Save the Whales: Clean Their Teeth

    I feel like I am cleaning the teeth of a humpback whale with a Waterpik (tm).
    I am squirting water at a huge surface with a device intended for the purpose, but one which seems woefully inadequate.
    At 2:15 in the morning, my judgement is clouded by fatigue and the enormity of the task. My mind races to find motivation to continue. My arms ache and my back feels like a licorice twist, alternating between being rock hard and other times sagging under the effort of directing streams of water.
    We've been at this for nearly five hours.
    "Friedli. Here, let me give you a breather," my co-worker says, reaching for the high pressure hose wand in my hand.
    I gladly pass the implement to him. He angles the head toward the brick wall at a 30-degree angle and pulls the trigger. He makes two slow passes, first right, then sharply back left and then a slow and steady motion right again.
    One lone brick changes from a speckling of white, black and deep red to its normal crimson state.
    He moves the stream to the next brick and repeats the process again. A jet of water strips the color from the top half of the brick in the first laborious pass. A quick return to the left side of the brick and another steady pass to the right.
    One more brick in the wall is clean. One more whale tooth.
    Dustin and I have been shooting streams of hot, high pressure water at paint since 9:30 p.m. We are quiet, because we can't hear each other over the roar of the gas powered pump.
    A few opportunistic young people took advantage of nearly five gallons of oil-based paint sitting outside the school building to create something reminiscent of 1960's pop-art. No structure, no form. Only white, red, yellow and black enamel thrown, splattered and brushed on dusty-brown brick.
    We had spent the first 90 minutes removing paint from a school van, the first target of our roving band of artists. Looking something like an episode of "Pimp My Ride", "Overhaulin'" or "Monster Garage" gone strangely wrong, the van was nearly unrecognizable from the paint poured and smeared on it.
    It looked more like a demolition derby entry, replete with painted wheels, rims and windows. Fortunately, copious amounts of hot water, hand-scrubbing and a potent cocktail of soaps, graffiti remover and solvents brought the van's appearance to near-normalcy. Only the identifying decals suffered damage. They'll be replaced.
    The restoration of the building and the driveway the van sat on was the overwhelming part of the task. Around the van was gooey paint, nearly a half-inch thick in some places. The walls of the school, an estimated nine hundred square feet of surface, were splattered. Other areas were completely coated.
    Two square feet a minute. I pushed my brain to calculate how long it would take to clean up this vandalism. This isn't "spray it and it goes away". This is holding the pressure wand within inches of the surface and cleaning half a brick at a time. After six hours of spraying, we will run out of fuel for the gas-powered engine at 3:30 a.m. By then, the walls are as clean as we can get them. The driveway will still bear a few spots. We are fatigued.
    A few minutes of adolescent mischief. Hours of cleanup. Fortunately, a last-minute decision to drive around the school late in the evening meant we were working on paint which had not yet dried and cured. Twelve hours later--more given the holiday weekend--and sandblasting might have been the only solution.
    Dustin keeps spraying, shooting the vandalism away, two inches wide at a time until the gas runs out. I try for the thousandth time to use a broom to remove the paint. It doesn't work.
    My brain sends me the message that humpback whales might not have teeth at all, that they simply strain out algae and plankton through their mouths.
    Well, if they do have teeth and you had a Waterpik (tm), this is how you would do it.

This Page was last update: Wednesday, January 3, 2007 at 9:23:20 AM
This page was originally posted: 12/21/06; 4:03:23 PM.
Copyright 2008 David Friedli

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