Dispatches From Guatemala

Welp, I couldn't join in on the New Years' insanity, but I hope that I had some comparable adventure down in Guatemala again this January.

The goal this year was to construct the footings of two bridges, survey for a third which will become my senior design project, and demonstrate a single family scale water filtration device. All of this in 15 days, which was no small feat to say the least. We met these goals and demolished them, pouring both abutments for our first bridge and pouring one abutment and preparing another for the second. Whew!

Our first week was spent in the community of El Aguacate, Quiche, Guatemala. They needed a 30-foot concrete cast beam vehiclar bridge to replace their old one which had been underdesigned and was, until they demolished it a few weeks before our arrival, being propped up at the foundation with tree limbs. So all 16 of us jumped in and started working on that. At this same community we planned to work on our water filter. We invited both communities, a couple of Peace Corps workers, and a group of Jesuits from Mexico to come and watch us build one. The filter consisted of locally obtainable materials-- sand and stone-- run through sieves made of chicken wire and mosquito netting and placed in layers in a locally-purchasable water container. You can run 5-10 gallons of water per day through one of these filters, and thanks to the wonders of mechanical filtration (and later on a biological process which develops too), clean water pops out the other side. People seemed quite interested in this, and were taking notes in English, Spanish, and the local Mayan dialect of Quiche.

El Aguacate was a very interesting place. There were a lot of English speakers who had just returned there from America either due to deportation or leaving the country due to a lack of jobs. It costs roughly Q40,000 (US $5000) to pay a coyote to get you across the border. Given the national minimum wage of Q50/day, this is a HUGE investment. Some people had been in the US for as long as 9 years before leaving again. It's also getting harder to run the border-- one man who we talked to had crossed twice. The first time, he took about a day to cross the border. The next time he was walking around in the desert for 5 days before being able to cross. A lot of people die out there according to him.

After playing around with power tools at El Aguacate for a week, we packed up and left via private chicken bus for our next community of Tres Cruces. At El Aguacate we were spoiled-- we got to sleep on the tile floor of a house. Tres Cruces had us camping literally on the side of a mountain. We found a small flat spot that we could get a couple of tents on, but other than that... well, don't lose your footing! It got cold at night up at this site, but that was just because the coldest weather in 8 years was rolling through Guatemala. 40's were the norm, not too bad for Wisconsinites. And the tradeoff was that we were able to shower in a waterfall fed by a mountain spring a couple of times.

The kids at Tres Cruces were adorable when they weren't dragging us down hills, learning how to do the fist bump really really hard, clinging to legs and being carried around that way, running around with a wheelbarrow trying to ram people all day, or babbling on in Quiche (they don't go to school at Tres Cruces because it's really hard to get there without a bridge, so very few kids in the community know Spanish, the second language up in the highlands). We did manage to teach them one word in Spanish-- dulce (candy)-- by the end of it. And how to say "MU rocks" and "I'm the boss" in English. Their moms must hate us. We also befriended the fattest puppy I've ever seen in Guatemala. The kids learned that when we got pissed off they could hand us the puppy and instantly make things better. Many offerings of the puppy were given.

Tres Cruces was a pretty difficult site due to high water levels. We had to fight the river the whole way with two nonfunctioning pumps, sandbags, and eventually a bucket brigade. Before we could pour footings we had to pour a subbase which consisted of soupy cement and huge rocks thrown or pushed off a ledge. This artificial rough surface will allow the footings to stay in place and prevent the river from scouring them out so we don't wind up with the original El Aguacate bridge.

Somehow in between all of this hooplah we also managed to survey for the replacement of a bridge in Joyabaj, the main city in the region. This will be a 42-foot vehicluar bridge that will serve roughly 20,000 people in the region with a shorter route to schools and markets in the city. The river there is pretty dirty, so we were very cautious when running around the place, but we got our survey done without even touching water once. We also began to chip out footings in the extremely hard rock on the banks of the river. Three days with 90-pound jackhammers led to little progress in the granite-like material. So naturally one expert Guatemalan rock splitter with a really huge hammer and another really brave guy holding a stake for him had the whole thing finished for us in a week. I think he weighed about 90 pounds himself.

We aren't sure if we'll use concrete or steel for this bridge, so towards the end of the trip we visited a Guatemalan steel fabrication plant in Guatemala City to see their facilities and process. Steel is not forged in Guatemala, so they import it from around the world (US, China, Russia, Israel) and then form it into shapes in country. The guy who ran the place was a Purdue grad, 3rd generation of the family to work in the business. It was really cool.

After all of our work was done we returned to Antigua for a free day and HOT SHOWERS and A BED. Life was good. We climbed Pacaya volcano again. It had just reopened to the public after being too active and dangerous a couple of days before. During our climb we saw a really huge amount of lava. My photos have nothing in them for scale, but trust me when I say that the lava pictures show a flow of several hundred feet rolling down the mountainside. It wasn't the thick syrupy stuff that I saw last time that is common in Hawaiian volcanoes. It was more crumbly and contained distinct bits of rock. Also some Australian girl was wearing soccer shoes during the climb and her soles melted almost all the way through. Note to Adidas: test your shoes for lava resistance next time! Our guide was very good and kept us safe. We were quite a distance away from the action, thankfully. It was still pretty damn warm.

