Monday, August 3, 2009

Next on the list



Today and Wednesday are flight days. That means early mornings and lots of weather monitoring. Today, there is a nice tropical storm in the area, not hitting us directly. It is dragging weather across our island tho. Ben was in the air at 6 this morning to get some folks out of the tribe. Not even halfway there, he ran into a wall of black clouds. There was no getting through, so he turned around and headed back to our city.

Four hours later, the weather looks a bit more cleared up. He is off again, this time he has made it to the tribal location and is on track to make it back home.

There's another storm headed this way. Perhaps it will make it here in time for his next flight? Wouldn't that be just dandy? For him, that means flying around storms, and monitoring his turn around boundaries. For me, that means I stick close to the radio, monitoring his location, checking weather on the internet, calling our halfway location for weather updates, and radio-ing the tribal location for up to date weather. And the return trip to our city entails me running back and forth from the computer to our porch to check local weather conditions and see if the mountains are clear (we have a GREAT view!).

After those two flights, Ben begins a 100 hour inspection on the plane. What does that mean? Not exactly sure what that means for him, but for me, it means a lot less running :)

The 2 Hour Project

This is a typical project for our line of work AND typically how it goes...
A wise missionary once told us, 'plan on 3 things to get done in a day, and if you get 1 done, you've had a successful day.'

Ben needed to fill out a form for the aviation authorities here in the Philippines. A simple, 2 hour job is all it would be. Then, send it off to the big city via LBC.

It was so simple it took almost a week to do.

First thing to go wrong: The form was incomplete. There wasn't enough time to order new forms before the deadline, so Ben decided to make it on the computer.
Second thing to go wrong: The computer crashed. Take it down to the computer repair shop
Third delay: It takes them a day to fix it. And a small chunk of change. Return to hangar to make form.
Fourth delay: All the programs are gone! Return to computer repair shop for help. Files are in new spots. Return with computer to hangar again.
Fifth delay: Word program starts acting funny...or maybe he just doesn't know it well enough yet. After awhile, he finishes the form and fills it out. Go to LBC and wait 1 hour in line to mail document.

And the 2 hour project is done.

In 4 days.

Onto the next one...