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We're back from our

We're back from our day in BaÒos. I always forget how dehydrated I can get at 6,000' while I'm in BaÒos. If I'm off climbing at 10,000' and higher, I'm always thinking about it. But there's something about spending the day in BaÒos that often catches me by surprise. That and the sun. I often come back with a sunburned neck. The sun is more intense up there. And now we're back in the humidity of Shell. I feel it for the first half hour after coming home, and then I'm used to it again. Right now one of my favorite sounds is in the background--a hard rain on the roof. That and the Andean flute music on the CD player.

Anyway, we enjoyed a great lunch at a new Italian restaurant some friends told us about. When we're in BaÒos we usually like to go to the Inca Flame for Mexican food. But that place is now closed as the owners have moved to Cuenca. We managed to do some Christmas shopping too. We also found a new little cafÈ. The owner was handing out fliers on the main street in town, and we happened to get one. So we showed up there in the middle of the afternoon for cappachino. The boys had a smoothie. They were yummy. All in all it was nice to get away for the day. We've been in Shell since we came back to Ecuador on August 9. We were ready for a break.

Happy Thanksgiving. We're all

Happy Thanksgiving. We're all working here, as Thanksgiving is a U.S. holiday and tradition. Tonight many of the missionaries will be getting together for a dinner at the HCJB guesthouse. But for now, it's business as usual. Dave is taking off right now with a missionary family and his parents who are visiting. They're heading out for a visit to a jungle village for the day. Fred was off before 8 AM taking some U.S. visitors out to the jungle. And Bruce will be off the ground soon. Not sure what he's doing or where he's headed.

The power went off sometime around 6 AM. I came over to turn off an extra server and a couple computers so they wouldn't have to run too long on the UPS (uninteruptable power supply). Soon after that Ron came over and started the diesel generator on the base and also the generator her at the hangar. Before 8:30 the power was back on and the generators were off.

I'm going to spend the day working on some web pages for the MAF program here in Shell. I also need to finish transitioning files from the old Windows NT server to the new Windows 2000 server. In addition, Bruce needs some help with his supporting mailing list, as he wants to know how to attach photos. Miriam, an e-mail user who works for HCJB doing community health work in the jungle, also needs me to help her with sending photos as attachments. Digital camera and web pages are great tools for staying in touch with the family, friends, and supporters in the home country.

Back from Puyo and

Back from Puyo and have my new ID papers in hand. It took only one trip, but I did have to wait over an hour. The last half hour was spent waiting for the jefe to come and sign the papers. He was off doing something elsewhere in town.

Taylor finally got to

Taylor finally got to sleep, and I went to bed early. I think we all feel much better this morning. I even got up and made pancakes for everyone. Something I usually only do on Saturday mornings.

The new engine for HC-BZE arrived this morning. Oscar and Mateo are working on pulling the old engine. The other three planes in Shell will all be flying today. That was the engine that ended up going to Singapore by mistake, headed to Indonesia.

I've got to run into Puyo this morning. There's a new identification card that all foreigners are required to obtain by December 21. It shouldn't be a big deal, but things like this always take several trips and end up being a hassle.

Taylor isn't sleepy tonight.

Taylor isn't sleepy tonight. He's still up. Grrrrrrr. And I'm grumpy because I stayed up too late last night. Up 'til midnight browsing a neat web site. Lot's of great satellite photos of the earth.

The country of Ecuador

The country of Ecuador has a new president. Yesterday the people voted Lucio Gutierrez as the new president.

I found another image

I found another image of the Reventador eruption. Quite an impressive picture. This page has some good photos and information. Make sure you scroll all the way down the page.

It's the end of

It's the end of another weekend. It was a good one. Today we had a church tape from Sierra Vista, something we always listen to on Sunday morning. Last week we were down to our last tape, and it only had the sermon. We made up the rest of the service, with Bible reading, singing together, and a children's story. After church Tay asked me to go pitch the baseball to him. I looked out the window and could see that it was really sunny. More blue sky than clouds. Usually it's the other way around. I knew it would be hot in the equatorial sun and wasn't too excited to go out. But he suggested the cancha at the school. Good idea! We headed over to the school and played in the shade of the cancha. That was a fun time.

