Bonaire Ministries on Dutch TV

Josie Olgers, a young Dutch video specialist, spent a few years on Bonaire filming windsurfers, divers, and the natural beauty that can be found here. While she was here, she learned about a number of ministries that are making a positive difference in people's lives here.

She decided that the people back home in the Netherlands should know about these positive aspects of the Bonaire scene, because as you may have noticed, the only stuff that typically makes it on the news is the bad news.

Josie went back to Holland and obtained the backing of the Dutch evangelical communications consortium, "EO". So last December, she and her husband-to-be (tho I don't think they knew it yet) Thom Verheul, came here with a crew and shot lots of video.

They returned home and produced a 50 minute show called Bidden voor Bonaire, which in English, means Praying for Bonaire. The program aired a number of times in Holland and more recently it was on the Dutch language satellite network, BVN, so we were able to see it here as well.

One of the featured ministries is the TWR Project Hanna outreach to women and its radio program Woman of Hope.

A group of women from a number of churches meet at TWR on the last Saturday of each month to pray for women's needs and ministries to women on Bonaire and around the world. 


Work is also underway to get the Woman of Hope radio program on the air in Papiamentu. The local women have been surprised to find out how much work and time it takes to do a radio program, even when they are just translating and adapting an existing series of programs.

The first program is "in the can" and parts of three more are completed. I think they are shooting for a August start up date. I'm sure the Bonaire Woman of Hope team would appreciate it if you would remember them in your prayers.

Maggie Fuller, who has been involved with Project Hanna since the very beginning is spearheading the effort here on Bonaire. Maggie was speaking English when she was filmed, so the program included Dutch subtitles. 

Ellen Herrera Cochrane was also featured in the show in connection with her Kunuku, which I recently wrote about in my blog, and also in connection with her visitation ministry to the elderly people in the Bonaire retirement home. I didn't pull any clips of Ellen from the show, but maybe I'll see if I can get one soon.

Vicky Oleana was featured for her work teaching and mentoring girls who have dropped out of school, usually because of their becoming pregnant. The ministry of APEM (Child Evangelism Fellowship) was also featured. I think Vicky's husband, Victor, is the chairman of the APEM board here on Bonaire. I know that Victor and Vicky are working hard out at the camp site, getting things ready for the camping ministry sessions in July.

Here we see Victor and Vicky being interviewed at the APEM(CEF)Camp. The camp is looking really good these days. 


I've sent copies of the show to Richard in New Jersey and to Sandra's parents in North Carolina, since they are family (the show is probably copyrighted etc.) If you are nearby and want to see the program, you might ask them if you can borrow it. You'll need a dvd player that can play VCD disk format. Most newer ones probably can.

Pretzels

One of the things I've missed for the 28 or so years that I've been living here on Bonaire is pretzels. Oh, sometimes I could get the pasty Planters in a can pretzels, but they don't really count. 

Recently I've occasionally seen real pretzels in the store, but they have always been somewhat stale.

But now, ta da, there are the pretzel sticks pictured here. They are light and crunchy and amazingly fresh tasting. We just got a bunch of bags of them at the Warehouse for 50% less than Cultimara has been charging.

I'm in pretzel heaven. Yum!

Earth From Space

If you've ever seen the cool images of the earth from space, showing the whole western hemisphere, or the whole surface of the planet laid out flat, or the earth at night etc.
Here is where you can download them for yourself.

Kunuku Rooi Lamoenchi - A Bonaire Treasure

Our church pastor's wife, Ellen Herrera Cochrane has devoted quite a number of years of her life to restoring the old family homestead, Kunuku Rooi Lamoenchi.

It is still a work in progress, but at this point the old plantation can only be described as magnificent. Ellen gives walking tours by appointment, something that I would put in the "must do" category for visitors who want to learn about the pre-tourism Bonaire way of life.

Ellen is off island right now, but her daughter, Eline, graciously took the Tangemans and me out for a look see.
 


