First Day at the Track!

Today marked the first day of Hawken Projects! I got an early start today arriving at the velodrome at around 9 o clock. Brett (my sponsor) wanted to spend some time with me outlining the plan for the next couple of weeks, while also introducing all the features of the track to me (the last time i had visited the track was in september for a short series of races). After outlining our plans for the coming weeks we set our sights on restoring the damaged trailer, specifically, removing the burnt, and decaying carpet, purchasing new floor tiles, reorganizing the cluttered trailer, and lastly, repairing a couple of the ceiling tiles. The carpet turned out to be the hardest task of the day! It refused to budge in many spots, and took a total of an hour and a half between three volunteers to tear up! Once we finished removing all of the carpet, we too a short trip to Home Depot to purchase new tile flooring to replace our old carpet. After returning to the velodrome, we realized that the tiling process would be more than a single day's work, so we focused on repairing a couple of the ceiling tiles, which had suffered smoke and fire related damages, and also on reorganizing the clutter back room, and bike storage area! By the end of the day we not only had replaced the ceiling tiles, but had also reorganized and cleaned the storage rooms, rooms that had zero available space to walk into now could fit all three of us. Every tool was back in its rightful place, every advertising material was back on the front table, and every single miscellaneous bike part somehow found its way into a drawer!

At 5 o clock we called it quits for the day. The trailer that was once a dusty, and smokey mess, was now a clean, still kind of smokey, repaired trailer. I believe tomorrow will be a day spent on repairing any of the rental bikes that suffered damage during the fire, and next week will begin our construction of the viewing stands on the far side of the track! Overall, this project is turning out to be a great opportunity to give back to the community that is in need of some aide, and what better way to do so then to go through this organization?

-Mark