Yes, even though it has been a few weeks now since the Second Year Rural Studio term has ended…there is still one more thing that needs to be posted about all of our work. Our team, The Jackalopes, were finally able to create the long-awaited signage out at Perry Lakes Park just in time for the annual Pig Roast Tour.

While Cassidy stayed back in Newbern working on the Second Year semester video, the rest of our team,  John, Brett, Corey, and Matt all set out to build the sign under tight time constraints seeing as we had only a week to do it all. As we mentioned before, we chose not to use telephone poles afterall, making things considerably easier by not having to deal with setting foundations, giant augers, and massive utility poles. Instead we used two two-and-a-half foot thick trees which were coincidentally parallel to eachother on opposite sides of the road.

Originally we went out Monday morning with the optimistic mindset that we could knock the entire sign out in one day. What we didn’t take in to account is the difficulty of drilling through these huge trees 20 feet up in the air on step ladders. To make a long story short, after a thousand trips to the local hardware store and getting bits stuck in trees, it took us nearly two days to drill four holes. Once we had those holes drilled though, everything went a great deal faster. 

On Tuesday, after drilling the second pair of holes, we were able to raise and easily tighten the cables using a simple tool loaned to us by Alabama Power. Once the cables were up, everything was ready in preparation for attaching the letters. Wednesday everything went quite smoothly. With the ease of a manlift, we were able to attach the letters using our hose clamp and screw design, also using epoxy for extra security. After the letters were securely fastened, a quick tightening of the turnbuckles finished off the sign.

Finally, Perry Lakes Park has a sign!…two cables spanning across the road attached to two huge pine trees, suspending aluminum letters 20 feet in the air. Overall we feel the sign adds a great finishing touch to the park without taking away from the other projects within. If you’re ever in south Alabama and you’re touring St. Luke’s Church, don’t forget to also make your way over to Perry Lakes Park and check it all out!

 After a long but successful week putting up the arches, Team Mind Bullitz moved on to other tasks as this week progressed.  Monday was our day of rest, well sort of.  After the thirteen hour days pulled during Arches Week, we spent Monday morning preparing site plan ideas to show to the Cahawba committee at our bi-monthly meeting.  The day was productive and after a very intense meeting, some of our ideas (we hope!) will become a reality in the coming months.

On Tuesday, two members of the team returned to the church to wrap up some unfinished business with the arches (making wood blocks, putting bolts in, and getting a few new purlins made) and the rest of us began our very short time working at Perry Lakes. We spent Tuseday morning reparing a section of the wall below the beautiful kiosk built by fellow team Roadkill and then proceeded to discuss the best way to repair another section of wall that over the years has begun to sag. A trip or two to Marion Supply, and we were ready to begin! The plan was to pull the wall in using anchor points and cable.  We ended the day by pouring our concrete foundations and placing our bolts so that by Friday we could begin pulling the wall back in!

Wednesday and Thursday were spent with our beloved Professor Dick Hudgens building joggling boards and traveling to Columbus, Mississippi. Friday we were back to work at Perry Lakes! Another trip to Marion supply and we had the turnbuckles and i-bolts needed to tighten the wall.  We weren’t able to get all of it complete, but our hopes are that we can have it finished by Wednesday.

This semester has been equally rewarding and frustrating. After running into many problems with the arches, our hard work finally became visual as the arches were raised, and the church finally began looking like a church. It really was the culmination of a wonderful semester!  A change of scenery was much appreciated in the end, however..

After a long, successful week where we put up all the arches we have been working on getting everything ready for the roofing contractor that will be working this summer. We have also been working hard to have everything in tip-top shape for the annual Pig Roast.

Monday, we met at Red Barn and finalized the vestibule schematics for the Cahawba meeting. Meghan and Alex worked on the PowerPoint for Pig Roast. We packed up and headed to Selma for a 2 o’clock meeting with the Cahawba Advisory Board. After a long meeting, we got approval for the vestibule design. SUCCESS!

Tuesday, we went to the church and began working on placing scaffolding so that we could work on replacing and repairing the three top sills of the Vestry. We also had to place two additional intermediary columns to support the load. While Zane, Heather, and Delvin were completing the top sills, Meghan and David moved all the scaffolding from the mobile attic into the the permanent trailer to prepare for summer.

Wednesday-Thursday, Since we didn’t have class with Dick on Thursday of Arches week we got two class days this week.

Wednesday for Materials and Methods we began building our Joggling Boards out of found materials.

Friday, we began preparation for Pig Roast. We cleaned up the arches work site, loaded pallets in the Dually to take back to Morrissette and carried the rest of the pallets to the Cahawba burn pile. We organized the trailers and cleaned the mobile attic so that it can be picked up.