The land house has been beautifully and tastefully restored. I could imagine living out there no problem!

Ellen has done a lot of work opening up access to an amazing number of scenic spots. There are breezy shady nooks everywhere. 

Don't forget that you can click on these pictures to see them bigger and clearer.

The topography of the kunuku and the resulting vistas are quite varied. For every private shady nook, there is a very different, but equally appealing panorama to enjoy. 


This kunuku is wildly photogenic. I could have spent a couple days just watching the light and shadows move among the different terrain features.

I have lots more pictures at my Club Photo site.

If you visit Bonaire, phone Ellen at 717-8489 or 540-9800 and schedule a tour.

Office Wing Mods

When I came to Bonaire in the 70's, the studio and office buildings were separated by a driveway. They are connected now, and what we call the open office area was added in the office wing.

In our new lean mean configuration, we've moved everyone over to the studio side and only use the first two rooms on the office side. 


We've been hoping to rent out the office wing so it could generate some income to help underwrite our operations here. A couple local churches were possibilities, but plans are now underway for a new grammar school to settle in here this summer.

We've already got a locking door between the open office area and the rest of our facility. Now we are putting bathrooms in two of the old office rooms, so that wing can be totally self contained. I think a second door for safety will go in too.

Here are some pictures of the work in progress. Above, you can see the open office area looking down the hall towards the old directors office end of the building. The bathrooms are going in the first two offices on the right side of the hall, which were created when the open office addition was constructed.

Here is the framing going into Brian DeWalts old office. The plumbing has already been installed in the walls and floors. By the way, you can click on these pictures to see them bigger. 

Here is a shot of my old office, which before that was Ray Alary's old office with the partition walls partly installed. 

Here are Ivan and Benny (with the hat) working on the drain piping outside the building. They ran the pipes inside the planter and Udo replanted the bushes, so now the building looks as good as new. That's nice, since the pipes run right under the new 40th anniversary mural. 

Brandaris Climb

Well it was another Saturday and there I was on another hike in Washington Park. This time it was intentional, unlike last week after my aborted bike ride. We checked the milage this week as we drove through, and I walked about 2.5 miles last week and Sandra picked me up about a mile from the park entrance. 

You can click on this picture (and any picture in my blog) to see a bigger version.

Saturday was fairly cloudy, very hazy, and very very windy. It was great Brandaris climbing weather, but we couldn't see much from the top once we got there. It was fun anyway. The scenery on Brandaris itself is varied and unusual.

Here is a shot of the transition from the lower part of the climb, which is a user friendly path, to the rock scramble up the edge of a ridge.

Based on my windsurfing experiences, I'd say the wind was 35 mph. at the top and maybe more. Jon Savage created a home made anemometer out of a 5 foot piece of three eighths inch rope with a rock tied on the end. The wind pretty much stretched this rope/rock combo straight out parallel to the ground. We were going to calibrate this precision instrument later by driving on a windless road and seeing how fast we had to go do make the rock stand out straight like it was doing up on Brandaris. But the rock got lost somewhere on the descent, so now we'll never know.

We took about a hour on the ascent and about 45 minutes to come back down. Ben and Cort Tangeman could have probable done the ascent in about half that time. Here they are enjoying the view while everyone catches up. The descent is easier on the heart and lungs than climbing, but the footing is quite loose in many places to one has to be really careful not to fall or twist an ankle.

I've posted a number of photos on our club photo site. Scroll down to the bottom of the page of thumbnails to see the pictures from this particular Brandaris climb.

Comets Spotted

The Bonaire weather is starting to get back to it's sunny self, and we could see the stars pretty well tonight. So we went out into the back yard with our trusty finder charts and binoculars and saw comets Neat and Linear again.

Between moon glare and cloudy weather, we hadn't seen them for quite a while. The comets have both gotten a lot fainter than they were a month ago. We could see them with the binoculars but not with the naked eye.

Here is a site that has good finder charts for the comets.

