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Car Accident

Please pray for one of our pilots who was involved in an accident as he drove to Quito on Sunday evening. As he was going down the 11,000' pass towards Quito, he came around a corner and found a bus broken down on the side of the road. As is the custom here, there were branches, and also a board, in the road as a warning to oncoming traffic. He wasn't able to stop in time, hit the branches/board, and was flipped onto his side into the other lane. Another car was involved, but both the MAF pilot and the people in the other car were only shaken up, not injured. In this country, even though the law says you are innocent until proven guilty, it is always the other way around. Since it's against the law to have an accident in Ecuador, the person they consider at fault is always taken to jail (unless they are injured, and then they go to hospital under police custody) until things are cleared up. So, Dale has been in a Machachi jail Sunday night and Monday night. The legal process here is slow, and it looks like he might be in jail again tonight. I talked to him on the phone this afternoon, and it doesn't sound like a very fun place. Our Quito staff, and lawyer, are doing what they can to get Dale out of there, and now they are waiting for a judge to sign some paperwork. When I spoke to him this afternoon, he had been witnessing to some others in the cell with him. Pray for his release, his testimony, and for his wife and three young children here in Shell. Dale had been on his way to Quito to take his a test for a commercial pilot license. He was going to be the first of the MAF pilots to take the test which is required so they can get a permanent license again.

Web Connection

I was able to get the Grant's set up with a 56K modem, and they're happy with that. Ron had bought a 56K USB modem when he was in the US in July, and he was wanting to use that to replace his 28K modem. I couldn't get it to connect to our MAFNet server at the hangar, but had another option. I had brought back a couple of used, donated 56K modems, so I set up one of those for him. Now he can connect to the hangar and can also connect to his Andinanet account and a speed of over 40K. That is unheard of, and a few years ago I thougth the day would never come. Now there are about six different MAF families living in Shell who have Andinanet accounts. This allows them to browse the web, and to also get their e-mail directly from an MAF server in Redlands, rather than here in Shell. The reason for them to use the Andinanet accounts is that they can get a faster connection for browsing the WWW. The bottom line is that it's a new day in Shell, with more internet options available than just our shared HCJB satellite link.

Monday Progress

I've gotten really lazy about posting here. Since I'm waiting for a download, and a backup, on two different machines, I'll take a minute. It's Monday morning, and today is going better than Friday and Thursday of last week. Mulitiple problems were staring me in the face those days, and I couldn't seem to get anywhere. I spent a bit of time working on one of them over the weekend, and got that figured out. Now I'm working on learning how to use the new DVD burner for backups. Well, now that I sit down for a minute, I'm reminded that I told Ron I'd go to his place before lunch and work on his modem. Better go see what I can do, and I'll be back later.

Moonlit Shell

I stepped out of the house tonight to run over to the Edwards' place. Dan needed some help getting connected to our e-mail server. As I walked onto the HCJB guest house compound, it seemed so long ago that we lived in the duplex there. The sky was clear tonight, many stars out, and a bright moon lighting the yard. I happily took it all in, 'cause we don't get many evenings like this in Shell. I was reminded by some newcomers to Shell that it hasn't been sunny since Sunday afternoon. I don't keep track of those things, since I don't mind the rain. But, I do always enjoy a clear blue sky, or a clear moonlit night. It took a few minutes longer to get Dan's PC set up, as it has Windows XP in Spanish, but we did get it going. I don't have many non-MAF clients using our MAFnet service anymore. With a cheaper option available to use the Andinanet ISP, we're only attractive to those who want tech support in English and willing to make house calls.

Today was one of those days where everything was a lucha, a fight. By the end of the day I had left a few things undone, problems for another day. I was able to help Manuel with his computer. Manuel was one of the MAF employees at the Sucua base which was closed earlier this year. He was also the pastor of a church there in Sucua. This month he and his family have moved to Shell. He will continue to work with MAF as a chaplain. We are excited about this new aspect of ministry. Manuel will work with patients who we fly in from the jungle, especially those who don't go to the HCJB hospital, which already has a chaplain working there. At any rate, he had a floppy drive that wasn't working, and I put in a different drive. Not new, but one that I had saved from an old computer for just a situation like this. Some of you in the US would laugh at what I work with, but I find my junk pile quite useful.

