Just down the road, toward the country, is a new development under construction. They leveled a lot of jungle to clear for the roads. The houses will do more jungle removal once they are being built. No one, including the local Panamanians, are happy about the destruction of jungle.
Several troops of cute, white-faced monkeys are wondering through the neighborhoods, looking for a new home. Sad.
Rumor has it that it is being funded by drug money.
That is the rumor for almost anything new so I have no idea if it's true. Most things are false here so I would bet on "no drug money" in this project.
Not far from the development and our house is a hydroelectric dam.
Every year, the hydroelectric dam operators dip out all the sand, gravel, cobbles and boulders that build up behind the dam each rainy season. This massive debris has to be hauled somewhere.
This year they are hauling it to the new development...over our roads...which are in piss poor condition as it is...now in really bad condition from the use of off road "Volvo" type massive dump trucks normally used in mining only. Each tire is about 8 feet in diameter and 2 feet wide.
Inevitably, no one will be held accountable to restore the roads to their prior condition.
So is the way of Panama and most other 3rd World nations.
Driving to and from our house has become dicey, to say the least. In many areas, there are guard rails and embankments that make it impossible to pull over out of the way of the huge trucks.
One afternoon, I was headed through a blind curve, guard rails and embankments on both sides of the road, when a behemoth barreled around the curve. Thank God he was empty. As it was, the back 4 huge tires locked up and skipped down the road. I pulled over as far as I could...a useless attempt to stay alive.
Fortunately, he stopped about 5 feet off my front bumper.
Whew! It took a few minutes to stop the pounding of my heart. My profanity flowed for several more minutes.
You just never know what Panama will throw at you.
I am headed back to Colombia this week for another whirlwind tour. These trips are heavily populated with WORKAHOLICS. Not my style.
Each trip, I give them a lecture about: I eat 3 meals a day, every day, every week; I sleep 8 hours a night, every night, every week; I don't enjoy working 12 to 16 hours a day, not now or ever ever.
The result of my lecture...if I'm lucky...is that I get one meal a day and 4 hours of sleep a night.
You could say my lecture can not trump addiction!
Hahahaha! I knew that! I just love to give a self-rightous, indignant lecture.
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4 comments:
living in a community with private roads, out in the country, most of our road devastation comes from the big dump and concrete trucks, which are lethal to chip and seal roads - and You are correct - no one is held accountable... and MAN is it costly! makes me wonder what $$$ cost I put on society by my ways??? hmmm. better I let this one go... thought about You a lot, lately, always wishing You well. I worked for about 4 days of the last 2 weeks, and that was a little more than enough for me!! Yay... now, all I have to do is assemble Laura's new kitchen chairs... should be fun, and I can probably make a week long project of it. but before I start, I think I will take a nap. Love You Tom! Darshan
Amen to the nap!
It is encouraging that the good ole USA has similar accountability issues as we have in Panama. Our roads are ever changing. Someone asked how our road was the other day. I responded, "Well, right now, they are good but who knows in a day or two."
We have had a gaggle of problems with electronic stuff this week. Yella's computer died a powerful and tragic death. Our little box that plays avi files on the TV now only has video in pink...WTF? Yellas got a new iMac and it is acting up too. We may have lost all the photos of our life that Yella scanned in to her computer last September. She thought she was backing up but it wasn't working properly. Damn! That is a big loss...maybe we will sent it to the Recovery Specialists in the US to try to retrieve them. Not a good week for electronics in Boquete.
I am leaving for Colombia on Tuesday to meet with some overly wealthy people who want to coal mine in Colombia. Hope we can sell them something. Maybe do a wallet-dectomy and run with the cash!
Hahahaha...I need to get back the $500 bucks that were scammed off me on the last trip.
Love, Tom
Ha... the scam 'trades'. My son in law, Thomas, who just came back from Mexico, was out partying, and a man said, is this your wallet - to which he looked - all id was there, but it was picked clean - of $600. his friend, had a razor blade slice thru the bottom of his back pocket, and lost hundreds as well... hope your coal mining business goes as good as their wallet collecting business - commerce seems to be on the rise! Have a good time in Columbia, and don't let the 'frantics' fool You for a minute that EITHER time invested, or level of anxiety, is a necessary ingredient for Anything (but selling oneself on the IDEA 'I' has done something)! What BS that is! I remember when You had a partner like that in your business that thought your weren't contributing unless putting in a gazillion hours, mostly spent doing nothing more than attending a desk... a moments inspiration, or one intuitive turn in the right direction produces ALL the results, though we rarely credit our Beingness over our acquired knowledge and judgments (mind). isn't it funny that we can be so old and still be getting school spanked to Realize Deeper? Love It - and You - Darshan
So true. I just arrived in Bogota to a frenetic office that felt more like a bus depot than an office. These people love this mayhem! Fortunately, they left for far away places and won't return until late Friday. Ha! Perfect! Now Sebastian, Gustavo and myself will settle down and get some work done.
I do love a few moment of frenzy. But that's all.
Love you, Tom
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