Washington Park Adventure

I went for another bike ride in Washington Park last Saturday. I was well on my way to a personal best for the route when I trashed my rear wheel and had to walk out. I called Sandra on my cell phone and she met me about a mile and a half from the park entrance.

The park guys fixed up all the roads for the big Park anniversary celebration on May 31. A few more of the nastier hills are now paved in cement to stop the erosion when it rains. They dumped fresh dirt in many places and rolled it flat. Then there was some rain and lots of cars drove on it on the 31st, so the surface is really packed hard. The bike rolls on it as if it were brown colored asphalt. It will get torn up soon enough, but right now one can actually do the park loop using a normal car. It is really fast on a bike, compared to a few weeks ago.

I was flying along in a section of very steep roller coaster type hills where you zoom downhill and try to use your momentum to help get up the next up hill. As I approached the hi-g trough at the bottom of one hill I shifted my chain right off the big cog in back into the spokes etc. The wheel locked up and I skidded through the whole bottom section and a little bit up the next side, but kept the shiny side up fortunately.

The chain ended up wedged between the hub flange and the cog carrier of the gear cassette and wouldn't come out for anything. I worked on it for about an hour before I admitted defeat and started walking out. When I got to the top of the next hill, I called Sandra on my cell phone and got the rescue going.

Now my cycling shoes are not made for walking, so I started out in my bare feet 'cause I didn't want to get holes in my socks. Then I got worried about sunburn on the tops of my feet and put the socks back on. Fortunately my feet are semi tough and although I did get some blisters they weren't too bad and didn't pop or anything.

The only lingering damage (except for a trashed derailler, and freehub and spokes) is a sore thumb from when I hit it a couple times with the big rock I was using as a hammer while trying to spin off the cassette lock ring using an Pedro's allen wrench set as a sort of punch tool. But it didn't budge. Later at home, I found that because the chain was jammed so firmly between the hub and the cassette I even had some difficulty removing the lock ring with the correct tool.

So these days I'm riding the bike to and from work with my wife's wheel and derailler on it and won't do any more real off road rides until I either get a new hub and spokes and rebuilt the wheel, or get a complete replacement wheel on eBay. It will probably be mid to late July before I get the stuff down here etc.

Good thing I also have a road bike. :-)

Venus and the Sun

The small black spot is Venus. The sun was totally obscured by haze for the first ten minutes but I got a few good pictures as it was starting to break out. Then I had to put the solar filter on the telescope. 

I'll post more pictures later, but I'll need to process them to see if I can improve the contrast. The solar filter made them look very flat and washed out.

There were lots of clouds and a good bit of haze this morning, but we were still able to see Venus passing in front of the Sun. 

So we were able to watch the show off and on from about 06:20 until about 07:20, when clouds completely closed in again. Venus had just about left the sun's disk by then.

Friday Night Fun

We have some late night radio programs targeted for young people on our FM station. We were originally hoping to reach Bonairian youth with these programs, but it turns out that we may be better able to connect with the North American students attending the not one, but two, Medical Schools that have been established here on Bonaire. 

Our church has organized a once a month fun night / outreach for these kids called Friday Night Live. About 50 of the students and a number of the teachers came this past week for a meal where they could "doctor" up a baked potato; and then hang out and play games inside, or head outside for some volleyball. 

I guess its too soon for the schools to have established much of a track record, but I can tell you that the students here are nothing like the characters in that not-so-funny 1985 Comedy, Bad Medicine. 

These young people are personable, polite, sharp as a tack, and highly motivated, and I can envision many of them turning out to be very good doctors.

Lowells and Tangemans Invade Bonaire

Patty and Terri and kids are having a great time rediscovering their old stomping grounds on Bonaire. 


Cara Lowell was baptized after the morning church service. A great time was had by all. Action photos can be found at our Club Photo site.
All photos can be clicked on to see bigger versions.

TWR Streaming Audio for Youth

Here is part three of my ongoing series on TWR's five core ministry focus areas(parts one and two were about Leadership Training and Women's Ministries.)