This afternoon Dustin found a hummingbird in the backyard. Lou the dog got to it first, but Dustin got there soon after, and that was a good thing. But, we think the bird flew into the window, since Dustin said he heard a noise that sounded like that. It can't fly, and the left wing is sticking out at an odd angle. Dustin has been feeding it sugar water, and hopes to take it to school tomorrow so the class can take care of it. I'm not too hopeful, but I guess I'm just a pessimist. We'll see what happens. It's spending the night in his room in a big Tupperware container. No lid on it of course, since the bird can't fly.

I didn't get a ride in today, but yesterday I had a good ride of twenty miles. Haven't ridden that far in a while. It was a great ride. And then tomorrow I'll ride again after work with John Burk. He's the maintenance specialist for MAF here. We've been riding together a couple times a week since October. I'm slowly getting ready for my ride to Arajuno. I'm thinking I should head up towards Ba�os over Thanksgiving weekend to see what sort of shape I'm really in.

I was doing a

I was doing a bit of browsing this afternoon for Ecuador news and came across this page with a really neat satellite photo of the volcano eruption earlier this month.

My eyes are tired

My eyes are tired from looking at the computer screens today. I've been installing software on a couple machines today, and so I've been doing a lot of sitting here staring at the screen. Well, installing this software has meant lots of waiting, so in the waiting time I worked on a web page for the workteam that's coming down in January. Some folks from a couple churches in our home area will be here for two weeks and this page will help them keep those at home in touch with what is going on here.

It's going to be

It's going to be a long time until Christmas. Ellyn is already playing Christmas CDs. Dustin is wanting to set the tree up. Taylor is wearing a Santa Claus hat.

Looks like we may

Looks like we may be going to the north repeater again. Sooner than we planned. Bruce noticed a switch in a position that didn't look quite right, but left it. Turns out that switch is in the wrong position. The repeater works, but we can't control who uses it with the tone control. I won't try to explain it here, but we can control who can and can't use the repeater. But right now we can't. Se we need to go back up and flip that switch. A three hour strenuous trip up and down a nasty trail to flip a switch. We're thinking of also bringing down some other parts that need cleaning and maintenance so that the trip can be a little more profitable. This isn't the first time that a switched was accidently bumped while repeater maintenance was being done.

Well, we did it.

Well, we did it. Went to the repeater today. We had a bit of a slow start out of the hangar, and it was 9:15 AM when we started up the trail. Bruce told me it would take between an hour and twenty minutes to two hours to reach the spot he pointed out to me. I couldn't believe it would take that long, as it didn't look that far. An hour and forty-one minutes later, after slogging our way up a muddy trail, we reached the repeater site. It was a cloudy day, and that helped keep things cool. But I still sweated a ton. The humidity was high. The bugs were bad on the top, even worse than at the south repeater which is farther out into the jungle. I never see mosquitos in Shell, but there were some really big ones up there. The elevation was 5715' where we were working. After we ate an early lunch we got to work. I cleaned the ten solar panels. They were very dirty. I didn't have much water to work with, and when I was done there was still some soap on the panels and on my hands. It didn't take long for the rain to come along and finish the job of rinsing the panels. Robert used a meter to check the solar panels and make sure they were all working. We found one that wasn't, and it was repaired skillfully by Bruce.

We also took one of the repeaters out and brought it back with us. It will be reconfigured and we'll take it to the south repeater in January. By the way, the repeaters are used for the VHF radios, which are line of site. Using the repeater allows us to communicate longer distances. The north repeater isn't used a whole lot by MAF, but the HCJB hospital in Shell does use it quite a bit. Our contacts with the jungle villages takes place through the south repeater.

I think we left sometime around 3:30. The trip down was very tricky, as the rain had made the trail slippery. Add that to the steepness of the trail, and it was difficult to stay on our feet in many places. We were back in the hangar by 5:15 with our mission successfully accomplished.

Oh, and forgot to

Oh, and forgot to mention I'm teaching a web page class to the seventh/eighth grade class and have a school board meeting this afternoon. The web page class is on-going and will prepare them to make the school's CD yearbook.

