An inquisitive old fart with a camera
Before I even got out of bed, I heard machinery in the road. Looked out to see a large truck with a replacement length of plastic culvert. Oh nooo … the definition of insanity and all that.
But wait! It’s smaller (40 cm vs. 50 cm)! It’s got sufficient cover not to be crushed by the weight of a truck!
And it’s …
… done!
It wasn’t so long ago (one week to the day, in fact), that I speculated that the road crew might have solved our chronic drainage problem. But I did harbor some concern that the plastic culvert, covered only by a thin layer of dirt, might not stand up to the weight of garbage and delivery trucks.
As I see today, I did not. It broke. Within a week.
Proving once again what everyone here knows, but none seems to understand: doing things the cheap way ends up being expensive.
Expensive assuming they fix it. With general elections in the fall, the odds are better now than after, I’m told.
If you’re not a Spanish speaker, but want to show off, it’s lo bah-RAHT-o SAH-lay CAH-ro, with crisp Rs: English, not ‘Murkan.
What is cheap ends up expensive.
Oh, OK, can’t fool you. Obviously it’s the same Glove Fish, a hundred meters further west on the beach.
However, I did see red and white carnations and candles washed up over several hundred meters. No point letting those go to waste.
When I light them, I will say a silent blessing for whatever their original intended use.
The very rare Glove Fish.
Thought the street is still a muddy mess, we got a surprise today when a backhoe appeared and installed plastic culverts, potentially (there remain a few unresolved upstream/upstreet issues) creating a workable drainage system. Whether the plastic culvert, with only a shallow covering, will sustain the weight of trucks full of bricks or tankers from the barimétricos (septic pumpers) remains to be seen.
At the far (downhill) end, you can see the ripples indicating that real flow is going on. The swamp is draining. Given caveats, this represents a great improvement over the last “repairs,” during which the weight of the grader broke the concrete culvert, over which it then spread a fresh load of tosca (pulverized rock), which of course completely blocked the culvert, preventing any drainage. Yours truly opened that up and restored drainage, at the cost of presenting a slight danger to motorists.
It‘s really funny to look at these photos. This place looks so third-worldy. I had the same reaction when I took perhaps my favorite photo in Mexico, without the benefit of being able to see what I was taking a picture of (to not scare momma-or-pappa bird).
Seven years ago. Wow.
Here we go again…fresh tosca (rock dust, for lack of a better description) and the grader.
Making a mess.
As if to taunt their efforts, rain comes in torrents, turning the road once again into a river, because the “repair” has done nothing to address the crucial issue, that the drainage system is broken.
Can this end well? Stay tuned.
If you’re one of my three (or is it two?) regular readers, you might recall that the 9s of Uruguay bother me. And if you look at this one, you can see that obviously the writer was taught to make a nine starting with a counterclockwise loop, which then rejoins itself and veers off at an angle to look like a 9. Unless it doesn’t, in which case it ends up as a P.
But what’s up with that first digit — ?
It’s a 4. It just happens to be upside down.
How the hell did someone learn, or decide, to write a 4 upside-down? Also, if you clicked on the link above, you might note that the 3 here is verging into the territory of the 2 on the linked page.
Uruguay is not an exotic country, but does hold some mystery. If you’re willing to squint just right, with your bad eye.
You might recall that I planted fruit trees in the wrong place on our chacra. I finally got around to transplanting them: pathetically poor root structure in the impermeable soil that turns from incredibly sticky mud in the winter to something resembling concrete in the summer.
I planted one each on the two piles left from the installation of the septic system, complete with wind protection with fencing and shade cloth I had on hand.
The only other shade cloth I had had stripes, so now we have this jaunty little display in our back yard. But this is by far the wettest year we’ve had here, and particularly bad for mold in houses and plants in the ground. Will they fare better in their new location?
We’ll see soon enough.
We were wrong.
Mainly because I had to see if it was true, I ordered—and just received—a stainless steel money clip for which I paid 99¢.
USD .99 total, shipping included.
How can they do it?