Evangeliums-Rundfunk, which we often refer to as "TWR Germany" has begun a 24-hour Internet radio service for youth (ages 14 to 20) called CrossChannel. Audio is available at three different bitrates in each of the RealAudio, Windows Media, WinAmp, and iTunes formats. That should cover just about everbody I would think!

There is a colorful web site too at www.crosschannel.de Listeners and visitors to the site will be able to "chat" with the moderator and guests during some of the programs.

Some of the CrossChannel programming will also be carried in Europe on the ASTRA satellite and on 1539 kHz medium wave.

Dick Saunders Retires

Anyone who has listened to the English service of TWR at any time during the last 40 years will recognize the voice of Dick Saunders, but probably not too many outside of Great Britain have seen him. So I thought I'd post this picture.

Dick Saunders is retiring from his radio ministry but will continue his pastoral ministry in Halesham.

The 15 minute programs; Rendezvous and Way to Life are now off the air, but TWR will continue airing the five minute version of Way to Life through 2004.  

Radio Tower Falls

Ok.... now that I've got your attention!

Benny Saragosa and Rich West went to Curacao on Monday to take down an old tower for Radio Hoyer. The tower was in bad shape and broke up as it came down, but it ended up being laid out on the ground even nicer than the guys had hoped for.

Before the trip, Rich had been talking about nothing except MacDonalds and Burger King. I think he is suffering from withdrawal here on Bonaire. Well, they ate out alright, but at some steak place, to Rich's dismay. There's no accounting for taste, I guess.

Nukove Revisited

On Saturday, we went up past the Bopec oil terminal to the little Nukove beach. We visited this area recently when my mom and dad were here, but we didn't go in the water.

Our Trupial friends were still there (see my post from April 10, 2004) and still looked at themselves in the side view mirrors of the car. They have a nest in a tree right where one parks. It's pretty cool.

Nukove Revisited

Nukove used to be a really beautiful snorkel, with acres of gorgeous shallow water coral beds. In 1999, hurricane Lenny reduced it to a desolate moonscape, BUT there are signs of rebirth. The corals are beginning to come back. 

Alternate Blog Address

I've noticed that there have been a couple of occasions this past week, when my normal www.bradtwr.blogspot.com
blog address hasn't worked.

If this happens to you, try this alternate address, which seems to always work.
http://bradtwr.blogspot.com

College Hijinks

Our son, Richard, made it into his school newspaper. He is on the left side of the front row, wearing my vintage 1979 Cultimara/Avanti volleyball team warmup jacket from Bonaire. Having a girlfriend and not racing on the cycling team seems to have helped his academics. He got all A's and A-'s this last semester. 

Kibrahacha tree photos posted

I've posted 21 photos of the flowering Kibrahacha trees on our Club Photo site. There are close ups and panoramas and everything in between.

You can click on the thumbnails to see the pictures bigger, and you can click on the bigger pictures to see the full size versions, which are 1024x768 in this case.

It looks like I got some killer Kibrahacha tree pictures yesterday. You can click on this one to see it bigger and probably sharper. I hope to put a bunch of them on my club photo site when I am home on lunch break today. 

Ministry Trip to South America

I mentioned church leadership training in my last post. Another critical area that Trans World Radio has chosen to zero in on is women's ministry.

There is a team of women from TWR's Project Hanna ministry visiting Brazil and Bolivia this week. (through May 28) Please join in praying for a safe and effective trip.

By the way, three other areas of ministry focus have been identified by TWR, in addition to Leadership Training and Women's Ministry. Sandra's dad has been and still is very involved in one of these areas so I'll see if I can't highlight each of them as time goes by.

Bible School Trans World Radio

Some of you may be familiar with Trans World Radio's initiative to train house church leaders in China by means of the "Seminary on the Air" broadcasts and study materials. You can go here to see the Chinese language web site associated with this outreach. You'll probably have to load a language pack from Microsoft to display the characters. I didn't bother since I still wouldn't be able to read it. :)

Leadership training is actually needed in many parts of the world. Our ministry partners in Latin America report an "explosion of small churches" and a critical shortage of trained "Biblically Literate" pastors.

