Queen Mary 2 is back today

I got close up pix of the QM2 last time it was in port. So today, Sandra and I went "mondi stomping" to get some panoramic shots of the ship and the Bonaire countryside.

As usual, you can click on the pictures to see them bigger.
Here is the view from the top of Seru Grandi, east of Antriol.


Here's one for the goat lovers.


Here's another one from part way up Seru Grandi.


QM2 as seen from just north of the Lagoen Road, opposite the Lagoen Villas residential area.


Same spot but from a lower angle.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas from Bonaire. We had a short sweet Christmas Eve. Service last night and then came home and watched "Miracle on 34th Street" on the TV. I watched most of another Christmas classic, the one with the Red Ryder BB Gun, this morning before Sandra woke up.

Then it was potato pancakes with mashed potatoes left over from Thanksgiving. (yes they were in the freezer) and opening presents. Our son, Richard, will be transporting some presents for us when he comes on the 29th, but we managed to have some fun stuff for each other today.

I'm listening to a Reliant K cd that Sandra gave me as I write this. Very "snappy", to quote someone from another movie I like that Sandra doesn't...

It is a balmy 80 degrees with lots of sun and a slight breeze, perfect Christmas on Bonaire weather.

Best wishes for a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Queen Mary II on Bonaire

The Queen Mary 2 visited Bonaire for the first time back on Dec. 12. It will be back on Dec. 27. I'm hoping to get a cool picture from up on Sero Largu, 'cause I saw one taken by someone else and said to myself, "why didn't I think of that?"

Here's a shot of the waterfront, sort of in the area where Sandra used to live when she was a kid. You can click on these pictures to see them bigger, 800x600 in this case.


It looks peacefull, but downtown was a hive of activity with zillions of passengers wandering around and locals coming to ogle the ships. We fit right in.


Sandra checks out the view from just north of the Flamingo Beach hotel. These are familiar sailing, snorkeling, and diving grounds for us, so it is cool to see such big ships parked here.

We're back online.

We got our Flamingo TV internet connection back at our house yesterday afternoon, after being down for almost two weeks. We'll celebrate by posting a bunch of pictures.

Here is another shot of the hotel site across the street from TWR. We are enjoying the view.


Looking east across the stink pond towards Antriol. If you click on the picture to make it bigger, you might be able to spot the flamingos.

Activities Building

Here's what the TWR Activities Building is looking like these days. Our church meets there on Sundays. AWANA meets there, as do our monthly socials for the medical school students.

Since there are only a few us still here with TWR, the facilities have been made available to some others too. The Bonaire Youth Outreach Foundation meets here on Saturday evenings. A couple other local churches also use the outside area for game nights.

That's Playa Trading, a big hardware and building materials supplier, in the background. Kaya Amsterdam, the road in the picture, pretty much has continuous buildings the length of the street. When I first came to Bonaire, TWR and Cambes were just about the only things there. In fact, the first time I crossed the street from the offices to the Act. Building, I thought that Kaya Amsterdam was a driveway!

Satellite Dish Project

Here is Ivan Statia with one of the handy dandy antenna kits.


Getting ready to raise one of the pedestals.


Many hands make light work.


Bruce came from the antenna contractor in California to install the hardware. Paul, an engineer from Intelsat was here again too.

New Short Wave Transmitter in Brazil

The three hours of Portuguese language programming that we air from Bonaire each day comes from a 24 hour a day satellite feed produced by our TWR partner in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Many local stations in Brazil also pick up and rebroadcast these programs.

Although we no longer broadcast on the short wave radio bands from Bonaire. Our TWR partner in Brazil has been broadcasting on two 10,000 watt transmitters. On Nov. 21, they commissioned a new 50,000 watt transmitter so they can reach more of that large country. You can read more about it here.

One cool side story is that the site manager and engineer for the RTM (Radio Tráns Mundial) short wave installation found the Lord as a result of listening to programs broadcast from Bonaire! You can read this inspiring story here.

If you'd like to brush up on your Portuguese, visit the TWR - Brazil web site.

Geminid Meteors

Whoo whoo, we went out last night at 10:30 pm to have a look at the comet, and saw lots of bright meteors.

We went to the Andrea 2 dive site to get away from the lights around our house. The comet was pretty easy to spot with the naked eye, but didn't seem to have a tail, even in binoculars.

The meteors were fantastic; pretty frequent, with many slow bright ones. If all meteor showers were this good, I'd surely go out and view them more often. This shower peaked last night, so we were out at the optimum time.

Monday Musings

Our internet access at home has been down since Thursday afternoon. It's amazing how much we've come to depend on it, having had it for less than a year at this point. I've got some pictures to post, but that will have to wait 'till we get connected again - I haven't put the software that lets me upload pix on my computer at work.

