Sorry for the lack of updates, but the last two days have been busy and tiring. Yesterday I started off by putting the finishing touches on the Zip Line Tower. It isn’t finished, but my aspect of the work is done. Now we need the guy who makes rope nets to come create ladders for the sides. He has quite the job ahead of him, as both sides will have rope nets all of the way up. (Glad its not my job!) If you’re wondering, the top two boards by themselves are not for the 3rd level (Which we decided not to do, due to stability issues), but are actually for the rope nets to secure to.
Anura and I, admiring the tower..
After I wrapped up that project Anura and I hit the streets in the flatbed truck to pick up supplies for the wood that was soon to come. (Although not as soon as we were thinking..) This proved to be quite the experience. After about 4 hardware stores, 40 miles and almost 3 hours later, we came out with half of the stuff we went looking for. Not a great success rate regardless of the situation, but especially so when the vehicle doesn’t have A/C and parking is hard to find. Our last and lucky stop brought us to this wonderfully decor-ed store which had the threaded rod we needed.
All it needs is a bit of touch up paint. Right?
A nearby store had the 3/4″ drill bit we were looking for, although unfortunately like EVERY OTHER drill bit you would find in the US, the back of this one wasn’t stepped down, so it would take and enormous drill to fit it. So that brought us to our next search of a lathe. Luckily after a bit of driving around (and beef jerky for lunch) we found a lathe and had the back of our bit milled down to 13mm. The guy did a fantastic job, and all for only 200 rupees!
Anura, looking on with interest.
We finally got back it Kalipu Sri (I finally learned the name of the boy’s camp) and we had some time to kill waiting for wood (Which was mostly filled by thinking about how much this job was going to suck). The wood arrived about an hour later, around 4:30.
Doesn't look like much.. Until you drop it on your foot. (Which I did)
While our wood pile may not look like much, it actually is a huge amount. The 2 pieces stacked closest to our view are 4″x8″ each by 20′ long, and weigh about 300lbs a piece. Our plan is to bolt 3 sets of 2 together to make the 3 masts of the ship. A large groove will be cut out of the top of each one so we can anchor a 4″x6″ piece into it, to give the illusion of tapering, and height. After all the preparation of the day, I wasn’t about to punch out at 5pm, so I worked into the night until I had only the light of a flash light to work by. I thought working in the night might also be good to beat the heat, but I was wrong. Chiseling solid Kempus wood is not an easy gig, as noticed by my shirt in this picture.
My trusty flashlight holder Chanika, and I.
The day ended shortly after i quit working at 8:30, because I was dead tired.
Today
Today was slightly mixed up, because the Northwest team left tonight at 11 pm (It’s 12:30AM now), so that had everyone running around preparing things for them to be off. Regardless we still managed to get a little bit of work done in the meantime. After an hour or so of chiseling, I noticed everyone seemed to be congregating towards the front of the lot, so I walked up and had a look what all the commotion was about. Commotion indeed. The city is finally paving the road way and has mandated that the wall of Kalipu Sri be moved back in two spots by 1.5 ft (it’s a dumb ordeal). But because of the thickness of the walls, two coconut trees have to be cut down before the wall can be rebuilt. That’s when they called this guy in..
The epitome of manliness..
I didn’t catch his name, but Anura just seemed to call him Tarzan. (He thought he was pretty clever for coming up with that one..) I missed the cutting of the first tree, but that didn’t really matter because it was small. This second tree however, if fell wrong, would smash the store across the street because of it’s height. As you can see in the picture, he’s climbing up to the top to section the tree off. I have an amazing video of the whole thing, but I need to find a video compressor so I can put it on youtube. A picture summary will have to do for now.
Harness:No. Safety line:No. Guts:Yes.
As you can see, the two ‘trouble’ sections of the wall have already been demolished. You can also see the nifty drawbridge entrance to the camp. (It’s really neat.) The whole ordeal took about 5 minutes, but that’s only because we spent 4 minutes waiting for cars to go by (remember the drivers are crazy here). Tarzan chopped the tree at lightning speed, and wasted no time once it was down too.
I think I just found my new hero.
After such a great performance, I just had to get a picture with Tarzan. The only problem which was later translated to me, was that the deal was if I took the picture, he wanted a paper copy. You don’t make promises to a guy who is this good with and axe that you can’t keep. So needless to say, my mission for tomorrow will be looking for a printer..
Best. Picture. Yet.
So what does he charge in return for his unique skill? 2000 rupees for both trees, which comes to about $18.50 US. I think we got the better end of that deal.. (Somehow I doubt he has insurance to pay for though, so this is good money.) Fun fact: This guy is about to turn 59!
Just as I was about to go back to work, some of our small children were coming home from school (The little ones get out really early). With the girls dressed up in their uniforms and blowing me kisses, I couldn’t pass up a picture. (Although they’re not blowing me kisses in it..)
I'm not sure why the boy didn't have his uniform on. Regardless, the girls were cute.
Having wasted enough time watching Tarzan and then getting distracted by the children, I got back to work on the masts. The sun started to beat down pretty good, but fortunately I had on nature’s sunscreen…
Nature's Sunscreen = Sawdust, and enough sweat to make it stick to you..
(I’m sure I just grossed out my women audience. I’m sorry.)
I kept plugging away til it was time to go to a final dinner with the Northwest University students and take them to the airport.
After this experience I am rethinking my future plans for a dugout canoe. I might go with a Coleman instead.
Dinner with the students was good, and I ended up back at Samudra Sri alone. (Although now that they’re gone I get to move to a nicer room, with a full sized bed, so… Good Riddance!)
But with all of this activity, I find myself still up at 1 in the morning with another long day ahead for tomorrow, so I bid you farewell..
-Brad
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