Saturday, January 31, 2004, and apparently there aren't a lot of places open for gravel on Saturday. So, she had to pick up the gravel at 4:30AM. Yikes. Her company, Tri-state, let her use the truck without fee (it seems) and she helped out on her day off.
She empied the trailer from the right of the picture two above, but almost got stuck. She had to dump the load about eight feet away from the area we dug out (to the right of the picture above). There were 12 inch trenches left by her tires. However, once the load in the trailer was dumped, she was able to get the truck and trailer out. The truck load she was able dump with trailer attached (and 'jack-knifed') from the other side (shown here). We spread the gravel around with a lot of help from the tractor.
Then we put down another layer of cloth down on top of the gravel (to keep the drainage area from filling with dirt again). They went and got more 'cloth' as the black cloth they had didn't quite cover the under layer. Everyone was getting quite sore and even my work as a mover left me ill prepared for a half day of shovelling. My arms were really aching (different motions than moving), but it was good exercise after a very light week. While we were putting down the top layer of cloth, the driver went and got wood chips. She got a double discount, one for her company, Tri-State, and another because we were a church school... The estimate had been for $26 a yard (down from $70 delivered) to $16. Wow.
She got back just before lunch arrived, delivered by a parent from MacDonald's. Yumm. We spread the wood chips under the equipment while the driver went back for another load (shown here) to spread around the edges. Then they let most of us go as there would be some delay before the second load of wood chips would be back and they could use the tractor to spread the wood chips around the edges. The tractor was a normal agricultural tractor (no accelerator, just a throttle for fixed engine speed and clutch with various gears). It was a little clunky, but got the job done. It was a tractor that belonged to the school (all of them, not just the elementary school), but was clearly for lawn use with shallow tread tires.
Early in June 2004, Nick and I were packing and loading an international shipment to Malaysia. I was driving one of our 26 feet straight trucks to the address which was off of Burnside, one of Portland's major thoroughfares. We had to park on a tiny side street up the hill from Burnside. So we came down this road and then turned off to the right (just beyond where Kevin is standing).
Then we went down this street, Osage, to park off to the side. I took me about eight tries to make the turn with Nick spotting for me. I had turned too soon so went back and forth to stay off the rocks by the fire hydrant.
There were several dump trucks going by as they had a backhoe digging out a basement for another building further up the hill. They knew to come up the hill rather than down the hill like I did so they had an easier turn.
After we had been there about an hour, a policeman spoke with Nick and asked for em to come out. The owner of this Subaru, just down the hill from the turn, had complained that we had backed his car and broken his side window. However, no one had actually seen us do it, his girlfriend had heard a crash and looked out to see us pulling away (according to him). However, Nick had seen the window was broken before we got there.
However, our truck could not have smashed out this window because as you can see, the side of the Subaru angles out several inches from the window where it was broken.
The truck we were driving had rubberized bumpers at just the height where his window was broken, but it is only about 2.5 inches out from the steel bumber which drops down another foot and a half. If the rubber bumper on our truck had hit the window the steel bumper would have creamed the whole side of his car below that.