I'm here in Shell.

I'm here in Shell. I woke up at 6 AM to hear the rain pounding on the roof. Even after it stopped here in Shell it was still raining up on the ridge where we need to go. So there will be no repeater trip today. I'm going to use the time to get some things done on my to-do list. Replace a monitor on one of the workstations here in the hangar. Update Internet Explorer and Outlook Express for one of the MAF staff. Document some emergency procedures and add them to the local area network handbook. Continue to do some planning for the e-mail server transition I'll be making after the new year.

Looks like we're a

Looks like we're a go for tomorrow. Will be four of us going, just gringos. When we went to the south repeater we had three Shuar guys go with us to carry tools and things. This trip isn't as long or far.

Monday morning. I'm a

Monday morning. I'm a bit tired. Not a good way to start the week. I was planning to go to Quito this morning by MAF plane. But that plan is changing. They say around here that 'the change is subject to plan.' A bit of a twist on the 'this plan is subject to change' saying. At any rate, Bruce is heading to the north repeater tomorrow, and it looks like it would be helpful if I go along to carry things. Since the work I need to do in the Quito office can wait, I think I'll put off that trip.

I was looking forward

I was looking forward to a longer ride on Saturday, but the rain cut that short. I didn't leave until 3:40 PM and by the time I got 6 miles out, I was in the rain. I stopped and waited under a bus stop shelter, but I could see it wasn't going anywhere fast. After realizing I couldn't out wait the rain, I headed home, arriving cold and soaked. My bike and soaking riding shoes went straight in to the bodega (storage/work room) and I turned the dehumidifier on to help dry things out. It didnt' stop raining until 10 or 11 PM.

Yesterday ended on a

Yesterday ended on a bit of a panic. Dustin came over to the hangar about 4:20 to use the web. He loves to go to the Lego site and see what other kids are building with their Mindstorm sets. Then I realized that the server had hung. So after booting into a safe mode, I was able to get the file system repaired and we were up and running again within the hour. This has happened a handful of times in the past two months, so something is not well with the system.

One of the guys

One of the guys flew these two pigs in yesterday. It's a patient's payment to the HCJB hospital for services. Kind of different, but it happens a lot here. If you don't have money, you can often pay with food. They use it to feed the patients. Don't click if you're squeamish.

I often have a

I often have a lot of sympathy for the people who are waiting to get back to their villages in the jungle. Sometimes it can take DAYS. You know how we can get irritated in the States if we have to wait an extra hour or maybe four or five. That's nothing compared to how long some of these people have to sit and wait. Much of the reason it takes so long to get people back home is bad weather. When the clouds and rain roll in for a week, that really makes it bad. Right now, not having enough pilots isn't helping either.

Mike and Brian are

Mike and Brian are both here in Shell flying. Mike came down yesterday and I think he's staying just for the day. Brian will be heading back on Friday. Now that I think about it, maybe Mike will stay 'til Friday also and then he'll be able to take Brian back up with him. Both of them live in Quito.

Mike is already off on his first flight and he's flying HC-BQV. Brian is still trying to get out of here. There's something wrong with his plane and John is working on it. Electrical problem I think.

I'm in the middle

I'm in the middle of trying to come up with plans for a new e-mail server here in Shell. Since I put in the http://www.thehoffmanfamily.com/ e-mail server a year ago, the IT department in Redlands has come out with a new e-mail server that they are supporting and lots of documentation for it. I can keep on using the server I currently have, but it's rapidly becoming out of date. So now I'm looking at how I'm going to put in this new server, CommunigatePro, and which platform I'll use. Choices are RedHat http://www.thehoffmanfamily.com/ and Windows 2000.

Thought you might like

Thought you might like to see a snake photo. We have three red-tailed boas like this here in the hangar. The snake is in the foreground. That's Bruce in the back.

The guys almost have

The guys almost have HC-BXK ready to go. That's the one they've been replacing both landing gear brackets. Took a while and they had to wait for a part from the States. The next big project will be the engine change on HC-BZE, but that engine still isn't here.

