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The trip to Quito

The trip to Quito was successful. No more e-mail server in the office there. Since there are only two users, they'll both get their mail directly from Redlands instead of using a server in the office. Makes more sense. Takes a big headache from me. I got on a direct bus at 1 PM on Thursday, and was home about 6:30 PM. It would have been a faster trip, but the driver stopped once an hour to put air in a leaky tire! I was glad to get home and have dinner with the family. They were waiting for me, and meat loaf and mashed potatoes were really good.

Friday morning I was at the school with the teachers for a couple hours. I showed them how to use the digital camera and how to get the images from the camera to the computer. In the afternoon I tried to fix the internet connection for the school, but wasn't successful. They've been without internet for a couple weeks. I'll have to wait until HCJB in Quito sends down a new computer to replace the one that failed. My temporary box can only handle one modem, and I was unsuccessful adding a PCI serial port card. I don't know enough about Linux to get the drivers for the card and install it. Nor do I know which brand the card is.

Backing up a bit. Thursday night we had Suze and David stay at our house. Suze is the MAF teacher in Sucua, the newly re-opened MAF base in Ecuador. Her son, David, is in the eighth grade. Suze is teaching the two Holland boys as well as her own son. Dustin had David, Kyle, and Jonathan sleep over that night. They all slept outside on the trampoline. I can't believe they actually slept through the whole night, as it didn't look very comfortable.

There's a plant out in the back yard with some very pretty flowers on it. Thought you might enjoy talking a look at it.

It's been a long

It's been a long day so far, and it's not over yet. I was up at 4:40 AM so I could catch the 5:30 AM bus to Quito. At 6:10 AM I finally got on a bus. I had gone into Puyo yesterday afternoon to buy a ticket so I'd have a seat on the bus. The bus never showed up, so I took the next one, which meant I was waiting on the street in Shell for about 50 minutes before it was all said and done. I was hoping to go on a direct bus, but the bus I ended up taking wasn't direct, which meant I had to switch buses in Ambato, and a little less direct route through another town. In the end I arrived in Quito about an hour later than I had hoped.

After lunch with Mike Ross and Brian Behal I went on a supply buying trip with Pablo and finally began work at 3 PM. I'm taking the server out of the Quito office, and Mike and the secretary will connect to an ISP to get their mail. That means I need to run some more phone line in the office. I just finished doing that, but one jack doesn't work properly so I've got some troubleshooting to do on that. That might have to wait for maÒana as I need to go do some shopping for Ellyn and get a bite to eat. After that I'm going to help Brian with his web site.

I was talking with Pablo a bit today as we drove on the hectic streets of Quito. It's normally his dad, Betto, who does the flight line and 'gopher' work for the office here in Quito. But his dad has several weeks of vacation and he's doing some missionary work. He's helping a group of people in the provice of Esmeraldas. Helping them with an electricity project since that's something they don't know much about. Pablo's mom went to, and she's working with the children. Pablo says his dad does this on his vacations or with any free time he has. He's a missionary in his own country. To get to the location he's at right now was an eight hour bus ride and a six hour canoe trip up the river. Normally the river part is only three hours, but this time the river was low so that slowed them down. That's quite a trip! Makes my plush ride on an airplane from California to Quito look like a walk in the park. What a heart this couple has for the work they do!

Just got back from

Just got back from doing water. I have to pass through a military checkpoint going each way. Show the registration for the vehicle. Show the passport. He asks where I live. Where I'm going. Where I'm from. I tell him I've lived in Shell for two years now. He tells me I'm almost an Ecuadorian now. Chuckle. I wish it was that easy. I'm sure he could tell from my lame spanish that I was far from being almost Ecuadorian.

Actually, I've live thirteen years in Papua New Guinea, twenty-four years in the United States, and two years in Ecuador. Wonder how long I'll live here?

Ron Grant is down

Ron Grant is down in Sucua with a work team this week. He normally gets water for the families here, so I'll do it today. I think I'll head out now and get that done.

Hmmmm. Our fourth plane

Hmmmm. Our fourth plane has 2.8 hours left and then it's due for an inspection. That'll put all four planes on the ground. Next they'll be asking me to help turn a wrench!

