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Tower Time

I guess I'm starting to lose my motivation to post anything--only nine posts last month. There's still lots going on here, and I think about sharing some of it, and it hardly ever happens. So here goes. Some random thoughts.

Last weekend we sold the trampoline and go-kart. I also found a buyer for the two kayaks. Ellyn is the one who takes care of selling the house stuff, and I sell the toys. I still need to take care of some tire and tube issues on the boys' bikes before they can go to new owners. They both are spoken for, and I'm sure I can get rid of them any time. I'm going to wait a while longer though. When I sold the go-kart, it really hit home that we are leaving. I've put a lot of time and effort into that, and we've really enjoyed having it. It's amazing what goes into moving when you've been somewhere five years. We've never had to do that before, except to come here, and I guess I've forgotten a little what we went through. And, we have it easy compared to some of the other families here who are leaving. Four of the families are sending back shipments, and several of those families have been here ten years. We'll head out of here with eight suitcases and my bicycle. When it comes right down to it, we're taking less with us than we brought. I think that's a good thing, and means we've been able to clean house and get rid of the non-essential things.

The pilots did hardly any flying yesterday. I think Dale made the only flight, going out to Sarayacu to pick up a medical emergency patient. That's not good for making ends meet financially. Today was better, and I saw two planes away before 9 AM, an early start for around here. Work has been done to get HC-BMO ready for sale, and from what I hear, that sale could happen soon. The program probably won't replace it, as we just don't have enough flying for six planes.

Curtis and I worked at his house on Saturday and this morning, continuing work to put up a sixty foot tower. At first he said he'd probably stop at fifty feet, but it looks like we're putting up all six sections. Today we tried to put up the fourth section, and attempted it without a gin pole. Not a good idea. So we ended up back at the hangar just before lunch to make a gin pole. For those of you who don't know what that is, it's a pole with a pulley at the top which is attached to the side of the tower. You pull the next section up into place using that pole and a rope passing over the pulley. If weather and time permit we'll try it out tomorrow and see if we can get up to fifty feet. We'll probably need to get some guy wires up to go all the way to the top. The tower is tied in to the house at two different points, the topmost being at about twenty feet high, so that helps a lot, but probably not enough. At any rate, I never thought I'd help put up a tower like this, but it's turning out to be a challenging and fun adventure. At one point today, I was calling out "Safety second!", which seemed to be a fitting motto for the day as we tried to wrestle the fourth section into place without a gin pole. It seems that so often in Ecuador safety takes a back seat, which is exactly where I don't normally want to be. Today I was too close to that position though, and that's why we took a break to go build the right tool for the job.