Hopped on a bus to the airport at 4 AM and now I'm back in Milwaukee. Whew! If you want to see some trip photos, check out: http://s885.photobucket.com/albums/ac60/astanle119/

Hope to go adventuring with some of you some time again soon! If my company is still in Haiti doing disaster relief (we just got called up to help FEMA pull its head out of its ass) when I go full time this summer, you may wind up getting some dispatches from there as well. In the meantime, donate to the Red Cross. Please.

Better Off Ted, etc.

yeah so obviously that didn't air, but i just wanted to say that you should check out the two seasons of Better Off Ted at some point. i should have said that a couple months ago, before ABC decided to kill it off, showing two episodes a night along with the rotting corpse of Scrubs. Its definitely the 'smart comedy' heir to Arrested Development, and Portia de Rossi is really fun to watch as the ruthless boss. they coulda easily put it on Wednesdays and saved it, but its becoming increasingly clear that TV executives even dumber than wall street execs. Yes, i'm looking at you NBC.

so anyway i really couldn't sleep the other night and consoled myself with the fact that there are 2(!) new 30 Rock's this week. then i figured i'd put the shows i looked forward to the most in order, to show where Better Off Ted fits. (and yeah, i think 60% of the reason for its failure is that meaningless title)

Top 10 (only 10) Shows That Get Me Through the Week:

1. 30 Rock
2. How I Met Your Mother
3. Community
4. Better Off Ted
5. The Daily Show
6. The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien. {Jay i hope you die of cancerous herpes}
7. The Office
8. Parks & Rec
9. Modern Family
10. Glee (I'm sorry. I'm really really sorry)

So yeah, this list one of the sadder things I've ever done. but waiting for a job/to head back down to berkeley, well its pretty boring.

I like Sunny in Philly a lot too, but we don't have cable and i have 4 seasons to catch up on so I think i'll wait until I'm trapped in a forest ranger tower. Also excited Eastbound & Down is getting a second season. looking forward to someday watching that with Pat, pretty drunk, while we wait for ken to fall asleep so we can draw on him.

i'd also like to catch up on Breaking Bad and Mad Men at some point. that is all.

Attn Doug:

20 years ago: 'I think I want to go into academia!'

favorite album of the year

since i ceased to be a music director, i have really fallen off with what i should be listening to, and montana didn't help. i listened to grizzbear once, on laptop speakers, and animal collective nonce-not once, don't use it-(ok, 'my girls' once) and dirty pros? naw. [phoenix:please don't steal my gf] sooo....the only album from 2009 that i need to big-up is Dinosaur Jr.'s Farm.




i'm not even sure if any of you dig Dino J but i just gotta throw this up there because this is my fortress of solitude, these are the best Mascis tracks maybe ever, its like fucking comfy battle armor, sweet but true and hard. his lyrics are as impossible to parse as ever, he's singing to some girl he misses that he probably never had-thank you J- and his solos, jesus, well he's certainly put up the greatest lead guitar of the last few years and he's making the case for best of the last quarter century. the intuition is unreal. this is the high and lonesome sound brought to now, not some cheesy-ass alt-country-folk horseshit but the sound those MFs woulda REALLY put out if they were around right now. lesson #1: you can fake it when the kids are faking it too. you can't when they're not. not for long.

the only weak part of the album is Lou's tracks, which is a damn shame cuz he put up some fine ones on the last album Beyond. he adds this dark paranoid element that Dino needs, but these are 2nd tier. that said, i love the guy and if you haven't, listen to 'Truly Great Thing' because it is one of the greatest love songs.

Runner-up:: Gaslight Anthem. released at the tail end of 2008, got listened to at least 50 times, never fails to make me feel like a world-beater, this band honestly made me consider sending fan mail. number one if it actually released in '09.

Honorable Mention: Paper Trail (minus"porn star") fuck i love me some TI. yes, well aware that this makes me even whiter. also did not release in '09. did i mention how lazy i am?

Other STUFF I LOVED:
Nurses: Apple's Acre--maybe the best PDX release of the year. nix on the maybe

A Sunny Day in Glasgow: Ashes Grammar--i am not worthy

Volcano Choir:Unmap--BROSEPH Justin. i dug you before these posers. I dig you more than these posers. keep it up you fucking baller.

The Very Best: not as good as the mixtape, but still Jubliant, Defiant, Life-Affirming stuff that makes me get up, smell the coffee and give thanks

Califone: All My Friends are funeral singers--they could be kings. they could have been kings.

Mount Eerie: Wind's Poem--fuck yes more please

Yo La Tengo: Popular Songs--shine on you crazy fuckers

Memory Tapes--i dig, against my better judgie.

Fuck Buttons: Tarot Sport--really really don't want to like these guys. really really do.

The Low Anthem-- fuck i hate it when FlabbyWhiteGuy stuff is actually good. you would srsly put all those other TEA&SCARVES fucks to utter shame if you had chosen a better album title. really, nearly anything woulda been better. call me. inscrutable is my middle name. (David, fyi)

Akron/Family: Set 'Em Wild, Set 'Em Free-- minus some wankery, this coulda been a stonecold Classic.

Pains of Being Pure of Heart: DEAR GOOD BANDS, PLZZZZZ (if you are good) move the fuck out of brooklyn. seriously. i shouldn't instinctively want to hate you this much. also, do you need a harmonica player? i think you do. ttyl

ps recommendations welcome, still playing major catch-up.

Merry Christmas, ya little shits!