I just passed up

I just passed up a chance to fly with Bruce. He's got four passengers and two stops. He left just after 4 PM, and he'll be lucky to make it back by 6 PM. That's a bit too close for me, as he can't land after sunset. If the weather turns bad he'll have to spend the night somewhere at a jungle village, probably Makuma. I'll look for a chance another day. I like to fly with the guys once in a while, and it has been a while.

Mike Ross just left

Mike Ross just left for Quito. He's the pilot based there. He came down on the regular Monday shuttle, but flew a flight out into the jungle while he was here. We can use all the help we can get here in Shell.

Our morning briefing and

Our morning briefing and prayer time starts each day with a brief on the day's flights. Today Tomas, the flight coordinator, started off by saying, "We have two pilots and one plane." Then John, our head mechanic, started his maintenance brief by saying, "We have three planes and one mechanic." Yes, out of four planes here in Shell, only one is flying today. And it's staying busy. Thankfully we have good weather today. Pray for safety.

Meant to get to

Meant to get to this yesterday, but had too much fun relaxing. We're really enjoying having Sunday be our family day. The boys stay home and we do things with them, and they don't have anyone over. They've stopped asking us "Do we have to?" and "Why can't we....?" and it's been a really good time. In the evening we had nachos and watched a movie together. It reminds me of the days when I was in PNG and we'd make a fire in the fireplace and have popcorn on Sunday nights.

It's been too long

It's been too long since I've had time to sit down and write anything in here. I was walking across to work on Thursday and I realized why I've been so tired. It has been a lot of late nights, but beyond that it was two back to back busy weekends. Two weekends ago we came back from the States. That was an exhausting weekend. Then last weekend I drove back up to Quito to pick up a work team. Again, a busy two days with little sleep.

Today is a 'normal' Saturday. Yea! I went out with Ellyn for dinner last night. The boys were both sleeping over with friends, so we were on our own. Then we hooked up with Brad and Naomi Quist and went to El Jardine for dinner. That's our favorite place to eat out. After dinner Ellyn and I watched a great movie while I uploaded files for a Summit Adventure's web site. I wish I could say I got to sleep in this morning, but I had to get up with our baby, Lou, at 7 AM. I figured it I was up I might as well make myself some pancakes and coffee and watch some of the Tour de France tapes that I brought back from the States. What a great way to spend a Saturday morning.

I just came in from mowing the lawn. I can't let the grass get too long or our little puppy gets lost in it! Funny thing, even though it rains twenty-two feet a year, I only have to mow the lawn every 1 1/2 to 2 weeks. As soon as Ellyn gets back with the car I'll probably take Taylor and his friend down to the pool in Puyo. Dustin is already there with his friends.

The boys are off to a great start of the school year. We always wonder how their friend situation will work out as there aren't that many kids to choose from. But things are going really well and Dustin is enjoying being with the two sixth grade boys here on the MAF base. Last year he didn't play much with them, but this year I think the proximity is bringing them together. He's going to miss his friend Craig. Craig's family will be returning to the States as soon as the adoption of their baby girl is complete. Once Craig leaves Dustin will be the only fifth grader in the school.

The day started off

The day started off with a truck delivering a shipment from Quito. Included in that was a new engine for HC-BZE, a lot of parts, and some of the personal belongings of Bruce Wied, including his toolbox. Bruce was with MAF in Venezuela for two years before coming here earlier this year. He has been waiting a LONG time, longer than the usual six weeks, to get his things out of customs. I'm sure today was an exciting day for him. We also sent a used engine back to Continental. MAF replaces engines at 1600 hours. Most aircraft owners overhaul an engine at 1800 hours, then fly it some more 'till it's overhauled again. They get as much life as they can out of that one engine. Ours are sent back to Continental where they are rebuilt and sold again. But we buy a new engine as a replacement. MAF used to buy rebuilt engines, but stopped that practice a couple years back to improve on safety. When you're flying over the jungle without any place in sight to land, you want to be certain you're engine is not going to fail.

