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Just back from a

Just back from a bike ride. Haven 't done that much at all this time back. I felt very blah today, and knew I needed to get some exercise. It was just hard to get started, and of course now I'm glad I did it.

Funny what you see as you peddle down the road here in Ecuador. A guy taking a shower outside while wearing his underwear. Someone washing their car. On the way up the road I saw him soaping the truck. On the way back, he was rinsing his truck, but without a hose. It must go quite slowly, rinsing one bucketful at a time. Most people don't own a vehicle. A vehicle and a hose would be too much to ask for. I passed by the swimming hole at Alpayacu, and Sunday afternoon is a good afternoon for a bath. I'm sure if I had jumped in today, the water would have smelled like soap.

I guess I left you hanging last Thursday. We did end up getting water again by about 5 PM. The HCJB maintenance guys came over and I'm not sure what they did, but by the time they left, we had water. It didn't take me long to enjoy a hot shower after work. Because we thought we weren't going to have water, we were all set to go over to the Toomer's for dinner, and that's what we did anyway. Ellyn felt lousy, but went along. Sandy gave her some of his great medical advice. When she followed it on Friday, she felt much better. That's funny though, since he's a pilot though, not a doctor.

Friday afternoon I spent some time working with Dan Rogers, one of the pilots with the program here. He didn't have a PC he could use for e-mail. In fact, out of three machines, not one was properly functioning. We worked on one for a while, with no success, and then decided to take a different tack on Monday. After that I went over to watch the boys walk in a parade with the rest of the kids from Nate Saint School.

Before I forget, here's a photo of a couple planes from early last week. These were taken early in the morning, right after our prayer time. The planes are pulled out of the hangar, and then the guys preflight them while they are loaded with whatever cargo they'll carry that first flight. The pilots do a lot of work in the jungle, since they load and unload the planes many times a day. Most flights here are short, and it's not uncommon for one of the guys to make ten or more landings in a day.