The getaway car

…may or may not be ready when you need it.

older Fiat car, Uruguay

But you will have easy access to the back.

The electrician’s ladder

Time to replace the ceiling fan in our bedroom, a job I was not going to do myself — too high. The electrician brought a four-part folding ladder that wasn’t tall enough, and neither would my extension ladder work. By itself.

improvised ladder, Uruguay

Since I had just started a massage in the next room when he arrived shortly after 2 PM (having said he’d be there at 10 AM), he poked around in my workshop, found rope and wire, and assembled this. My ladder is on the left; his is folded over it. Rope, many pieces of wire….

Hey, it worked!

But how did he transport a ladder on a motorbike?

carrying a ladder on a motorbike, Uruguay

Easy! Notice the tool box balanced in front of him as well.

Just another old car

Many details don’t show in this photo, but the seat belt hanging out the door caught my eye. And the roof rack, indicating it’s still a beast of burden. Also, parked outside a meeting at Ajupena (social center for retirees and pensioners) suggests that maybe the original owner? I haven’t been able to determine the year. Maybe inherited? Who knows.

1942 Ford — rare gem

I spotted this gem parked on the highway one day, thought to take a picture but didn’t, and the next morning it appeared in front of our house.

Although it doesn’t show in the photo, the only identification on the front was “V8.” So I walked around back, where again I saw “V8,” and only then “Ford.” The owner was walking back to get parts out of the back, and told me it was a 1942.

¡Impecable! as some people here are fond of saying. But wait — he was getting parts out of the back? Yes, a car battery, is seems. At least for this day, this was a car mechanic’s working vehicle, a 75-year old show car.

Increíble.

Savoy

~1958 Plymouth Savoy, still going strong after almost 60 years, in Estación Atlántida.

Universe responds

Two parked white vehicles

I guess there’s nothing technically wrong with this parking, it bothers me viscerally.

oddly parked vintage car, Atlántida, Uruguay

Backwards lettering on the back of a truck

And I can appreciate that ambulances and fire trucks sometimes put reverse lettering on the front of the vehicle, so you can read it in your rear-view mirror. But something about this application of reverse letters escapes me.

(Flete: transport)

The bike

Ralf, Syd’s brother in law, left for Germany Saturday after several months here.

He had brought his electric bike from Germany to have some adventures exploring Argentina and Uruguay. The bike itself provided some adventures, requiring the German Embassy in Buenos Aires to intervene with the bus company that “lost” it. And then the airport: though the bike had come from Germany on Air Europa just with a plastic wrapping, the Uruguayan employees decided it had to be in a box.

And of course they had no box.

So with airline tape, and the help of four helpful guys who apparently appeared out of nowhere, Ralf scavenged cardboard bits from every shop in the airport.

The end result was equally amusing and terrifying. But OK with Air Europa.

Bicycle packed for air transport, Montevideo Uruguay

Of course, upon arrival in Frankfurt, the whole mess had to be taken apart, which took so long that Ralf missed his train and so, after 25 hours of traveling, had to wait two more for the next one.

Having lived in Germany, I can only imagine what other Germans thought of the mess of plastic and cardboard abandoned in the airport.

Saab story

On Saturday, returning from the organic vegetable market, we passed an unusual crowd of parked cars on the entranceway to the Ruta Interbalnearia, and glimpsed a collection of antique cars on display in a most unusual and inaccessible area.

Atlátnida, Uruguay: location of antique car show