Well, if I hadn't seen the picture I wouldn't have believed it. Racing carabao caroming around the course!

Got home last night and wrote this up. Slept well, the sleep of the exhausted. Now I am headed back into it and this may be my last post from this "hotel" room. From now on I'll only be able to post from work.

8/13/2003 9:11 PM (Local Time)
Well, the Mudcat is down and I need to update the diary. So I'll do it offline and copy it into the system later.

Today was a banner day. My household goods arrived. The truck pulled up around 9:30 with three guys in the cab and four large crates and one smaller crate on the back. The load was covered with a large yellow tarp. Once the truck was in place and the crates were opened they pulled the tarp back over and tied it off to make a shaded workspace.

The crew was made up of one crew chief and two younger guys. The crew chief, Harry, explained that the helpers were new and worked hard. He was right about that. Those kids worked hard all day long. They were a pleasant group. We tuned our two boom boxes to the same station and they went to work. The boxes came off the truck and flowed into the house.

And the house slowly but surely filled up. It was like Christmas day! All my goodies were there like old friends. The first thing that came off the truck was my 12 foot Viking spear. That must have set the theme as far as they were concerned. Then the boxes of books came off in an endless stream. And the crummy furniture. And the tools, and the boxes of LPs and the boxes of music books, and the racks of CDs, and the cassettes, and video cassettes, and all that other stuff.

And then off came the crate with my guitars. I quit everything else and turned to opening the crate and tuning up the 12-string. Ah, the sweet sound of that wonderful little lady. I didn't take too long but I enjoyed every minute.

At lunch time I ran down to Taco Bell for lunch and ran into the carabao protest outside the main gate of the base. There were a lot of people there, waving signs and standing under colorful umbrellas. They even had a couple of carabao there, stolid in the sun, chewing and completely unaware of what was happening around them.

In the afternoon they finished the unloading and headed out leaving me with a real mess to straighten up. Boxes and paper litter the rooms. Sigh, it's going to be a long couple of weeks till I get it all under control.

Coming back to the hotel room for one last night I saw something interesting. A person standing on the deck of a ship can see about a mile and a half to the horizon. Coming down off the mountain in the dark I could see a lot farther than that and what I saw was very impressive. I saw a thunderstorm out at sea. I could see the whole thing from top to bottom, sporadically lit by silent lightning. I have never seen anything like it. The storm was too far away to be heard but I could see it clearly. Quite amazing.