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I thought I'd still

I thought I'd still be in Quito tonight, but I'm back in Shell. It's a bit of a long story, but there were two planes in Quito this afternoon, and both of them went to Shell this afternoon. I had the choice of getting on one of them, or taking the bus back tomorrow. A 55 minute plane ride or a five hour bus ride. Not a hard decision to make. I flew back with Dave McCleery. Also with us was Bruce Wied, a pilot from the Venezuela program who's going to help out here for a year or so.

The flight back was uneventful. Well, I should say it was mostly routine. Dave had flown up to Quito yesterday to bring a patient up. Since it was so late in the afternoon, he was forced to spend the night in Quito. Today the weather was so poor in Shell that Dave couldn't leave Quito until 4 PM. As we flew over the paramo, the clouds came low, too low for us to squeeze under. Dave bank the plane and headed toward the twin peaks of the Ilinizas, and somehow found a way through the weather. The sky was full of clouds and rain, but I did get a glimpse of ash billowing from the 17,000' peak of Tungarahua.

I wish I could say my trip was more successful. I went with the hope of getting one thing done on the e-mail server. I tried that yesterday afternoon, and it didin't do what I was hoping. I spent the rest of the time getting other things checked off on my to-do list, and the trip wasn't wasted. The IT department at MAF headquarters in Redlands, CA is working on a new e-mail system. When they are ready, sometime in early May, I plan to test it in Quito to see if it will work better than what we have.