Friday afternoon I was trying to get out of the hangar before 5:30 PM, but was still trying to get an Windoze 98 installation done. Bruce and Caleb wanted a few photos with snakes. Bruce was hoping to get a photo good enough for a prayer card. I told him I didn't think the light was good, but we tried anyway. I'm not sure if he'll use any, but I saved one of him with a snake necklace, and another with a snake hat. Caleb was holding a young Rainbow boa. Not sure where that came from, as it wasn't in the hangar when I left for the summer, and I haven't asked John about it. Before Caleb had put the little guy away, it struck at him. Caleb's reflexes were fast enough that the snake got nothing but air. It's beyond me why anyone would want to hold a snake if they didn't have to. I have a snake phobia, that has only slightly been reduced because of the constant proximity to the pet boa constrictors in the MAF hangar. I figure that a fear of snakes in a country with over thirty species of poisonous snakes is a good thing--I'll just steer clear of them all.

Taylor's teacher and his family came over for dinner this evening. This is the first time Taylor has had a teacher with the title of 'Mr' and I think that's a bit different for him. He is enjoying school so far this year, especially the science experiments. I see him being more responsible about his homework and his daily reading. Last year he was supposed to read twenty minutes a day, and we let him do ten, since twenty was such a chore. This year he's to read thirty minutes a day, and he actually does it all! He breaks it down, and reads fifteen minutes in the morning before he goes to school, and fifteen minutes after school. Today he started reading a Star Wars book that he's excited about. Tonight he was reading in bed for a while. It's encouraging to see him becoming a reader.

Kayaks On The Bus

It's getting late (what else is new?) and I'm still up, working on Summit Adventure's web site, as well as dinking around on my computer. Still working on getting everything in order after upgrading to Mac OS 10.3 (which, BTW, I am absolutely loving!). My day started early, when Dustin and I got up to head to Tena and pick up some kayaks.

Dustin doesn't like basketball, soccer, football, baseball. He's great at individual sports, and excelled at skiing when he was young. Can't do that here though. Then we got the boys a used trampoline here, and Dustin taught himself to do forward and backward flips, and flips with a twist. I'm still amazed. A while back we knew he had an interest in kayaking, so I took him for a one-day trip with Rios Ecuador for his birthday. He was hooked! He saved up money, and we helped him buy a used kayak. Of course, he can't kayak alone. So, to make it possible for him to persue this, I bought a kayak also. We figure we have two more years left in Ecuador, there are world-class rivers here, so we need to make this possible for Dustin.

The 6:30 AM Flota Pelileo bus left a few minutes early, and the driver didn't dawdle for passengers as he drove out of town. Turns out he was on the scent of the San Francisco bus that had left about ten minutes earlier. We finally caught up to the other bus, and from there on, it was a classic Ecuadorean bus race. Downright scary at times, as we held our breath, waiting to see if we'd slide off a corner on the gravel road. Better just ot close your eyes and go to sleep! We woke up in Tena, and couldn't believe we'd made it there in under two hours. Breakfast at Cositas Ricas, and then a wait for Tarquino at the Rios Ecuador office. Turns out we were early, and so was Tarquino, and we were able to start picking up the kayaks at 9 AM, an hour early. When everthing was in order, we got a taxi pickup to take us to the bus terminal. We arrive minutes before the 10 AM bus for Ambato was to leave, and we didn't waste time buying a ticket and having the kayaks tied to the roof. The ride home was a bit slower, but much less exciting, and we arrived with both kayaks and a happy Dustin.

When we planned out day, I didn't think it would actually happen, but we managed to take the kayaks up to the Alpayacu this afternoon, and spent a couple hours playing in one of the quieter pools. Dustin worked on his roll for a bit, and I practiced a wet exit a couple times. Before long I had developed some confidence. We had a blast, and it was a dream come true for Dustin. He was exhausted tonight, and fell asleep on the couch before 9 PM. Very unusual for him.

Around The Hangar

It's Friday afternoon, and I'm installing Windoze 98 on Rachel's computer. Reformatting and re-installing Windows has been my answer to the problem of not being able to connect to the e-mail server with that machine. So far it has been the right call, as things are looking better again. Now it just takes some time to update Windows, install Office and Norton, and get things back they way they need to be. When I was in the Accounting office, I looked up to see this. Fan is very dusty, tape is to cover termite holes and keep the termite 'dirt' from dropping on the desk and keyboard, and the dark stain is from a leak in the roof. There's a rag on the desk to soak up the water.

