Rain Gauge

Money: the thing no one talks about, and always do something about.
Weather: the thing everyone talks about, but never does anything about...

Twice in September my rain gauge overflowed... It's not that I leave it
alone for days at a time, I check it three times a day (and empty it at
least that much) and yet in the time it takes for me to go to sleep
something like this happens.

Rain total for the month of September in Kaiam (the "dry" season): 307mm
(or ~12.1 inches)

I'm scared to think what kind of rain totals we'll have during the "wet"
season... I think I'm going to need a bigger rain gauge... or an
overflow...

Mud

That's right... mud... For the first time in the history of Kaiam
someone is recording rainfall amounts... That someone is me. Currently
I just about have one complete month of recordings and the numbers are
quite staggering for what is unanimously considered the "dry" season...
I, however, use that term loosely as the picture above is a common sight
in many locations throughout our airstrip project. The
sticky/slimy/suck-your-shoes-off-your-feet substance, while less
frequent than my previous experience here, is still much more prevelent
than the name of the season implies...

However, there has been a comprimize reached on the seasonal naming
system: "Wet season" and "Soggy season"... I leave it to you to
determine which is a replacement for "Dry season"...

Evening Feast

It's not just a meal, it's literally as much as you can eat during the
evening meal at Kaiam... Sometimes it's ridiculous how much food the
guys here consume, but as it turns out having just rice, cumu (sweet
leaf), and maybe a bit of tin fish for flavoring doesn't give enough
calories to keep me from loosing weight. And for those of you who know
me, know that I can't really afford to loose much.

So, from time to time, it's good to have some real protein, and on this
particular night, Nick provided for us with a smoked rubber-mouth fish
that was caught a short walk away in the Karawari river... Well, not
that short of a walk, but it's the closest place to catch a fish this
size. The nice thing about this type of fish is that most of the bones
that it has are really big and easy to take out. The bones that are a
little bit smaller are still a pain, but they're flexible enough not to
break too easily if you miss one... I really hate bones in my food.
That's probably why I hate buffalo wings so much... I don't want to
nibble my food, I want to eat it. Usually I avoid fish as well for the
same reason, but these rubber-mouth fish aren't all that bad.

What did you do all day today?

I moved this rock... or rather, I moved the dirt around this rock in
order to get it out of the ground because it was in the middle of my
airstrip... And left a ginormous hole behind as a result!

There's this one strip of rock running through the airstrip and it's not
easy to break up even with this machine. For two days before this I was
scratching at the top of the rock trying to break it up but on day three
I'd had enough and went nuclear on it. This rock was exposed when I was
done... Vertically... When I picked it up it was heavy enough to put
the tractor on it's front two tires, even with the counter weight...
Let's hope I got it all. (yes yes... we both know that there's more...
who said I can't hope???)

Midway point of airstrip

You're looking down the midway point of the airstrip. Of course it's
all sopping wet in this photo because of a huge rain... As it turns out
my rain gauge goes up to around 60mm (more than 2 1/4") and then it's
overflowing, and on this particular morning the rain gauge was topped
off... Where's my dry season?

With construction about half done it seems like things are going to
start happening quicker. On the left side of the photo is the
"mountain" that we removed. It extended the majority of the way across
the airstrip and the big hole that's now filled with water used to be a
rock... A very large rock (the size of my bucket) that took me the one
entire day to remove... I hope I don't have to do that again!

All the people here keep saying things like "What's that noise? It's
the plane coming to land!"... Though there's still a long way to go...

New House Construction

Well, work continues on the new house. This is what the new "haus
copper" is looking like, and hopefully soon the floor will be going in.
Then it will probably feel a lot more like a house instead of a picknik
shelter. While I'm busy driving the tractor, Jeff is working on the
house. That will be much nicer to live in than the sac-sac (sago) house
that we currently live in. We hope to be moved in before Christmas.

For the most part I try to ignore what's going on over there. Every
once in a while Jeff will ask me questions like: "Why is the blade on
the saw smoking so badly?" I wrongly assume that he's talking about
cross cutting and that he's not supporting the timber close enough to
where he's cutting... After giving him the advice to move his supports
closer, I decide I'd better investigate. He's using a 4" cut blade to
rip a 5" thick piece of lumber. If the motor wasn't smoking yet, it
would be soon... I told him to use the baby chainsaw instead of
breaking our one and only electric saw. Sometimes it's best not to know...

Clutch Cable Resolution

Well, it took nearly two days, but here is the resolution to the clutch
cable... It's a piece of bar stock drilled out in the center, then four
slots drilled in alternating fashion that was welded to heat it (there
is no torch here at Kaiam) then pounded while still hot to pinch the
cable in place. The piece below is the old cable end... I would have
preferred to drill that one and do something like this, but the metal
they use on those things must be extremely hard because I wasn't able to
make much more than a dent when attempting that one.

Making this part took me all day... But when you consider I had to
re-wrap six inches of frayed cable, drill three inches of bar stock,
file out the sharp edges with a small round file, charge a battery to
start the tractor to run the generator to weld the piece to smash the
sides in to pinch the cable and mushroom the top flat and I atempted to
heat it up and solder all the pieces together to help hold everything
firm... that part didn't work as I couldn't keep the part hot enough for
the solder to stick.

Today I put the part in and tested it out. The overall length of the
cable didn't change by much and from the driver's point of view it's
just like it was before. All in all I should probably be more happy
with the fix, but I guess this means I've got more driving in my
future... ;-)