Our Trans World Radio - Venezuela partner has developed a "Bible School Trans World Radio" radio series as well as a training manual to assist these untrained church leaders.

Here is the cover of the manual, so you can see what "Bible School Trans World Radio" looks like in Spanish.

TWR is currently testing this curriculum with 70 church leaders in Venezuela. The goal is to roll this out across the whole of Latin America. Please pray for the team because scaling up this outreach from one country to the whole region will be a complex undertaking.

Kibrahachas are Blooming

The Kibrahacha trees on the hills to the East of our offices are blooming very nicely. A few to the north of us are blooming too, but most of these did their thing a couple weeks ago.
I'll try to get a picture or two tomorrow, before the flowers drop off. They only last a day or two, so one has to react quickly.

All-Natural Dog Chew Toys

Here is another shot of our coconut hound in action. 

This dog, who shall remain nameless, to help protect his ability to guard our house, likes coconuts. All the dogs like coconuts, but this guy can peal the husks off them and crack the shell of the nut inside, so as to get at the yummy coconut milk and meat.  

Whoo Whoo, Photos in my Blog

Well it looks like I can now put photos right in my blog. I think you can click on them to see bigger versions of them. This photo is so that my mom and dad can see the nylabone wishbone dog chew that they brought with them when they visited us in March. It is in the lower right hand corner of the picture to the right of the arrow. 

Ladies Retreat a success

Our church had it's seventh annual Ladies Retreat this past weekend. It was held out at the Kunuku Roi Lamunchi. Berni Lusse was the "guest" speaker.

They had about 50 ladies on Friday and about 50 on Saturday as well. This retreat used to be for the ladies of our church and invited guests, but this year women from other churches were involved in the planning and ladies from seven were in attendance.

The ladies retreat, together with the TWR Project Hanna women's ministry, could prove to be rallying points for evangelical women on Bonaire.

Two Comets Spotted

There are still a lot of clouds floating about, but in between them, the sky is very clear tonight. I saw both comets Neat and Linear tonight, right were the charts say they should be.

I couldn't see any signs of a tail on either one of them, but I'm glad to have spotted them at all.

I haven't had a chance to see much of anything for quite a while, so this is a big improvement, even with the moon hanging around.
I'm pretty worried that there will be clouds around on the morning of June 8, when Venus goes across the face of the Sun. But I suppose a lot could change between now and then weatherwise.

Mini Rainy Season

We've had what Udo calls, a mini rainy season, the last few days. We even had a good bit of thunder and lightning Friday night.
It looks like it's trying to clear up today though.
It has been pretty windless, hot, and muggy.
I think I see signs that the Kibrahacha trees are about to pop. Some of the ones up north did a couple weeks ago but not the ones here in the middle of the island.

Washington Park by Bike 2

I rode the main Washington Park loop on my mtn. bike again on Saturday morning. It was sunnier than the previous week but windier too, so the net effect was similar.

I had two full Camelbaks for drinking, two packs of granola bars for munching, a water bottle for spraying on my head to keep cool in the hills, and a water bottle full of flat coke for a sugar and caffeine boost. I normally don't drink any stuff with caffeine in it, so even one bottle of coke or an energy gel packet with caffeine gives me a noticeable boost. :-)

I wasn't near as worn out at the end of the 3+ hours this week as I was last week.

I'll have to bring along a camera some week. It will give me a good excuse to stop, heh-heh. This week I saw some flamingos, a big iguanna, and lots of dirt, rocks, and cactus.

40th Anniversary Mural finished

Ivan finished up the 40th anniversary mural on the front wall of the office wing last week. We've already received quite a few favorable comments on it.

Here is Ivan packing up his gear after a job well done, and another picture from slightly farther away.

