Name that Picture

Here's another chance to rev up those creative juices.

No - not your stomach juices.

Yes - that is my right leg.

Hint - A souvenir from my bike ride on Saturday am.

Click - on the picture to see it bigger....

Urrrp....

Papiamentu Programs

Our 100 kw AM transmitter can heard from Florida and the Bahamas in the north down to the middle of Brazil in the South. We broadcast daily Bible teaching programming in the English, Spanish, Portuguese, and Haitian Creole. We also have a weekend program in Baniua and in Macuxi, the languages of large indigenous groups living in the Amazon basin.

In addition to our international broadcasting, we present programming in English, Spanish, Dutch, and Papiamentu (the language here on the ABC islands) on a FM transmitter.

A group of women from Bonaire collaborate on a program for women. I mentioned this project a couple times about a year ago. You can search on Project Hanna to see those posts. We also air Bible studies by a couple of pastors located in Curacao and Aruba.

We have Papiamentu, English, and Spanish programming for kids each afternoon. Our newest kids program, Chikitin Pa Hesus, is being created by Richandro, the very talented and very dedicated young man pictured below.


In addition to doing his regular weekly program, Laso Direkto Ku Hesus, on TWR, and working with some friends on a successful youth program aired on a popular secular station, Richandro has been working with us on a number of projects as a summer intern of sorts, after having graduated from MAVO in the local high school this past May. He is now beginning the rigorous HAVO school program.


You can click on the pictures to see them bigger.

Curacao and Back

There was absolutely no wind yesterday morning (Tue.) when I woke up. Normally I would take advantage of such a rare event to go for a speedy road bike ride. But I only had time for a short mtn. bike ride, because it was visit the doctor in Curacao day.

We took the Divi Divi puddle jumper plane, which is really laid back. More like hopping on a bus than a plane. When we flew back to Bonaire that afternoon, the air was super clear and the sun was behind us, and we got the best views of Bonaire that I've ever seen. I was wishing I had brought my camera, of course, but we enjoyed it none the less.

Curacao was fine. We rented a Toyota Yaris Hatchback (smaller than an Echo) and zoomed hither and yon. Visited a nice big bike shop and to see if there was any market for some carbon fiber race wheels I have left over from my road bike racing days. There is an active cycling community in Curacao, but no one seems to ride sew ups these days, so the wheels will likely end up on eBay one day.

We visited a candy store, a warehouse store where we bought Santo Domingo coffee that one can no longer get on Bonaire, the BMW/Land Rover dealer, Subway, and of course the doctor, where we learned that Sandra is doing great.

We flew back to Bonaire on the last flight of the day with most of the same seven other passengers that were on the plane in the morning. Bonaire sure seemed quiet and sleepy after spending the day in Curacao.

Kellners are Back

Trans World Radio has introduced many families to the wonders of Bonaire during the more than 40 years that we have been broadcsting from this little island. Many of the kids who spent some of their formative years here eventually make a pilgramage back to Bonaire to check out their old stomping grounds. My wife, Sandra, and I became a couple when she visited the island to check out her roots.

MK Mark Kellner garnered a mention, but no picture, in my blog, when he returned after some 31 years, in Nov. 2004, to celebrate his 25th wedding anniversary with his wife Sue.

Mark was back on Bonaire again this past week with his daughter and his dad. I still don't have a picture of Mark. I think he was under water most of the time he was here. But I did snap a picture of Bob Kellner checking out the vibration isolating fabric bellows his late wife made for the studio building air handler unit, before they first came to Bonaire, some 35 years ago.

Mtn. Bike Race Trail

We'll be having another mtn. bike race on Sept. 10. Some of the race is on nice wide dirt roads, some is on washed out dirt roads, and the best part is on some donkey trails that most people don't even know exist.

As time goes by, these unused trails get overgrown with bushes and thorns. Every couple years, I have to do some thorn bush pruning so I can ride without getting all chopped up. Brer rabbit would feel right at home in some of our Bonaire briar patches.

One of my favorite trails connects some dirt roads between the Radio Netherlands antenna farm and Karpata. Here we are looking back near the start of the donkey trail.


You can click on the pictures to see them bigger.

Some parts of the trail are are wide with a hard rock (coral) surface, but other parts are narrow and have a loose surface made up of small to medium sized rocks. The loose parts are a challenge to power through on a bike.


Here is a narrow part of the trail. We get to enjoy the scenery much better when we walk along the trail with our pruners and clippers. When you are on a bike, you are too busy steering to check out the view.


