June 30 2009 / Crow's Nest

19:32

June's demise, like any, is a bizarre blend of loss and gain, of decay and germination, of an irretrievable past and an inevitable future. It strides past with its head held high, a penumbral shroud dancing across its stoic visage. Never again will I witness the likes of what this month has wrought, and the notion is as banal as a Seattle windshield wiper's daily dues.

The king of pop and my first poster pin-up girl both sailed off into the great mystery. The Aqualung turned 46 years old. Aladdin went back to camp, this time as a counseler rather than a camper. Doug withdrew into his shell and out of his break back onto the world at large. The first new pavement was lain outside Jim Town, and the Khan Man wrapped three jobs off peninsula. Juanitas closed out the month without a single loan from its owner and in the black, all bills paid. The tax man is after the Khan Man, but the seventy million ($135,000) in 2008 credit card revenues are all backed by good records, and what receipts we don't have we can get, so I am considering the audit not a challenge but an opportunity.

I was invited by www.sellingcr.com to write a solar article for them, and after submitting a short article, we decided to span it into two articles, one that paints the broad Costa Rican environment with respecta to solar power and alternative energy in general, the second one to be a nuts and bolts and costs description of what it takes to put in a solar power system. With all the work that installations and their attendant downstream obligations imply, there is little doubt but that if I can parlay any pretended expertise into a revenue stream from writing about it, there is some appeal to that over the grind of actually doing it. Of course, it takes both to keep the planet in orbit, I guess. I will post the first essay once I have edited it. I am not at all happy with my first take on part one. I kind of liked the original article. I managed to use the term "gordian knot." It's not often that you get to use that expression, and I have sadly deep-sixed it, banished it from the page. I bet, knowing myself, that it will find its way back into the essay..

00:30

Somewhere south of the witching hour, way past my bed time, eight cans into the evening, it is hardly time to be launching a blog entry. Yet today's momentum forestalls any notion to the contrary. My return from the field is to a wide range of administrative ticklers in CafeNet and the gathering storm over the Matapalo job I am staying hush on for the moment. It's just a dispute of $2000, but still, a dispute is, after all, a dispute, and disputes are never good.

I wrote a solicited solar article and will link to it tomorrow following final edition. We'll see how it plays. Too late for words here in paradise and off, now, to a hard-earned pallet..

June 28 2009 / Crow's Nest

If it ain't fixed, don't break it.

June 27 2009 / Crow's Nest

If it's important, say it twice, say it twice.

How two baby iguanas can sleep on a rock with a bevy of rattlers slithering around is beyond my ability to comprehend, yet there they sit, side by side, snoozing hard, eyes closed, locked in a perilous gambit with the reptilian equivalent of Morpheus. If androids dream of electric sheep, what then must populate the dreams of baby iguanas dropped as food into a cage of rattlesnakes. I am down to six of the babies and Mamasan. Four others are visibly dead in the cage. That leaves two unaccounted for. Either they are under the sack or they fell victim to hunger, or potentially both..

The Paradise equivalent of the Internal Revenue Service has pointed to credit card revenues of around eighty million colones in fiscal 07 and 08 and are asking for $45,000 in back taxes. And yesterday instead of cloud nine it was deep six with a rupture in the Rana Azul pipeline. Still holding my breath, buoyed somewhat by the nearly biblical elegance of the rainfall capture system in Manuel Antonio and my certainty that I am truly onto something in the advance stages of a rush. I am there at the right place at the right time. Boots mount the staircase. The door is flung wide open. He is not there for he has risen. He is not there for he has risen.

The orbital attraction of fuzz and media at the Quepos airport this morning on the start of my southerly blaze was too intense for words, and I could not but slow to a crawl beside a fluorescent vested, hardhat-buoying road walker. "Big ears," he spat. grimacing with disdain. "The president," asks I, and yes, he is unable to deny through choking dismissal.. "The bastard." And five miles down the immaculate road bed I come upon a garlanded tent festooned with lounging besuited dignitaries and Costa Rican flags and beyond that a perfectly black ribbon of tarmac winding aggressively as if constrained to an American dream, It is a first glimpse of asphalt on a stretch of road that has been begging for the hydrocarbon for an entire decade, and it appears as if the nation is going to be able to rejoice in this executive christening..

Imagine my surprise to find on my prodigal return to the Cradle an entire kilometer of newly paved road on the outskirts of Jim Town. Imagine pavement all the way to Bambu. Imagine and it shall be thine.

Thus sayeth the horde.

