Roadie Blog, Week 1, Raise the Roof

It's been a long day and I'm exhausted but I feel like I've changed. I am probably not the only one. We all came on this trip looking for the rock lifestyle amidst the challenges--the partying and the beautiful girls. It's not the easiest thing in the world being on the road all the time and the perks make it worthwhile. But today was not about that.

Our adventure began once Tommy and Luda found their team members last night. They met with Cedric the Entertainer at Brennan's to discuss their mission. We didn't really know what to expect yet and no one was happy to hear that we had to start at 8 in the morning but we're glad to have gotten an idea of what is going to be happening.

It took the guys a while to figure out where they were going this morning and we all ended up having a full tour of the Ninth Ward. If you haven't been there since Katrina hit, it's a very emotional place. I'm not the kind of person who ever really gets too upset but I had to turn away from everyone at one point because I was feeling overwhelmed.

I never saw the Ninth Ward before the hurricane, but afterwards its like a world in limbo. You can feel a sense of the people who lived there still hanging around the edges, like they can't leave their old homes and lives behind without some closure?a little like living ghosts.

We found our destination, the Battleground Gospel Church. We were there to help Pastor Lawrence Armour and his congregation in their commitment to rebuild their church and their community as a green, sustainable environment. The challenge was to build solar Life Pods to provide power for the church. These solar pods are simple to build. Tommy and Ludacris and their teams put them together in a few hours and they are not the most technically inclined group of dudes.

What I think is really cool about solar power is that it can collect energy and you can use it at night, on cloudy days or you can even sell it to your power company. It's going to save these people a lot of money, which will make a big difference because they have so little. Some people who use solar panels in their homes don't ever have to pay an electricity bill.

After the pods were built we partied with the locals and ate crawfish, jambalaya and gumbo. I really like the jambalaya, but I think I've had all the crawfish I'll need to eat for a long while.

Our next stop is San Francisco. Talk to you from there.

~Roadie T