Lidenor no more.

Apparently one thing you don want to be when a forest fire comes through is a huge commercial sawmill. I’m told 55-gallon drums of wood preservative were exploding like bombs.

This is the remains of what I thought I had documented: an automated machine for chopping and splitting past-expiry wooden telephone poles into firewood.

Unfortunately, no effort was made to remove the metal mesh embedded in the ends of the poles – eucalyptus being prone to serious splitting. I took most of those pieces back to exchange for “real” firewood. I didn’t plan to ever buy firewood from them again for that reason.

In semi-related news, today is the third Thursday in a row for which rain has been forecast – and failed to materialize. It is brutally dry out there.

How they roll

It’s 6 PM on Sunday, January 1st. Normally I would cross the Ruta Interbalnearia. However, it’s time for everyone-at-the-same-time to leave the beach (other side) and return to Montevideo (to the right). I didn’t manage to catch the traffic, but there are lots of cars, also heading to Montevideo, coming from further east.

In this photo there are nine cars in the crossing, one more waiting on the far side of the far lane, and one more on this side, also waiting to turn right.

It was very tempting to wait and watch them all sort out this clusterfuck, but I wasn’t feeling patient.