June 25 2009 / Puriscal

Today, I had the highly unusual experience of driving a new road, this one from Orotina to Puriscal. As I observed to Lalo, we now know all the ways in and out of Puriscal. Here at the Cabinas Ensueno, it is very nice, rustic looking cabinas with all the amenities and a nice cedar smell inside. I negotiated a third off the rate based on cash and liked the people, despite their erring slightly on the side of solicitousness. Then we repaired to downtown for a very serviceable meal.

Madhuvan is a wrap. We wired the two cabins, completed the grounding connections. buried the conduit, and put the float valve on the top tank and tested the pump, and everything worked. Lalo cleaned the intake this morning and replaced all the filter rock with piedra cuarta, so Madhuvan is at full capacity and beyond, and we blazed at 2:15 feeling strong.

The deployment wound down on the food end almost to a timed finish. I used up the salchichon today for breakfast, and finished the last of the onions, the culantro, leaving only a couple chile dulces, three cukes, and a few lemons in the produce department, having cooked the corn and green beans last night. I broke the kitchen down and packed it, getting the salt, coffee, sugar, and flour into their separate respective zip lock bags, all of the pantry neatly packed and ready for the next need.

Let us keep our fingers crossed for a quick resolution at Palmichal first thing in the morning. It is time to walk away and for it to hold up for a few days. It is past time. And tomorrow, an overnight at Verdemar. Copete finished this afternoon, Phase I complete. As complicated as this trip has been with a total of four projects underway simultaneously, I am strangely near a hat trick with the main three and may be able to have Erick and Lalo knock off the Uvita transformer transport on their own tomorrow afternoon while I conclude Verdemar Phase I.

Two nights hence, I will be back in the Crow's Nest, even though I am told that some of my babies have died. You can't take anything for granted in Paradise.

Rest in peace Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson. It will be odd to learn what the lessons are in the days to come.

June 24 2009 / Madhuvan

Today's culinary cycles were grimmer by far than the multi-crested panoply of project milestones. It was a good day, and I topped it off with arroz con pollo, or vice-versa according to Erick, with green beans and corn on the cob. The dog got onto the counter in the morning while we were out working and grounded an entire plate of chicken fingers that I had breaded like the eggplant and sauteed in olive oil this morning to get the lunch meal out of the way early. I made pinto a la montana for breakfast and scrambled eggs with onion, garlic, culantro, tomato, and one can of tuna. It sucked. When Alex made just eggs and tuna it was delicious. I had never heard of it, but it was quite good, quite a striking taste. But I somehow managed to get out of hand with it. I think maybe you have to squeeze the tuna dry. I drained the can, but only by gravity, and I think maybe you have to press the juice out to get the magic with eggs. After the dogs dispensed with the plate of chicken fingers, . I had only tuna then to whip up something to go along with the leftover pinto for lunch. The dogs managed to get not only the plate of chicken but also somehow into a closed dish containing recent leftovers, a cheeseburger and a pork chop. In the meanwhile we installed the submersible pump, put up the steel cable and posts to support the electrical conduit over a drainage ditch, and completed the plumbing to the top well and the buried cabling to the power center. In the afternoon as Erick was doing the final distribution run for the two main cabins, I bought a half meter of piedra cuarta for filter pack and delivered it to the terrace above the intake. I was the first vehicle in in months, clearly, and to my professional satisfaction there were extensive examples of fluvial geomorphology at work in the steep road itself beneath the steady influence of the universal solvent's passage down the mountainside. I wondered at one point if I was going to make it out. It was a risky thing to do, even after these five days without rain. I ain't going back down there for love nor money, but now the filter pack is there..

It must be veranillo, and it is the right time for it. We don't get it much in the Osa if at all. But Guanacaste gets it. And this must be it. It has not rained at all. The celestial forces have allowed me to sleep every night on the front porch here, despite the swarms of insects, and tonight is going to be a repeat. And tomorrow we conclude in the morning and pack and fly.

Presuming nothing goes wrong it is back to Puriscal tomorrow evening and a hotel room, Palmichal for a final commissioning and lightning arrestor installation on Friday morning, then for the boys Jimenez, for me a night in Manuel Antonio to inspect the work that Luis Copete will complete tomorrow as well. Unless something takes a southerly deviation at any of these three jobs I can possibly expect a return to the Cradle of Saturday at the earliest.

I cut my left index finger through the fingernail and into the flesh today with my fileting knife while whipping through some garlic. I always use the butcher knife, but this one was there, and the next thing you know, I had sliced right through the nail and into the flesh and the flesh grinned its anger with a virulent crimson smile, gushing effusively. It settled down amazingly quickly however. I kind of felt like fainting when I realized what I had done. Then it turned out to not be that bad. I dosed it with rubbing alcohol and have a band-aid on it. It makes me shudder with revolt to think about it. I hope it does the same thing to you, so that you will think twice before betraying your favorite knife with another one just lying around. Don't do it.