Learning Objectives:

Traditionally, we write what learning objectives we have achieved for the week. As a team I just want to let everyone know how much we have learned this semester. We are all excited by our knowledge but saddened that this great experience has to end. We are trying to savor every minute of the next week as we prepare for Pig Roast. Thanks to Jason, Natalie, Steve, Dick, and Dan for a great semester.

This week was pretty scattered and a little bit of everything. After being physically and mentally drained from the crazy arches week, we continued our preparation for the construction of our sign. Monday we headed out to the site and quickly realized that using utility poles for suspending our cables just wouldn’t work. The vegetation had grown up too high and there just wasn’t any easy way of setting the poles in the area with our given time restraints. We then looked back to the idea of attaching our cables to two large trees on both sides of the road, forcing us to redesign our pole connections. We then contacted Joe Farruggia, our trusty Rural Studio friendly engineer. We told him all about the issues we were having and he was very helpful in our design alterations. Also in preparation for the sign, we went back to our sign mock-up and sadly had to “mock-down.” We needed to salvage all the parts so we could reuse all the turnbuckles and U-bolts in the actual sign. At the end of the day we had accomplished a ton but we were still far from completing our work at Perry Lakes Park.

Tuesday we once again headed out to Perry Lakes. We began cutting down the existing gate located on site. We took measurements of terrain differences between our two trees and also gathered information on tree diameter. The trees turned out to be wider than we thought (roughly 2′ 6″) and we quickly realized we once again had to redesign our tree connections. Some of us finished up at Perry Lakes around noon and headed back to research our connections. We also gathered more supplies for the sign by ordering parts, making phone calls, and taking inventory of our materials.

learning objective D_develop skills in using materials and tools. The bandsaw was absolutely useless because it couldn’t cut through these hollow steel poles unless you had 2 hours to spare to cut one pole…..but hey, at least we know how to use it.

Since we spent the entire previous week with the arches, we had a make up day on Wednesday for Dick’s classes. We spent the morning doing the usual chapter review and test, but we spent the remainder of the day designing and gathering supplies for our final materials and methods project: a joggling board (see picture below). Since, after all, we are the Rural Studio, we were thinking of new and creative ways to build the traditional Charleston rocking bench. We finally decided to utilize the excess roundwood (from one of the thesis teams) for our rockers and legs and use and old baseball dugout bench for the seat. We will be spending time next week building the joggling board. It will be finished by Pig Roast next weekend!

On Friday we had to refocus ourselves on the Perry Lakes entrance sign. Instead of heading out to the site, we searched for the new materials we needed to secure a cable to 2 ½ foot-thick trees. We spent the morning in a panic because we could not locate an essential piece to our cable connection. We couldn’t even find one in the entire United States! After a few headaches and punches thrown, we realized that a simple design alteration (yet again) would work perfectly for our application. John and Matt then headed to Demopolis to return some materials we no longer needed from Alabama Power and unexpectedly received more materials from the generous company. Brett and Corey spent the rest of the day running to nearby stores and ordering final materials for next Monday. Then, we ran into another huge problem. Nobody in the area, and we called about 20 distributors, has galvanized threaded rod in stock and the soonest we could get it would be next Wednesday (because of a rural shipping complication). After another genius revelation, we decided to have the rod shipped to Dick’s house in Selma and we will pick it up on Sunday. Overall, the day was hectic and full of unexpected obstacles, but as always, we came out on top and we will have all of the materials ready to build the sign on Monday.

learning objective B_develop problem solving skills. After running into several problems finding the right materials on Friday, we learned to work together in order to get through our dilemmas.

At the beginning of the semester we set several goals concerning what we wanted to accomplish during our brief 4 month stay at the Rural Studio. St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, a 160-year-old wonder, brought forth highly difficult tasks that shouldn’t normally be given to the typical Second Year student. We, however, proved ourselves worthy and made the colossal puzzle come together. The months of January, February, March, and April gradually built up to our final goal, the erection of the arches. We spent countless hours in preparation, finalizing the church structure and reconditioning the arches. At last, the climax of the semester finally came, a week that was truly the worst and best of our whole Rural Studio experience.

In order to take advantage of daylight, we began our days at 5:30 in the morning, getting all our morning routines and commuting out of the way in order to arrive at the site by 7:00 AM. Monday morning we came to the site with a bittersweet attitude, not knowing exactly what to expect but anxious and pretty flippin’ excited. The cherry pickers arrived a little after 7:00 and without hesitation, we jumped on those babies and went to work. We began the morning by moving the 2 smaller arches from the greenhouse to the site using the trailer. We quickly found out that we would definitely need a crane for the rest of the arches. Around 9:30, Chris the crane guy arrived. With the aid of his trusty crane, we were able to arrange the arches on the ground in order to put them together. We were then able to successfully place both small arches but encountered a great deal of problems. From the arches not fitting in the church, all the way to squaring up the arches for purlins, life as a 160-year-old church builder became quite intense. By midday, we had an audience of people that came out to witness the arch construction. At times, the atmosphere became pretty overwhelming. At the end of the first day, we were exhausted and pretty concerned about the remainder of the week, but hey, we managed to get 2 arches up!

