Author: doug

Kindling

All that thin wood on the right represents three hours of dragging lumber from underneath the avocado trees to the nearby carport, cutting it to length on the table saw (I would say “cheap table saw,” but anything with a motor or engine is not cheap in Uruguay), loading in a wheelbarrow and stacking 20 meters away in front of the casita (small/guest house).

There’s nothing quite like a shop vac for cleaning up piles of sawdust without having to breath it. This morning I emptied it and marveled at the simplicity of this 10-year-old supermarket-points purchase, still going strong.

Then I wondered if I had a manual for the shop vac (I always save them, even if I never look at them). Then I thought, what if it was my job to write a manual for this thing? I quickly concluded I would get fired, for my instruction manual would consist of a single line.

If you need an instruction manual for a shop vac, you are probably a liberal arts professor and should not be trusted with it.

Remarkable.

A Christmas card received in the end of March. Typical of Correo Uruguayo was my first thought. I looked closer: mailed 20 December, arrived in Uruguay 28 January, and delivered 28 March. Two months in country before it got to our house.

Ridiculous? Look closer. “Caviahue” is the name of our house. There is no city, state, or postal code in the address.

Can you imagine the USPS delivering a letter to an address with no city, state, or ZIP code?

Perfectly legible – kind of.

I got back from the feria today, unpacked fruits, veggies, cheese, nuts, and other good stuff, and found these in the bottom of the bag.

The first digit of the three items on the left is a 1. The second digit of the first item is also a 1. A cursive 1, I guess.

The list on the right has a classic Uruguayan backwards 9 and Z-style 4, but other than that the numbers are pretty legible. The letters, however…see if you can figure them out and then scroll down for the answer.

 

 

 

 

 

  • marron (green pepper)
  • calabacín (squash)
  • remolacha (beets)
  • lechuga (lettuce)
  • cherry (tomato; it doesn’t get cold enough in Uruguay to grow cherries AFAIK)

 

Easy, eh?

Aerial surveillance happening

A jet flew overhead, and out of curiosity I looked it up on flightradar24.com, finding this far more interesting flight path. A helicopter, obviously checking for something, finally returning to MVD

where it probably landed on the “X.”

What was it? Here things get strange.

It’s listed as a privately owned Bell 212 helicopter, illustrated with an image of a private jet, registered in the United States. That is certainly no private jet path, especially with an altitude as low as 50 feet at one point! And I seriously doubt a US registered chopper is doing surveillance in Uruguay.

But the jet is easily explained: N845RL is a US-registered jet. About which the photographer writes, “I have no idea what this private Learjet 45 is doing at Aero Sports Fair 2002 in Brazil wearing US Registration and flag. Anyway, welcome!”

Flightradar24 also says the helicopter private, which I doubt, however

I find no government Bell 212 helicopter registered in Uruguay. But the Wikipedia article mentions the military version called the Bell UH-1N Twin Huey, and

I know the Uruguayan Air Force has those.

While this is going on, I sent Syd a message with a link to the flight path which was very near his house (a couple times it got close enough to us that I could hear it, but I never saw it).

And he replied that he had just been watching the TWO helicopters, one white and one black, directly overhead. Being a bright day, the “black” may well have been military green, but the white? And why only one on the radar?

A bit of strangeness to make the day more interesting.