Words and Light

Say what you want about “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” — it’s the best show on TV, it’s the cheesiest show on TV, it’s uplifting, it’s emotionally exploitive — but it’s here in York County, and people are excited.

We’ve been covering the build every day since Ty Pennington and the crew knocked on the Keefer family‘s door on Sunday, but my first chance to go to the site wasn’t until the wee hours of Wednesday morning. Reporter Kevin and I arrived at an elementary school parking lot, where all volunteers and media sign in and take a shuttle to the build, just before 2 a.m. Our goal: To report on what it’s like for volunteers to work the overnight shift at the build. Due to various logistical happenstances, however, we couldn’t get cleared to actually go to the build. It was either go home or stick around — but for what?

We did what the Philmont rangers do — “Scramble, be flexible” — and stuck around. For the first half-hour or so, we hoped to get in touch with one of our contacts and, thus, get cleared to go to the build. But soon we decided to focus instead on what it’s like for volunteers to work the overnight shift at the sign-in tent.

© 2011 by The York Daily Record/Sunday News. Security guard Robert Haun and volunteer Lisa Dorr of Dillsburg chat during the early hours of Wednesday, June 22, 2011, outside the Extreme Makeover: Home Edition volunteer sign-in tent in the Red Mill Elementary School parking lot.

When you step back and think about it, building or renovating a house in one week is a pretty big task that requires a lot of manpower and coordination every hour of every day. And when the vast majority of your manpower consists of volunteers — well, you need a team of volunteers just to coordinate the other volunteers. That’s what happens at this tent in the Red Mill Elementary School parking lot: Registration and traffic control.

And a little fun, too, sometimes.

© 2011 by The York Daily Record/Sunday News: Volunteer Daniel Eyler, 15 of Dillsburg, caps off a stack of hardhats for fellow volunteer Josh Dorr, 16 of Dillsburg, as they pass time in the Extreme Makeover: Home Edition volunteer sign-in tent early Wednesday, June 22, 2011, in the Red Mill Elementary School parking lot.

And, for some, a bit of a wait:

© 2011 by The York Daily Record/Sunday News. Volunteer Derick Greiner of York City sits on his hardhat and smokes a cigarette in the Red Mill Elementary School parking lot early Wednesday, June 22, 2011. Greiner and several other volunteers arrived around 5:30 a.m. to help do the siding at the Extreme Makeover: Home Edition build, but were told they had to wait until 7 a.m. before they could start work.

Kevin and I did eventually hear back from both our contacts later in the morning, but we stuck with our “scramble” story and never did go to the build.

• Kevin’s story: “Extreme Makeover” overnight: Volunteers sacrifice sleep
• My video: Extreme Makeover’s overnight volunteers
• The paper’s coverage of the whole event

Coming up next: My second consecutive overnight shift. Extreme? Fittingly!