Don't cry for me, Pakistan.

June 22 2009 / Madhuvan

Tonight the moon hides behind the dressing screen of the mountains, coy like a maiden, blushing with the inevitability of an orange burst over the horizon, like a fresh dancer taking the stage, her hand reaching for the first grasp of the iconic pole, heart in mouth. The inspiration of lunatics everywhere, she denies us tonight our nightly quota of moon dew, and in the distance I imagine a petulant howl from a lonely ridgeline, a tell-tale silouette, head thrown back above the tallest crag.

We are past any challenges here and strictly going through the motions. It is low pressure, everybody letting us do our work without interference, all the comforts of home with the well-stocked kitchen, Internet, sleeping privacy, the reservoir of mood-enhancers, wet and dry alike, make it almost like a little vacation. For some, all their vices are wet. Not so with the khanman. I am an equal-opportunist when it comes to phases. Solid, liquid, and gas are all, after all, linked in their own continuum, and it would be indeed unseemly to favor one over the other. They all have their place.

The politics of this group have settled into a safe zone of cheerful and helpful conviviality. Erick has his ascerbic and biting sarcastic side turned off in deference to Lalo, and Lalo in turn is indulging fewer of his finicky bents and is gracing us with an indifferent to pleasant mood. The khan man has no girding stress related to technical and operational challenges and is free to drift to other mental concerns without the need to be elsewhere. I am tired of cooking for the crew. It has grown to be a chore. Yet, I still face every meal with an air of mystery and imagination, and it pays off in the outcome. Tonight I breaded and fried eggplant slices, which we ate with pork chops. I mixed blackberries, whole cream, and sugar for dessert. The eggplant was spectacular, the constituent spices in the breading forming a dance line of flavors, the olive oil adding its gastronomic brush-stroke, and the meat remained not rigid but not mushy, somehow completely cooked but with the final vestige of crispness still lingering for the satisfaction that dental incision brings in its intersection with food texture.

Erick as always is nothing but complimentary about the food and goes on and on about the eggplant. He does this at every meal, repeatedly complimenting the good tasting thing(s) whatever they are. Lalo on the other hand would not release a compliment under the leverage of a crow-bar. And naturally he does not like anything that is not done in the most simple and most basic manner possible. The Costa Rican spice rack contains a single resident, salt, and while I am not critic of salt, the proper living of life requires somewhat more in my opinion that flat-line cuisine. Yet that is all Lalo wants: rice, beans, some kind of meat fried hard. shrimp the only gastronomic luxury in his little world.

But I'm tired of it. I have had great fun being the cook, and it has been a wild ride being on these distant deployments, but I am ready to be over it for a spell.

We will nearly finish tomorrow afternoon and will most likely depart Thursday noon and spend the night probably in a Puriscal hotel for a Friday return to Palmichal to get them up and running. Copete anticipates a similar Thur noon wrap time at Verdemar. I will have only to get Rana Azul up and steady on the hydro and have no surprises here or at Manuel Antonio in order to earn a trimphal ring tone as I punch in Jim-Town on the Ruby Racer's speed dialer.

June 21 2009 / Madhuvan, Nicoya, Guanacaste

Tonight's crickets rejoice the afternoon's light rains. The mountain sides have a veridian sheen, and the sky brushes over them awkwardly, laden with water. If the sun so much as breaks through the attendant steam bath is like those face blasts in river saunas all those years ago in that Oztotl worship and pscychedelic rationalism.

The best path to a great dinner is to start with good ingredients. Tonight's fajitas originated as tenderloin, and I have found that it is hard to go wrong with this cut of meat. It cannot be overcooked nor undercooked, and it goes as well with any type of condiment as it does with nothing more than salt. I made pico de gallo and guacamole, and also a skillet of refried beans. I needn't have marinated the meat even the two hours, but like I said earlier, you can't go wrong with tenderloin. With this cut of meat, all roads lead to Rome.

This facility had been without power for two weeks. Within thirty minutes of our arrival yesterday afternoon, they were back up again, fully powered, and with Internet. Today we put up panels and tested the auto-transformer to boost to 220 volt for the submersible pump I am installing. Other than that it is plumbing, signals, electrification, grounding, some wiring, surge protection. A week's worth of work.

Happy Father's Day, Dad. I hope yours has been as good as mine. I have certainly enjoyed the unfolding road and cannot imagine any of it outside of the context that your example and guidance has helped to define and render.