We've seen the comet a couple more times. The skies are really clear and dark, in between the clouds, 'cause the rain has washed all the dust out of the air. The comet it just about exactly where the finder chart (the second more detailed one) says it should be.

A bunch of us did a group ride in Washington Park on Saturday morning. It is nice and cool for bike riding, compared to the summer months anyway. The dirt roads in the park are a real mess because of the crazy rainy season we've had. I think my 1.5 hour personal best for riding through the park is safe for a while. Riding fast would be very difficult right now. Survival is the order of the day - which on a mtn. bike, is a lot of fun in it's own right.

I had a blast. I was the only one who rode out from Slac Bai, and got out just ahead of the mind bogglingly torrential rains that hit. The others in a F-150 pickup weren't sure if they were going to make it. The rushing waters were such that they couldn't identify where the road was in places.
I only got lightly rained on, which served to keep me from overheating in the roller coaster hills on the way out. The town of Rincon got hammered too. When I rode through Rincon, there were still fast moving rivers crossing some of the roads - like 3 to 6 inches deep rushing muddy water.

Because of the rain, the dirt road shortcut from Rincon to home would have been really a mess, so I rode back on the paved East road. It was quite a bit farther to ride, but at least I knew I would eventually get home in one piece. I've had the wheels and frame get so clogged up with mud on that other road that it stopped me cold. No pix of this bike ride, you had to be there....

We had not one, but two cruise ships in port on Sunday. One of them was the Queen Mary 2. That thing is HUGE. It seemed like everyone on Bonaire was there to see it. Of course that was only about four times the number of people who arrived on the ship. I'll post some pix when I can.

I've got some pix of our two new bird baths, I mean satellite dishes, too.

Comet Machholz spotted

2004 has sure been a banner year for bright comets. Last night, after coming back home from a food and fun night that our church held for students at the two medical schools here on Bonaire; Sandra and I observed what may be our fifth comet of the year.

Of course "bright" is a relative term. We could barely detect comet Machholz with our naked eye, after finding out exactly where to look using binoculars. But any comet that we can see with our naked eye is pretty cool.

The comet will be well placed during the whole holiday season, but this week is especially good for comet hunting because there is no pesky moon in the evening sky. (I saw the skinny crescent moon a little above Venus at 6 this morning.)

There is basic info about the comet and a finder chart on sky and telescope's web site. There is a very good, more detailed finder chart here. The good news is that the comet is only a little south west of Orion, a very prominent constellation. If you can find Orion, you should be able to use the detailed chart along with your binoculars, to "star hop" your way to the comet. Wow, all those connect the dots books that I did as a kid were preparing me to be an astronomer!

Let me know if you see it.

Going... Going... Gone

This is the machine that has been dismantling the old hotel, across the street from the TWR studios. That claw thing on the end can go up and down and left and right, but most importantly, can also spin. When it grabs a piece of wall and spins/twists the wall pops right off!

You can click on the pictures to see them bigger.


Here's a view of the demolition progress as seen from our old office wing, which is now a school. The machine just crawls along munching on the structure like a giant locust. Lots of people have been stopping by to witness a Bonaire institution disappear.


If I were still located in my old office, which had a window, I'd have a first class view now. Our offices are now in the double walled, soundproofed, windowless studio building.

Once I'm installed in front of my computer workstation, I don't know if its sunny or stormy, day or night.

But believe it or not, one day recently, it rained so hard that I actually did hear it from my office, in what used to be the music library when I first came to Bonaire in the mid 70s.


Here is the view from the studio side, with the new airconditioning condenser in the foreground and our green "Frog" in the parking lot.


This site would make a great park. The view, looking across to Klein Bonaire is most excellent. The beach itself got hammered by hurricane Lenny, a few years ago, but could be easily cleaned up.

More than 190 Languages

Continuing to expand the scope of its international outreach, Trans World Radio has surpassed 190 languages and dialects aired across the globe. In the last decade alone, TWR has added more than 90 languages and dialects to its broadcast schedule. You can find a list of all the languages here.

Recent additions to the airwaves include the following for the Northern Caucasus region of Russia: Avar, Kumyk, Dargwa, Lak, Lezgi, Tabasaran and Chechen.

Also new are Papiamentu (Bonaire); Pulaar (West Africa); and Uyghur (China).

“Expanding the number of languages TWR airs undoubtedly broadens our opportunity to reach even more people with the good news of Jesus Christ,” says TWR President Dr. David Tucker. “What’s more, by adding broadcasts into hard-to-reach areas like the Northern Caucasus region and China, we can deliver the gospel to people who might not otherwise have access to it.”