Rain

Today is Thursday and we pretty well completed our work at Cote Plage on the new Inverter system. After some testing we made a final wiring change and the battery bank should be up full by now. I am sure the power will go off during the night so it will get tested right away. We finished what we were doing and went for lunch around 1:30. After lunch we headed out to the Eko Depot which is a Haitian version of Home Depot. Traffic was exceptionally heavy because of some closed roads and it took us 1-1/2 hours to make the 9 mile trip. We thought we might not get there before they close at 4 PM, but we ended up getting there by about 3:40 PM and found out they are open until 4:30, so we had ample time. We were able to find all of the parts we wanted to begin working on the mountain at the Boutillier Repeater site, and we are expecting to go there starting tomorrow. It has rained almost every day since we are here and today's rain was exceptionally heavy. The trip back from Eko Depot took us 3 hours, and we spent the best part of 1 hour getting through a single intersection, one of at least 3 that were gridlocked. The rainwater was rushing down the streets so fast that we drove through several sections of deep water, probably over the floorboards in depth. Amazingly many Haitians are afraid to drive through some of these "lakes". We feel bad for the street vendors who are coping with such downpours and who are getting very wet and cold standing in water up over their ankles in many instances. Some of the streets looked like I should have jumped right in with my kayak, as they had some pretty good rollers (waves). I didn't see any boats though. One just never knows how deep the puddles are or if there are any deeper potholes covered by water or perhaps a manhole cover missing here or there. You could lose a wheel in something like that... Paul said it would not be right to not experience an adventure while here and this was certainly an adventure. It would be good to have something that has high ground clearance here, but most of the vehicles are small and my truck would be hard to maneuver in such conditions. Tomorrow we will begin our work at Boutillier. I am thinking we might have 3 or 4 days of work up there, but it could go well and be less time, as the travel to and from there will take a big chunk out of each day we are there. If we get finished there we will look at and possibly tackle some work at the Stereo92.9 FM station in Pitionville. We will let you know if tomorrow is another "adventure".