August 26 2010:  Hotel Nahua,  Tamarindo, Costa Rica

August 25 2010:  Hotel Nahua,  Tamarindo, Costa Rica

August 24 2010:  Hotel Verdemar,  Manuel Antonio Costa Rica:  THE KHAN MAN TURNS 49 YEARS OLD !!!

August 23 2010:  Crow's Nest,  Pto Jimenez, Costa Rica

August 22 2010:  Crow's Nest,  Pto Jimenez, Costa Rica

August 21 2010:  Crow's Nest,  Pto Jimenez, Costa Rica

August 20 2010:  Crow's Nest,  Pto Jimenez, Costa Rica

August 19 2010:  Crow's Nest,  Pto Jimenez, Costa Rica

out of control	life imitates art	Golfito Bay	fellow traveler

The hydro water	Golfito below, Golfito Bay, Golfo dulce, Osa Peninsula background	the potable water:  can you taste the sugar?

August 18 2010:  Hotel Samoa del Sur, Golfito, Costa Rica

looking down at the hydro chute	Big water in little Uvita	Drinking fountain for giants	The home site view

Final stucco for the concrete bases	Cope welds	Dawn checks out her new river

August 17 2010:  Tucan Hotel, Uvita, Costa Rica

Improvised scaffolding	The beams have ears	Wish not, want not	Where toucans dare.

August 16 2010:  Hotel Aeropuerto, San José, Costa Rica

August 15 2010:  Hotel Europa,  Boca Chica, Dominican Republic

On my final night, it has been interesting, but I don't think I would come back without a pretty good reason.  There was no mistaking the Caribbean air.  Even in the sketchy coast of Santo Domingo, the breeze blowing in off the water is warm and evocative, like a fluid that washes over.  It's like breathing a drink, completely unlike the water that comes off the Osa Coast, either the Gulf or the Pacific Ocean.  It is familiar from Puerto Rico all those years ago and curious that I came nearly all the way to the Isle of Enchantment but stopped short.  Sto Domingo is on the southern coast, so it does not get those trades in from the Atlantic.  Well I guess it gets them but cycled and turned and disrupted, not the laminar blast that I got in Ocean Park facing Ireland back in dangerous years.

Must get up at four a.m. and am figuring that perhaps this is one of those times to not rely on anything and just stay up all night.  It's a late night place.  Toyed with napping here in the cool of the hotel room and sleeping off the beery afternoon tide to step out later around ten for dinner and then humping and pumping on work till time to go to the airport, but I may just skip the nap

August 14 2010:  Hotel Europa, Boca Chica, Dominican Republic

http://www.facebook.com/?ref=logo#!/album.php?aid=2045955&id=1292286247

August 12 2010:  Hotel Europa, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic

http://www.facebook.com/?ref=logo#!/album.php?aid=2045955&id=1292286247

August 11 2010:  Hotel Aeropuerto, San Jose, Costa Rica

August 10 2010:  Dan's Pad, Platanillo, Costa Rica

www.osanest.com

August 09 2010:  Crow's Nest,  Jimmy, Costa Rica

August 08 2010:  Crow's Nest,  Jimmy, Costa Rica

As August thickens, the news is good from the giddy heights of the Crow's Nest, the lowdown encouraging.  I have landed the two Ojochal jobs, full solar and green engineering retrofits and installs, on top of landing the Tamarindo job, so my prospects brightened dramatically over the course of the weekend.  Adding quality to the fineness, my tenant departed early, allowing me to reoccupy the Crow's Nest on Friday.  Good productivity today and yesterday, and I have completed the work on Casa Cuna del Golfo and have gotten all but the photos on The Crow's Nest.  I am excited at the prospect of taking rental money and applying it toward some improvements next door to give me a little cushy landing pad for when I need to move for paying guests.  With lots of signage in the works and tee-shirts and caps coming up tomorrow, it all feels like big business all the time around here.

Crowning this, I have been slamming on Mr. Potato and downloading tablatures and lyrics and putting together a song list of just the coolest songs, what the hell, will paste below to share.  It will take me awhile to learn to play them all decently so that I can have some walking around songs to surprise the naysayers every once in awhile.   More later, back to work now on some more graphic art for signage in paradise.

Angel from Montgomery

Pencil-Thin Moustache

A New Coat of Paint

Heart of Saturday Night

Black Wing

Swordfish Trombone

Invitation to the Blues

Mr. Jones

Desolation Blues

Under the Bridge

Comfortably Numb

Sam Stone

One Headlight

I will Survive

Cuando Calienta el Sol

Sultans of Swing

Heart of the Night

Out on the Weekend

A Pirate Looks at Forty

Cortez the Killer

IN MEMORIAM:  WINDY AUSTIN

In 1982 I moved into a house on Hill Street, 159 Hill Street, and in the refuse left behind by the former inhabitant, geo-troglodyte Albert Ogden, Ph.D., on his way to greener pastures in Austin, Texas, was a poster promoting a 1977 Frank Zappa concert and the Mothers of Invention concert, opened by Zorro and the Blue Footballs. Zorro and the Blue Footballs, I thought.  What the hell kind of name for a band is that?  Only problem was someone had scribbled on the poster, but I put it up on my bedroom wall anyway.  I felt with Zappa looking down over me at night I was sure to be a regular Cassanova around town . . .

I remember the petrified walrus dick bone that had seen miles and miles and miles of walrus pussy, and the only time I visited Windy at his house, there was nothing to eat, though he did roll a joint of krazo sensimilla, and Duncan Idaho, me, and Windy huffed it up.

Like my father before me in another era I worked in George's Majestic lounge slinging beers and selling Mary’s aigs until they came and got me off Dickson Street to come and teach introductory Spanish classes up to the university. It was a real kick in the pants to the geology chairman, Babbling Bob, who took great pleasure in denying me a teaching assistance ship in 1984 because (I think) I got the girl at his summer field camp and he had to make do with Rosy. 

Well he keeled over dead on his desk less than a year later down in the geo building after being deposed from the chairmanship of the department after disgracing himself and a hot new igneous petrologist hire that I took graduate igneous/metamorphic petrology under before she had to move on as a result of those overtures.

And today we mourn Windy. And looking back all those years, yes, I really did eat the only time I went to his house.

That scribble on the poster, turns out after studying it real close one day probably tripping on morning glory seeds, it was Frank Zappa's signature, from obscenity to the Senate Floor in three measures of 7/32 time and now pushing daisies in the American heartland while undergirding nascent geniuses on the coasts from his grave.

Another ghost rider has hit the sky, and I am a long way here in Central America from Dickson Street, but I can still feel the breeze of the Swinging Door fanning my ass on the way in and the pungence of cigarette smoke bent by the blues of BB King and the Cale Brothers and the smell of stale beer and little hard-bodies sweating on the dance floor one drink beyond the limits of their ephemeral virtue under the sounds of Greasy Greens, Jeff Clampett, and the inimitable Zorro and the Blue Footballs.

Tonight I shall fly my staff at half flag.

August 07 2010:  Crow's Nest,  Jimmy, Costa Rica

August 06 2010:  Crow's Nest,  Jimmy, Costa Rica

August 05 2010:  Hotel Angelus,  Pérez Zeledón, Costa Rica

August 04 2010:  Hotel Angelus,  Pérez Zeledón, Costa Rica

August 03 2010:  El Nido del Halcón, Uvita, Costa Rica

August 02 2010:  Juanita's House,  Jimmy, Costa Rica

August 01 2010:  Juanita's House,  Jimmy, Costa Rica