Dave and Bruce are both out flying today. Well, half day for Dave. Other half in the office. Brian is coming down from Quito to help with the flying for three days. He was supposed to fly down yesterday but they had to close the airport again because of more ash from El Reventador. He drove down today with the Marx family.

Aahhhh! Back from a

Aahhhh! Back from a nice ride with NO rain! Gotta love it.

Finally sunny this afternoon

Finally sunny this afternoon and the GMU missionaries from Makuma are getting to go home. They are going home to a station without electricity though. It's been two and a half years since they had a working hydroelectric plant there. It was all ready to run four months ago, but there was a problem at the last minute with an unexplained 'banging' that shook the whole structure when they tried to start things up. Then the next day Jim Hedlund left on furlough. The Holmes stayed behind, but because of problems with generators, even the new one that we flew out last month, they've had no reliable electricity. Only ran a small generator an hour or so a day, just long enough to pick up some e-mail during the day. That meant no fridge either. Anyway, while Jim was gone they found a log that was stuck in the hydro system. Hopefully they will find that when they remove that log that it was the banging they heard several months ago.

We've got lots of

We've got lots of flying to do, but lousy weather. The Holmes and Hedlunds are waiting to get back into Makuma. The Holmes came out for the GMU conference that was at the GMU Mangayacu camp. The Hedlunds were at the conference too, but they are returning from a short furlough in the US. I just ran Lois and Norma over into town in the pickup. I needed to get some milk, and they needed some veggies, eggs, dry goods, and cash.

Taylor called me down

Taylor called me down the the bathroom when he got out of the shower. He had found something small and black on his little body. We have a friend who was bitten by a tick when she was a little girl, and Taylor was worried that this might be a tick. He told me that you were supposed to look for things that were very small, like moving freckles. So he pointed to a black dot on the bath mat. It was a flea. Two guesses where that came from, and the first one doesn't count. Lou the beagle. So I grabbed it, killed it, and showed it to Taylor. That's the first one I've seen in the house. And I've never seen one on her yet, either. A few minutes later Taylor walked upstairs and wanted to know what happened if you were bit by a flea. He was concerned that he might get fleas if he was bit by a flea!

Ecuador is such a

Ecuador is such a beautiful country. But it's so full of litter. I see the problem everywhere as I ride my bike. In many ways it's no different than in the US. But in the US we have a great infrastructure for getting rid of garbage. Here it can sometimes be hard to even find a garbage can to put some trash in. Some buses have signs that tell the riders to keep the bus clean and throw the trash out the window! I've seen people dropping all sorts of trash on the ground as they walk along through town. No one thinks twice about it. Two days ago I started my ride with a 1/2 liter Coke bottle. When I was done drinking, it was hard not to follow suit with everyone and just toss it in the gutter. For a minute I wondered what difference one more plastic bottle in the Pastaza province really would make. I did end up keeping it in my jersey pocket until I got home. I could never bring myself to toss anything more on a ride than a banana peel.

I've got to hurry.

I've got to hurry. Ellyn has gone ahead to Maria's for pinchos. I was out for an hour ride and jumped in the shower to clean up before dinner. I'll walk up with Taylor in a second. We enjoy the Friday evening meal of pinchos (think shishkabob) and papas fritas (think french fries). It's the social event at the end of the week for the gringos.

I really didn't have any IT work to do today so I worked for Ron. I peeled off and re-applied door seals to three doors on the Ford van. My hands are sore from scraping and rubbing all the old adhesive off. I also helped him use contact cement to get some formica onto a counter top.

As I was riding back toward Shell I could see a lot of haze. Not sure what it was from. Made me think of our MAF program over in Indonesia. On the island of Kalimantan they haven't been able to fly for three months. The visibility has been poor because people are burning fields for agriculture. That's a lot of smoke, and it's not a healthy way to live either.

Dave just made it

Dave just made it in. I'm sure he's glad. Bruce should make it in too.

The hour is getting

The hour is getting late and the weather isn't looking good. Dave is up in Latacunga to pick Mike up. Mike can't fly out of Quito still, because of the ash on the runway. I think he took a bus to Latacunga and Dave is going to fly him down here to Shell. If the weather clears up. It looks really dark to the west, the direction they must fly from to get to Shell. Bruce is out in the jungle. I think I just heard him call taking off on the HF. He has a better chance of getting in tonight as I can see some lighter skies to the south and east.

