Amazing what a little paint can do

It’s been over two years since I bought a $140 Chinese-made bike (now $159; here’s what it looked like before losing front and tail lights, derailleur and gears). It was falling apart before we got it home; went from 18 speeds to one (we live on the beach; no problem). Its primary redeeming feature has been no incentive to lock it up. With rusty 28″ wheels, it was uncomfortably big for most people here, and hardly looked worth stealing. In fact I wouldn’t have really cared if someone did take it.

The other day a valve stem broke. In pursuit of a new inner tube, I asked the bike guy about getting aluminum replacement wheels for the ugly rusty ones. The problem – this is a bike thing, not a Uruguay thing – is that 28″ aluminum wheels are not the same size as 28″ steel wheels, so I would need to replace tires and another tube as well, which just seemed wasteful.

But here is a Uruguay thing – take the rims, minus axles but with spokes – and send them to Montevideo to be sandblasted, painted, and oven-baked. At the same time, swap the kickstand for a safer rear-wheel model. And of course replace the inner tube.

For $40, I have a bike that looks worth stealing again.

(Now where’s my cable lock?)

Ah, tropical Uruguay!*

frost

-1°C this morning in Montevideo; 93% humidity. Heavy frost in the front yard (none in the enclosed back yard where my latest planting of cilantro has just peeped out of the earth). It’s been a month since the chimney cleaner didn’t clean our chimney . I got some slabs of steel cut to replace the bricks he broke in the wood stove; just installed them this morning. Who knows when, or if, the guy will ever return. It’s Uruguay.

As I mentioned before, most mydayuruguay.wordpress are neither well insulated nor well-heated. I’m sitting next to single-pane windows set into single-brick walls. I finally wised up and put a small heater under my desk; it helps. As do multiple layers of clothing.

* no one claims Uruguay has tropical weather, but some people apparently have that impression.

Bulk, recycled, cheap – what’s not to like?

In an obscure and unmarked store I would never have stumbled upon, you can buy several things not generally sold, such as pure bleach, not the expensive and watered-down Agua Janes, so ubiquitous that the recycling station has a separate bin for its distinctive orange bottles. The real stuff costs a fraction of the diluted.

They also sell detergent that is not watered down, again unlike the crap sold in the supermarket.

It comes in recycled 1.5 liter soft drink bottles (notice the variety of caps). In the beginning, I only had one bottle with the white  at the bottom, and with the latest batch it apears to be normal. I know next to nothing of the chemistry of detergent to guess what it signifies, but regardless we use ‘Deter’ for dishes, clothes, and other duties as assigned.

When you buy it by the funda (wrapped quantity), it’s cheaper. In this case, a little over a dollar  (23 pesos) for 1.5 liters. A single 2-liter bottle of bleach cost 39 pesos, or just under US $2.

The Tibetan Buddhist Temple in Uruguay

Yes, there is one. It sits high stop a hill (400 meters altitude; highest point in Uruguay is 500-something) on 600 hectares (almost 1,500 acres) of beautiful barren hills. Inspired by a vision of a visiting lama, started a dozen years ago, it sits basically in the middle of nowhere.

We went in a minivan with a local tour company, at the suggestion of friends with whom we did a bus trip to northern Argentina a couple years ago.

Interesting way to spend a day. Not something I’d be in a hurry to do again, nor necessarily recommend as a must-do. But different – which alone gives it points in a country that is, for the most part, anything but exotic.

Another boring blue sky day

blue_sky

View from our ever-cluttered dining room.

Blue sky? Actually the morning dawned dull and gray.

However, weary of looking at the drab wall of the neighbor’s garage, that faces us and that only we can see, I painted it sky blue (celeste) the other afternoon.

Mauro (of the weird haircut and motorcycle accident) cackled in delight as he did when I fixed his motorcycle at the idea of my painting part of the neighbor’s house on a whim.

By noon, by the way, it was a beautiful blue-sky, chemtrail-free sky.

Small and unexciting

The dogs had fresh bones and did not want to leave the yard. So I walked on my own, pausing longer than usual at the goats’n’geese (and apparently now a duck) enclosure at the local zoo, which the Bradt Urguay Guide (first and only in English) dismisses as ‘small and unexciting.’

Well, yes: I read the headlines. Looming economic, environmental, and political catastrophes on a scale that boggles the mind.

Small and unexciting? I have no problem with that.

Goats and duck in Atlántida, Uruguay zoo
Goats and duck in Atlántida, Uruguay zoo
Goats and duck in Atlántida, Uruguay zoo

 

Personal responsibility

trash left by fishermen on beach, Atlántida, Uruguay
Apparently not an issue for the city fisherslobs who come out for the weekend and leave their plastic and tangled fishing line on the beach, 30 meters from a trash receptacle. In the summer, a couple of people would come along at 8 AM and pick up everything. This time of the year it will simply blow around, wash along the shore, perhaps snare and kill a bird or fish.

Small-minded, selfish, ignorant people.

My thoughts jump to the geniuses of GE – who bring ‘good things to life’ – and the small-minded, selfish, ignorant design and management of the Fukushima nuclear plant – and the dozens of reactors in the United States sharing the same faulty and design (hence the blackout on the subject by GE-owned ‘mass media’).

If (when) the storage tank at unit #4 fails, there will be no one coming around at 8 AM to clean up the mess. It will simply blow around, wash along the shore, and quite possibly end civilization as we know it.

But the bringing good things to life ads sounded good, some people made a lot of money, and no doubt the fisherman took a couple of nice fish home to fry.

What else matters?

An argument for buying local?

Moldy shoes in Uruguay

The trusty Timberlands on the left have taken me through Mexico City, Paris, Prague, Bratislava, Buenos Aires. Notice the mold growing on them. The same is true of most shoes we brought to Uruguay.

The ‘Freeway’ shoes, made in Brazil and bought here, remain unaffected, even though stored in the same (ventilated) place.

What to make of that? Who knows.

If, however, you find yourself here and similarly afflicted, the answer (leftmost shoe) is Blem – furniture polish – and a rag.