I've also been exploring a collisions issue on my server, and it seems I'm starting to get a handle on that, with a possible solution. That would be good, because this has been an issue since before I left in May. It's been nice to have Caleb around, 'cause he knows so much about Linux. Problems are much easier solved when there are two of us putting our heads together and throwing around ideas.

A few of us noticed some work going on at the end of the runway down from the hangar. Turns out they are putting in a new road from the end of the runway to the main road through town. I've heard two different stories about what is going on. One is that the road is simply so the fire truck can get off the runway and onto the main road. The other is that the DAC will be closing the vehicle/pedestrian crossing on the runway, and having all traffic go around the end of the runway and then back down to the military base. We'll see how that all turns out. I wonder if that will mean a speed bump or two on the road near the entrance? The buses and other vehicles are going crazy fast at that point in the road, as they leave Shell and head for Puyo, and to have an entrance to the military base there without some traffic control would be nuts.

They've made much progress on the new hangar building since we left in May. You can see it at the far left in the photo. Will be storage and a meeting room when it's done.

IT Work

Hard to believe tomorrow is Friday already. Today I spend some time cleaning computers and straightening up cables. Putting things away from the past couple days of work, as well as working on a TCP/IP connectivity problem on one of the computers. Made some progress on that, but still not done.

Yesterday Caleb and I put up another cantenna (outdoor wireless antenna made from a tin can) and put it up at the Harcey's house. It's all temporary, and is proof on concept that we can do multi-point bridging to several houses around the base. We also put in to VDSL modems between the HCJB hospital and the hangar, which increased our bandwidth by quite a bit. That is a huge plus, as update downloads won't take nearly as long. For example, I downloaded a new version of the software I use for my e-mail server the other night. The 4MB file took about three minutes to download. With the old 56K modem connection the download would have taken about thirty minutes! Oh, I should tell you who Caleb is. He's here helping Ron with maintenance, but he's also very much into Linux, so he's a big help to me.

So, I've got a lot done this week. As usual with computers, there was some frustration involved, but we've made some good improvements to things. I'd like to head to Quito next week to work on an issue up there that came up while I was in the States this summer.

Fast Walking And Late Sleeping

Tonight at 1 AM Ecuador time, Jefferson Perez will be competing in the men's 20km walk. He became Ecuador's first gold medalist of any kind when he won the even in Atlanta eight years ago. The president has made a declaration that the people of Ecuador don't have to go to work on Friday morning until 9 AM! I won't say more, and I'll leave it at that!

Back To The Rain

Well, today we finally had the 'Shell day' I've been waiting for. All summer we had hardly any rain. One of the things I was looking forward to upon our arrival back in Shell was a rainy day, and to go to sleep with the rain pounding on the roof. Early in the morning I woke up to the rain, and it rained off an on through the morning, so much that the guys didn't do any flying 'til about noon. The reason it's been somewhat dry here is that twenty years' of rainfall records have shown that August is the driest month of the year, with an average of 'only' 14.1 inches of rain. If you have a roof that needs to be changed, this is the month to do it!

Licensing News

Good news on the licensing issue. Finally, after almost two years of pilot license insecurity, a long-standing contract with the government allowing MAF to operate in Ecuador with foreign pilots was recognized as valid by the DAC. Ecuador is also in the process of moving toward an international standard of accepting pilot licenses of other countries. The USA pilot licenses will be valid once a written exam is passed. Thanks for your prayers in this regard, and rejoice with us in this answer to our prayers! A direct result of this is that it frees us to focus on training the newer pilots for solo jungle operations.

Where's Lucy?

Friday was a national holiday. I had the day off from work, but the boys had school. Since they have a North American curriculum, most of their holidays are based around a typical US school schedule. I was glad I didn't have to go in to work, as I still had things to do around the house. Still, because the hangar is so close, I ended up there several times, doing a little cleaning in my area and talking some shop with a working visitor who uses Linux and is a server admin.

At lunch time the boys were home and Taylor mentioned seeing Lucy heading towards the school on the old power lines. The lines run from the generator shed beside our house, over to the school, across a deep gulley, and on to the HCJB guest house compound. I'd seen her on those wires before, and didn't think too much of it. They are not very large, and Lucy has a hard time walking on them.

