« We had a rat | Main | Three more hours 'til »

I'm back to work

I'm back to work this week. It's a frustrating time for me, as I'm trying to get a server going with Red Hat 8, and I'm getting a lot of lockups. Not sure what's going on, but I'm not getting off to a good start. This afternoon I went up to Mangayacu to get water for a few of us families that are left here on the MAF base. A couple guys were working today--Bruce and Dave shared a plane today. Bruce flew it this morning, and Dave this afternoon. Darryl came up from Sucua with his family and he flew a couple flights out of Shell also. We've got three planes down for maintenance here in Shell. That and being short on pilots is sure putting a cramp in things.

We took my mom and dad back to Quito on Friday. They flew out of Quito early on Saturday morning and made it back to Pennsylvania without any problems. We had a good time with them here, and it was great to be able to show them where we live and what we do here. On Friday night we took the boys to one of the malls and I bowled with them. That's a big treat for them. Then sometime on Saturday they must have eaten something bad. By Sunday morning they both were making frequent trips to the bathroom, and that meant it would be difficult to travel. We had planned to travel to Shell by noon on Sunday. We pumped them both up with Pepto Bismol and made the five hour trip without incident. Giving Dustin some Dramamine also helped him make it, and he slept most of the way. Clean restrooms at gas stations are few and far between here in Ecuador.

By the time we got home on Sunday night, it was 8:45 PM. I'd made three round trips to Quito in December. That's thirty hours of driving, and I was glad to get it behind me. Driving on the road here in Ecuador is quite a challenge, and it seems to me that often times people make up the rules as they go. Stop signs are a suggestion, as are painted lines on the road. In Quito, when it's the middle of the night, or very early in the morning, you're EXPECTED to run red lights. Oh well.