Dave, the program manager,

Dave, the program manager, just sent me this URL. It's the Ecuador Volcanoes Satellite Imagery web page. Has some great satellite images of Ecuador. I've looked for something this specific before, but never found this.

Yesterday Ellyn happened to

Yesterday Ellyn happened to brush against a caterpillar out in front of the house. One or two of them touched her leg and it was very much like a wasp sting. It was irritating for quite a while. And these are just baby ones compared to the huge ones that are way out in the jungle.

The kids go to

The kids go to a really neat school. Twenty-two kids in the whole school right now. Four teachers and a principal who are Believers. Chapel on Monday and Bible class the other days. Spanish class everyday. And when they go out for recess, they usually all play one game as a school. This weeks it's volleyball. Last week it was kickball. Before that it was wall ball.

Yesterday Taylor asked why we couldn't stay in Ecuador forever. He's not interested in going back to the States at all. He's become a third-culture kid.

It's a dark, cloudy,

It's a dark, cloudy, rainy, and dreary morning. Bruce is itching to get out of here. He thought he might try, but I think the weather isn't good enough yet. Then we just heard a huge thunder clap, and he says, "Maybe I don't want to take off just yet."

Quito airport continues to

Quito airport continues to be closed indefinitely. People are trying to clean up the city, but it's going to be a huge job. I heard this morning that they have almost a thousand people with brooms and dustpans cleaning up the runway and surrounding area. Here's a shot of some workers cleaning off a passenger jet. It's a huge financial liability for the country to have the airport closed. Off the top of my head, and can think of the tourism industry and the fresh cut flower industry that will be hurt by this.

Just heard from Steve

Just heard from Steve Marx that the Alliance Academy won't be holding classes again tomorrow. His daughter is a sophomore at the Alliance. There's more than an inch of ash on the runway, so the airport is still closed. Now's not a good time to be heading into Quito by car or by plane. The ash is very abrasive, and not good to be breathed or ingested by engines.

A volcano, El Reventador,

A volcano, El Reventador, erupted in northern Ecuador on Sunday around 7:30 AM. The volcano is 11,683 feet above sea level and hasn't erupted since 1976. It's sixty miles from Quito, but that's close enough to cover the city in a layer of ash. The kids in Quito have the day off from school, and residents are urged to stay inside. The airport was closed yesterday, and I don't know what the status is for today. The AP story is at Yahoo, as well as a slideshow.

Ellyn is in Puyo

Ellyn is in Puyo tonight at a women's retreat. Taylor has Luke and Joel over for a slumber party. They had a good time watching movies, eating popcorn, and playing with Legos. Dustin has been sick again today, and spent the whole day inside, mostly laying down and watching movies. He did manage to eat a bit for dinner, and we'll see if he manages to do better tomorrow. No fun being sick on a long weekend. Today was a national holiday. I think it was Dia de Cuenca. Many of these holidays are to celebrate when the different parts of Ecuador (which wasn't really Ecuador at the time) gained their independence from the Spaniards.

I'm feeling sick tonight.

I'm feeling sick tonight. Not physically though. I had a local guy trim some parasitic vines out of the huge ficus tree beside the house. Did a great job. But near the end he asked for a machete. OK, no problem. Then as I was leaving the house to go to the hangar, I saw him hitting around the base of a dead tree next to the ficus tree. It's a tree with many orchids and other plants growing on the trunk and several branches. I thought he was just getting rid of a vine or something like that. When I returned from the hangar a short while later, it was to the creak and crash of a falling tree! It was a beautiful tree, and one that we saw right outside our dining room window. It added a lot of character to the view.

When I think about it, I can hardly blame Jorge. He was just cleaning up the tree like I asked him to, and this dead tree was part of the problem. The bad vine was moving across from the dead tree into the ficus tree. To him it was just an old dead tree. To us it was part of the view from the house. Jorge lives in a little 'shack' that makes our house look like a huge mansion. Our perspectives are so different. But Ellyn and I are left mourning the loss of an old dead tree.