So we’re all still alive out here… and a lot has happened since our last blog so I will try to bring us up to date. It all began about 2 weeks ago… The steel jig arrived on the flatbed from Birmingham on Tuesday (February 27th). The jig was used to brace the arches as we removed them from the church. I guess Wednesday could be nicknamed d-day because that is when everything started coming down. Much to our dismay, we were able to smoothly remove 2 arches in our first day with the help of a boom truck, crane, and two man lifts.. Thursday was an eventful day… in the wee hours of morning, 5 AM to be exact, we called the day and decided to work on other things besides the church due to the threat of tornadoes… some of us decided to weather the storm in Sub Rosa while others at Morissette House. We all made it for the record. It was back to work Friday, and we again sucessfully removed 2 arches. Come Monday, it was crunch time. We had set a goal for ourselves to have the rest of the church down by the end of the work day Tuesday before we left with Dick for our Architecture History trip to New Orleans Wednesday morning. You better believe we accomplished it. As of now, all 6 arches have been transported to the new site at Cahawba, all of the walls are down and the members have been loaded into the trailer. The shoring came out Monday and now all of us are at the Red Barn recovering from New Orleans. This week has brought all my friends back to the office to begin working on everything that must get done before we can start rebuilding the church. Eric and Erin are putting together assembly documents so that we will know how to put this thing back together one day; the crack auto cad team consists of John, Adam, Christine, Chris, and our ever faithful leader Jason. Golpar, Bill and the happy couple, Walker and Sarah are washing windows; Jamie, Candace, Cameron, and Nick Wickersham have disapeared to the site and no one knows what they are doing since they did not sign out and now everyone is mad at them. Frances and Nick Bishop are working on the model and designing the new wood connections. I have been contacting companies about Lexan today, scheduling the pick up of the port-a-potty, dumpster, and storage containers and other random mindless tasks. No one knows where Van is. Well, I guess that pretty much catches us up to speed. We are projecting that we will begin to rebuild the church the Monday we return from Spring Break, April 2nd. At that point we will have roughly 4 1/2 weeks to rebuild it which is completely realistic. Between the church, watercolor, our column drawing (which is due next Thursday), our paper, eating, thinking about running, and M & M drawings, we have still managed to have fun. So long..

This morning we met as a group to discuss how we are going to break up into groups for the rest of the semester to get everything accomplished. This was a long discussion to make sure we covered all aspects of the project and things we needed to prepare for the next meeting with Cahawba. After much conversation, we decided on eight major groups to divide into. Erin and I were chose to work on the design assembly directions. Chris, John, and Adam began work on the construction documents. The other groups were the connection details, working on windows, unloading members at the site, 3D-models, and the office. After the groups were decided, we all split up and began work on our specific tasks. Lots to do, so little time.

After an exciting week in New Orleans, we were all ready to get back to work. With the church down, we had a meeting first thing in the morning to figure out what needed to be done next. A few people went to the old site to take down the shoring, scaffolding-like structure that was supporting the arches. The other members of our group stayed in Newbern to wash the windows removed from the church, work on our powerpoint presentation, and work on autocad drawings of the church. Soon it will be time to start rebuilding the church on the new site!

The last day in New Orleans, Dick had arranged the option for us to go to the New Orleans Museum of Art. About half of the class attended the museum while most of the girls went to the French Quarter to go shopping on Magazine St. Sarah and I walked around the park near the museum and joined in on a game of bocce ball with a guy named Nick and another named Andy Ambrose (Son of the famed American historian, Stephen Ambrose) Afterwards everyone met back at the front steps of the museum and we gathered into the vans for the drive back to Newbern.

Our first day in New Orleans! We left around 8 in the morning for our five hour drive with many stops; so, maybe a seven hour drive. We stopped right outside New Orleans at, Catch of the Day, for the most amazing seafood and crawfish so we came back later in the week before we left. After lunch we drove around a little getting familiar with the French Quarter. Then, we were all supposed to head to our hotel, The Olivier House Hotel, but a few of us decided on accident to do some extra sight seeing. The van Nick was driving was following Dick’s van and decided to make an extra turn. Bill’s van that had Christine, Adam, Frances, Walker and Sarah followed in the wrong direction and ended up getting to the hotel an hour behind. Once we settled in after our adventure we went exploring around the French Quarter with Bill, who gave us a great tour. Then Bill took us out to dinner at The Marigny Brasserie. After dinner we all went out to different places; Erin, Eric, John, Christine, Fuller, Jamie and Chris’s brother went to sing karaoke at One Eyed Jack’s; while Adam and Chris stayed at the hotel. It was a night where everyone went out in New Orleans and had a good time.