About 4 PM I realized I hadn't seen her all afternoon. I took a walk over behind the school, then down the sidewalk towards the guest house. I didn't call for her, but just looked to see if she was around. She wasn't in sight, so I headed back to wash and vac the truck. After that Dustin took a walk looking for her. He did call for her, but he didn't find her either. Our neighbor, Kyle, came over and he told me that he also had seen Lucy on the wire just above the school courtyard. Now I was worried, and realized that if she had fallen off the wire while over the gulley, she'd be stuck. It's a deep jungle down there, and Lucy doesn't fly.

Because I was going to help the neighbor with a couple computer issues, I ran over there and told her I'd have to do the work on Saturday. Once again I went behind the school, and this time I called "LUCY" one time. Immediately I heard a loud and long, almost frantic "SQUAWK"!! from down in the gulley. I hated the thought of going down into that jungle-like gulley, but I was sure she was hating it too!

I went back to the house for a pair of old jeans, my boots, and a short machete. I easily found a spot behind the school where I could get into the jungle. The ground dropped of steeply for the first fifteen feet, and then it was a cliff. I worked my way along the edge of the cliff, moving towards the right. As soon as I went into the mess of vines and bamboo, I was calling for Lucy, and she was talking back to me. It wasn't too hard to find the right direction, but the question in my mind was, "How far down do I have to go?"

After a minute I saw her below me, walking on branches and bamboo in my direction. If you've ever been around bamboo, you know it has long thorns that can be over an inch long, are as strong as nails, but much sharper. Wishing for a pair of leather gloves, I carefully cut myself a path. I imagined she wasn't having an easy time getting around those thorns either. A couple times I looked back down for here, and she was gone! I thought she'd fallen deeper, but upon some careful searching, I found she'd climbed up higher. Soon she was almost ten feet above me. I chopped down a thin piece of bamboo, and tried using that to reach up to her. That didn't appeal to her sense of safety I guess, because she ignored it, and I ended up with a few small cuts and some slivers on my hands.

After about ten minutes she finally worked her way down to me, and was on my hand. I'll tell you, she was sure happy to see me! We worked our way back up to the school, and then on home. During the whole two months we were gone, she hadn't done anything like that. I have no idea what possessed here to take a walk on that wire, but I guess it's the next best thing to flying. Hopefully she won't do that again!

Last night I slept downstairs on the floor with Taylor. I was woken at 8 AM this morning by Lucy. She was at the front door, saying "Hello Lucy!" and "Knock knock!" over and over again. Even though I wanted to sleep in, it was past her breakfast time, and she wanted to let me know about it!

Back To Work

I spent the day continuing to get organized around the house, and over at the hangar. Getting caught up on e-mail was also a priority, and that included setting up automatic checks of a couple admin e-mail accounts on the server. So far things look good, and I've started a list of things to do, both at home and at work. Friday is a holiday, so that will give me a chance to get some things done around the house. Actually, the place looks really good, but after being gone for over two months, there are some things that need attention and cleaning up. I'm sure I'll also end up doing some IT work tomorrow also. For sure I know I need to help a couple of the MAF staff with issues on their personal computers.

Trip To Shell

After being in Quito for just under 24 hours, we are now back in Shell. Two hours after landing, we were at the dentist office. Dustin was not able to see the orthodontist, and that appointment was put off until first thing Wednesday morning. Instead, we went to Supermaxi and did some grocery shopping so we would arrive in Shell with our cupboards stocked.

We were very thankful for the use of the Harcey's van. They are in the US on furlough, and we were able to drive their van back to Shell. It was strange driving around Quito again. There were changes to roads, and street directions, and the usual traffic lights that didn't work. What a wild difference to the driving in the US!

The BaÒos road has continued to improve since we left, with three more tunnels and one new bridge open. There is still one bridge and one short tunnel to complete before the work is done. The thrill of the BaÒos road is almost gone, and soon we'll be left with only stories about the old, narrow, scary, one-way sections. Now that it's all surfaced with cement, what used to be an hour and a half trip can now be done in under an hour, and with a lot less wear and tear on things.

We're Back!

You should have seen the grins on our faces as we touched down in Quito this afternoon. We really were home! After two and a half months in the States, we thought maybe we'd not want to come back. But, driving out of the airport parking lot, and onto the crazy Quito streets, it seemed like we'd never been gone.

Biggest news is that all our luggage arrived with us, and looks like it's intact. I need to go through it still to make sure everything is there and that nothing was damaged, but we're off to a great start so far!

We'll head down to Shell tomorrow. This afternoon Ellyn and I were both in to see the dentist, and then Dustin sees the orthodontist in the morning. Then we'll hit the road. More later.