Lot's going on around

Lot's going on around here. Dave Fyock, the Latin America Regional Director is here. A small workteam is here for three weeks. They are a family of five from Illinois, the sister and brother-in-law of Bruce, our radio technician. They arrived in Quito on Saturday night. I drove up on Saturday with Bruce to pick them up. We arrived back in Shell at 6:30 PM yesterday.

Oscar and Mateo are working on HC-BQV. They've had to get into the undercarriage to replace a landing gear saddle. They've also found a lot of corrosion which they're having to clean up. Turns out that aluminum will corrode if you douse it with enough vomit and blood. The vomit is from people, and the blood is from years ago when the MAF planes carried a lot of beef out of the jungle. The people would raise the beef for sale out in the towns on the edge of the jungle. With the road infrastructure what it is these days, most of the beef is driven out in trucks now.

I'm exhausted. I've been

I'm exhausted. I've been back in Ecuador ten nights. I think I've been up to midnight or 1 AM everyone of those nights except one. Last night I went to bed early, and that was at 11 PM. Don't ask me what keeps me up each night, but I think it's computers.

Finally. I have this

Finally. I have this weblog fixed. My ISP changed some things on their end, and of course didn't tell me. I didn't figure things out until last night, but couldn't do anything about it since I was in Quito.

Our MAF internet connection here in Shell is down again. I'll have to get on that first thing in the morning.

We've had a bad

We've had a bad connection to the internet since Sunday. I finally got things fixed yesterday about 3 PM. The problem was over at our ISPs end, but I had to fix it. I put a new server in, and our connection is now just a little bit faster.

I guess I should

I guess I should write a bit more, since that wasn't the end of the story. We slept in on Saturday, and then went looking for a puppy. We knew we wanted a beagle, and we and been praying that we would find just the right one. After almost giving up hope of finding one, we were able to buy one from a family who was getting ready to sell it to a pet store. She's a very cute eight week old puppy that Taylor named Lou. We're all very excited. I'll post some pictures later.

We had planned to drive down to Shell on Saturday, but because we were so tired, and to give us some time to look for a puppy, we decided to wait and drive down on Sunday. We joined up with another MAF guy and a small workteam of four that he was bringing to Shell. Between the two trucks, we were able to get all nine of us, including our luggage, down to Shell. We arrived about 5:30 PM on Sunday afternoon. The first thing I heard, after all the hellos, was that our internet connection was down. There wasn't much I could do about it last night, but first thing this morning I was able to pursue that and by noon we had our connection back again. The power supply on a computer at our ISP had gone bad. After helping them replace that, we were up and running again. It's amazing how lost we feel down here without e-mail!

We're back in Shell

We're back in Shell again. And it's so good to be home! After three weeks in California with no rain, I woke up this morning to a steady rain on the roof. Lucy the Macaw was talking outside my window as I lay there and thanked the Lord for bringing us safey back home.

We flew into Quito late on Friday night. Actually, we flew into Quito twice. The first time, around 8:30 PM, we weren't able to land due to mechanical difficulties with the flaps. The pilots were not able to extend the flaps all the way out, and were not able to safely land that way at 9300'. The air is very thin at that altitude and the pilots need to have full flaps to slow the plane down to a safe landing speed. So we slowly flew to Guayaquil, down on the coast. We sat in the plane for over an hour while they fixed the flaps and then refueled the plane. We took off again and sometime after 12:30 AM we landed in Quito. And what a scary landing it was as we came in very fast with a tailwind. It took a long time for the plane to roll to a stop. I kept hoping there was enough runway. We collected all our bags and cleared customs, only to wait in front of the airport at 1:00 AM as we waited for our ride. I had to make a phone call to wake Brian and ask him to come and pick us up. He had a truck and our guest house key, and he was soon there to load our luggage and us into the car. We were glad to get out of the cold, and on top of that, we didn't feel exactly safe there in the parking lot in the middle of the night. I think it was after 2:00 AM before I finally put my head on the pillow. It was a long day, as we had left for the airport at 3:30 AM that morning in California. Even with the time difference, and losing two hours, it was a long day. The boys were great travellers, and that was great to see.