If you look at the bottom of the picture, you'll see some of the bumpier terrain. There are a couple sections of washed out stream bed that I haven't photographed yet. They are quite tricky to ride, especially at race speeds. Novice riders may have to walk their bikes, but experienced cyclists will hammer through more or less out of control, and loving every minute of it.

School Days Again on Bonaire

If you click on the August 2004 link on the right side of the blog, you can read about the grand opening of the Pelican grammar school that meets in the old TWR office wing.

Well, its August 2005 and school started again yesterday here on Bonaire. The Pelican school has really taken off (heh-heh) with more kids and more teachers. They are using master studio too these days, as a classroom annex.

You can click on the picture to see it bigger.

Amazingly enough, there is also a new high school (HAVO-VWO) meeting in what used to be the workshop area of the Activities Building. I'll see about getting some pictures of that soon. There is a write up about the new school in this week's Bonaire Reporter.

active Weekend

Wow, it's been almost two weeks since I posted anything. Either nothing is happening here on Bonaire during the dog days of summer, or I've just been too brain dead to notice.

Sandra and I have been getting our exercise lately. We've been clearing the thorn and other bushes off of one of the old donkey trails that we'll be using as part of our next mountain bike race, come Sept. 10. It's a 1.7 km stretch that connects two dirt roads. We head out there with the dogs after work every once in a while and chop away until the sun sets around 6:50 pm. After about 17 man hours, we've cut back all the thorns and some of the regular bushes and brush. Hmmmm.... I wonder what that is in dog hours? The dogs love running around out there in the middle of nowhere. I've included a map of the course, for those of you who know the back wilds of Bonaire.

I just used a new tool to post the image. It is easy to use, but didn't put the picture where I wanted it. I'll have to play with it some more. As always, you can click on the picture to see it bigger. In this case, if your browser is set to NOT resize images, you'll see it quite big indeed.

I went for a bike ride with some friends of Miguel on Saturday. Miguel, who beat me by 10-15 seconds in our last bike race, is starting up a fitness center type business in September. Mtn. biking will be part of his program. He also is a volunteer at Jong Bonaire, an after school center for teens. (I came in second in the mtn. bike race a on July 30, but what I don't tell people is that there were only 8 riders and three of them got lost!)

Well, the slowest rider on our ride last Sat. got a leak in her tire near the start of the ride, so they pumped it up and headed her back to town... with the suggestion that she ride fast.
ha-ha...

That left three guys and me. Turns out that one of them races bikes in Venezuela and our ride turned into a race of sorts. At least I had to ride at race pace to keep up! It was great 'cause I would never have ridden that hard by myself. It was also great 'cause there was a guy a little slower than me who we had to wait for periodically, which let me catch my breath. The poor guy was in double trouble, because not only could he not climb as fast as us, but he didn't feel comfortable descending like a bat out of you-know-where. So he was always playing catch up.

Then Sunday, there was actually some wind, so I zoomed out to Sorobon around 4 pm and got in an hour and a half of windsurfing. I've been 4 times now since June, for the first time in quite a few years, and am enjoying it a lot. My windsurfing muscles, not to mention the calluses on my hands are totally out of shape for windsurfing, so short sessions are all I can handle.

So, it will be good to vegetate in front of my computer and edit audio files all day today. It will give my aged bod a chance to recover from an active weekend.

Inter Island Church Gathering

The churches of the Evangelical Alliance of the Netherlands Antilles and Aruba held their annual summer get together on Bonaire this year. The main meetings were held in the TWR Activities Building. It was great to see old friends and to make new ones.

There were lots of people at the big meetings held Wednesday through Saturday nights and on Sunday morning. As always, you can click on these pictures to see them bigger.


These young guys are VERY talented musicians, and they switched between instruments with ease. TWR's Jon Savage sat in with them on bass for the Sunday meeting.


In the foreground we can see some of the pastors from the ABC islands. Pastor Zeifinger from Aruba, on the left in the light shirt and dark tie was the pastor in North Salina when I first came to Bonaire. At the right edge of the picture, with the dark skirt and pink blouse is Esther, widow of Clavis White.


The singers did a great job too. Miguel Martis, on the left, was the coordinator and MC for the meetings. His wife is in the middle with the pink dress. Gregory Van Arnamon, from Rincon, is on the right. I don't know who the three girls are, but if I were my son's age, I'd want to find out, heh-heh.


Ah yes, the sound guys. You can't have great meetings without good sound guys. These two young men were with the Curacao contingent and did a wonderful job all week.