June 20 2009 / Puntarenas

From Hotel Las Brisas the gulf is hazy and calm, the mountains on the Nicoya Peninsula rising higher and more jagged than as if looking across the Golfo Dulce from golfito. The air at seven a.m. is hazy and diaphonous. A febrile sun slowly defeats the salt vapor and will rise to blazing, but for the moment it is pleasant and breezy. The coffee is bad, the service worse, and it will be fine to get on the ferry in a couple hours and get out of this town. Erick's snoring last night was the worst ever, and I really could not sleep at all, it seemed, despite being very tired and sleepy when we finally made it to bed. It was a marathon slog yesterday from Palmichal into San Jose and torrential rain, then rush hour traffic to pick up two packages then out through Heredia and Alajuela and off into the rainy night toward Puntarenas. In a few hours we will be pulling up at Madhuvan and after weeks of carting around $5000 worth of solar panels I will finally be able to release the Ruby Racer of their tedious companionship.

June 16 2009 / Manuel Antonio

A swarm of thoughts, a veritable dervish whorling, does not coalesce into a sentient jewel. Sentences do not blossom from a tree, no matter the new radiants of sky plowed by its hungry boughs. And the world is no longer a tangible quantity known, nor the realm that encompasses so many faces nor simultaneously is so amenable to simple characterizations. Boundaries are elusive. Frontiers gape into anastomosing dimensions. People become inchoate galaxies. Gods are indeed unknown. There is too much to say, too much time to say it, and too many means to achieve the statement, and for all this ease the task verges on the herculean. Yet, there is hope for me. My universe is not without conflict. It is paved with neither the roses of my good intentions nor the bad ones of others. Let's see how I handle it.

That age old dilemma. I cannot go into details because it is a public format, and that fact is at its odds with what the Ikhanosphere actually is. Like a fortress of solitude, it derides all notions of holding back as chicken shit. Yet there is a dick-headed lawyer lurking back in my occasionally be-suited super-ego somewhere shaking his finger in my face and pointing out my age and how I should know better than to (sic) let it all hang out..

Hotel Verdemar. . . ! Back again. Round Three, repeat business. This time, rainfall capture, solar hot water heating trial. It is a project preceptually as cool or cooler than anything I've ever done. It is also a yearning launch pad. Solar hot water simply works here. It is incontestable and will be great to see the hard numbers for this commercial installation. It will be publication quality information. And rainfall capture as well. Water is expensive. Rainfall, so abundant it is a bother, is free. One plus one makes two, every time.

Rana Azul, biggest hydroelectric installation to date. Madhuvan, a place where all the most eclectic arts of the trade are exacted by a confluence of climate, geography, society and culture as to leave the sensitive numb and the animated super-dimensional. And it's a road trip to boot with a budget that is unrestricted beyond basic precepts of project management. What a time to be alive and to be inside my skin!

I wouldn't wish it on anyone else. At the table, let's eat.

June 2 2009 / Puerto Jimenez

Imagine my surprise to discover that inside the grain sack in which I have been carrying Juanita, she gave birth. Now, instead of one five foot long rattlesnake I have twenty five babies as well. I'm bullish on pit vipers these days. Yesterday as I got my bag out from the tool box, I noticed the foam mattress was wet beneath where Juanita (nearly Rosita) lay in her sack. I had no idea she was really female, but the evidence would now appear preponderant. It was strange to me that it should be wet, and I imagined that Juanita had died and was rotting or something but there was no smell. It was eerie and has been on my mind. Peering into the sack is discomfiting. The lethargy is titanic. The family seems to be perfectly happy all entertwined and compelled to one another's company. If they have not begun eating one another yet, then that is almost certainly in their impending future as I don't even have a cage built yet, and now the thing has grown complicated. I think Fernelli must have known this would happen and that this is kind of a practical joke. If so, it is demonically funny

It was a pleasant surprise to call shortly before noon to learn that the Outback circuit board sets were released from customs and available for pickup. I found David's office through a back way from Cariari, a great drive that reminded me of the old bus passage from Heredia to San Jose back in the foreign exchange Barva days. Happily, the two sets of boards came in two wholly separate boxes, and I found Transportes Alfaro in Barrio Mexico without too much circling around and parked easily in and out and then was off to Orotina in record time, taking the coastal route in order to return the strayed key in Manuel Antonio. With improvements to the Hatillo-Quepos stretch, the coastal route is shorter than the Panamerican, barring interference by unusual traffic congestion.

Wham-bam. The lighting suppression and surge protection analysis is at full circle fruition with a $140 part that I expect to incorporate standard into all installations and retrofit to seven existing installations.

I am home, back in the Crow's Nest. I thought I would have to spend tonight in San Jose. The parts handoff was splendid timing, the liaison clearly a lasting and solid one, all horizons resplendant in a full three sixty, life at mach one.

Cry havoc.

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