The Hellish week continued Tuesday morning, but not without a few angels to aid us through our journey like Virgil did for Dante. (Read Dante’s Inferno, then you’ll understand). A few of the past church members from the Spring 07 group came to help us assemble Arch 1 and were at our complete disposal for any other tasks that we deemed necessary to erect the arches. First, we had to set the two halves on the back of the crane and drive them to the church site where we aligned bolt holes, push the two halves together, and nailed the trim. We later placed the jig on Arch 1 and strapped them together before Crane Chris hoisted them to the heavens. It was manna to set the jig, but pure hellfire and brimstone to unstrap the jig from the arch when we had it set in place. A one hour task escalated to a three hour three ring circus. Tempers flared just as the heat climbed. Luckily a lunch break catered by Hancock’s Barbeque helped to cool the atmosphere and allowed us to rethink our system for assembling and setting. We realized that the jig used in the deconstruction of the church served its purpose in only being a deconstructive tool. Instead of the jig, we decided to use 2×4s for bracing. The jig was too heavy and time consuming, but it was a lesson learned.. it helped us move along and replan.

Wednesday morning was just as cold as Monday and Tuesday, but everyone’s eyes were glazed with the speculation of what will happen today. Yesterday, only Arch 1 went up and at this rate, we will not meet the deadline to finish by the end of the week. Our best bet is to organize early and issue out specific duties to everyone. The Assembly Team assembled the arches from the greenhouse area to the site, joined the halves, nail the trim, and hoisted the whole piece with Crane Chris. The Scaffolfing Team made sure the arches were meeting the columns perfectly on the wood block cuts they shared. The Cherry Picker Team directed Crane Chris to the appropriate destination of Arch 2. Also, they made sure that the arches weren’t crooked on the sills and set the purlins in place between Arch 1 and Arch 2 to resist lateral force. All the while, the Assembly team gathered Arch 3 and this was the cycle between the three groups/teams. It was a great system that worked until we get ear that Arch 4 is in an unstable condition. I cried. No one saw me, but I cried. Later, I walked to the greenhouse and saw people handing tissue to one another. It was the whole team crying. I felt great to know that at least I wasn’t the only one crying. And I’m a grown man. Not supposed to, but at times like this, ya gotta do something. We all mustered strength and focused on what to do. Our taskmasters decided that we aim for 2 arches tomorrow because the sun was setting. Secretly we couldn’t allow only 2 arches to erect on Thursday. We all voted to aim for four arches, knowing that three arches was the only possibilty. We aim high because we can get no lower. Two altar arches and Arch 1 and 2 stood alone on Wednesday’s sunset. Thursday will only foretell how well we do. But hope is in our hearts.

The horrible despair that hung over our head the previous 3 days began to dissipate early Thursday morning as we arrived and got ready for another go at Arch no. 3. Late Wednesday afternoon, we realized (after taking bringing no. 3 back to the ground after an unsuccessful attempt) that the best way to put the arches up quickly was to measure the width that each arch would have to fit between. In retrospect, this is a decision we should have made in advance, but seeing as how there were dozens of variables to deal with, none of which we had any idea about ahead of time, I think we did pretty well. Once the discovery was made, the arches went up at the breakneck speed of 3/10 a/h (arches per hour). This might not seem fast at first, but if you’d experienced the unbearable tedium of the first 3 days of the week, it would seem like we were literally throwing them onto the church. After tripling our productivity and feeling our first hint of warmer weather, we were in high spirits as we left on Thursday.

Friday started off with everyone in a quiet anticipation, because with the finish line in sight, we were ready to put the misery that was Arch Week behind us. Arch 6 was put together and ready to go within an hour of our arrival, and it went up without any snags. All that was left for Crane Chris to help us with were the 2 faux arches that provide the frame around the 6 large arches for the roof rafters. After a bit of debate and research over how these “45s” (this is the name we’d given them, even though we decided that their slope is closer to 55 degrees) fit onto the roof, they were placed and braced to the arches at the front and back of the nave. And finally, after weeks of planning and hard work for the 15 second year students, the arches were up, and we could breathe a collective sigh of relief. Our cries of joy reverberated through the trees and squalid swamplands of Cahawba, and we got the flip out of Dodge.

Arch week was a trying experience for all of us, but we can simply look at St. Luke’s and see how our labor paid off. Whether we were exerting all of our possible energy sliding the arch halves together until we had a seamless fit or risking life and limb in the ever-swaying cherry pickers, we’re all proud, and honestly pretty amazed, that we were actually able to get this church back together without breaking it or straight up killing each other. We can now sleep a bit easier knowing that the bulk of our semester is behind us, and we can simply enjoy the work and each other for our remaining time in the wonderful Hale County, Alabama.