I have a couple more pictures of the mural here. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click on the thumbnails etc. Some pix are 1024x768 for windows wallpaper etc.

International Space Station to Eclipse Jupiter Thur. night

FLASH !
If you live along a narrow swath that stretches from Alabama to Maine, you might get to see the international space station go right in front of Jupiter between 9:30 and 9:39 on Thursday (May 13)night.

If you live anywhere on the East coast, you will probably enjoy looking at the space station go by, even if it just goes near Jupiter, instead of in front of it.

Here is a NASA page that tells all about it.

Also on that page are a couple great images of the ISS taken by people with telescopes in their back yard. This is something I am definitely going to try to do this summer, while I am babysitting the Thorp's 8" Celestron telescope.

Golf Course II

There was a little interest in my recent mention of a golf course on the east coast out South of Washi Kimba.

As far as I know, it is a real 18 hole golf course, but unlike any you have probably ever seen. I'll try to get some photos next time I ride out that way.

This week's Port Call newspaper had an ad for an upcoming golf event. These people do seem to really love the game, but Papiamentu speakers will quickly be able to tell that they aren't making any wild claims for the quality of their golf course.

I haven't been able to find a higher quality version of it their logo yet. This ad suffers from low resolution, heavy compression, and some lack of color registration during printing. But I like the logo and their initiative.

Blast from the Past

As you have probably realized by now, TWR Bonaire will be celebrating 40 years of broadcasting this August. This is a good thing in that it has inspired a number of projects.

I've posted pictures of building repairs and painting, and the anniversary mural, which Ivan just finished.

As time allows, I've been dubbing our old archival audio tapes into the computer and making CD's. Up until now, time has never allowed, but I'm making some headway this spring.

Berni Lusse is spending some time going through our archive of old photos from years gone by. The thought is to make some big wall displays, possibly arranged by decade.

There has also been some talk about posting some of these images on our www.twrbonaire.com website. That may or may not happen, but in a blatant attempt to increase traffic, I'm also thinking of posting some of the images here.

To whet your appetite, here's one of someone near and dear to the TWR Alumni online community.

40th Anniversary Update

The dates for our celebration of 40 years of broadcasting from Bonaire seem to have firmed up on the 20th through the 22nd of August.

It turns out that TWR Bonaire is not the only one celebrating a 40th anniversary this year. To discover our anniversary twin, click here.

more Bonaire from space

I'm still trying to find the source for the cool picture of Bonaire from space that I posted a week or two ago. I haven't found it yet, but did find some other cool photos that astronauts have taken.

These images are all courtesy of Earth Sciences and Image Analysis Laboratory, NASA Johnson Space Center, and can be found online here. NASA has all sorts of fun stuff online.

Here is a picture of the whole of Bonaire. It isn't that big and image, but it is nice and clear.

Here is a great one showing from left to right, the islands of Aruba, Curacao, and Bonaire, all sitting just north of the coast of Venezuela.

This one shows Curacao, Bonaire and Venezuela. Once, when Richard and I were on top of Brandaris, the highest point on Bonaire, we were able to look just to the left of Curacao and see the landmass of South America. It was sort of an eerie feeling.
The other cool thing about this photo is that to the right (east)of Bonaire, I think you can see the Aves and Roques islands.

Weekend Fun II

I finally got around to doing a bike ride in Washington Park this past Saturday. It was a lot of fun, but a real workout. I think the heat is the worst part. It gets toasty back in the hills in the middle of the park, and some of them are steep too. Fortunately, it was pretty cloudy and windy that day.

The commute to and from the park takes more or less 45 minutes each way (at a commuting pace) and is around 17 miles in total. The loop I took through the park was around 18.5 miles and took an hour and 45 minutes. So I was riding for about 3:15 in all.

They are doing lots of work on the roads in the park right now, which is good, since some places are just about 4WD only. The really bad section is between Playa Funchi and Slac Bai. I was going down the hills just about as slowly as I was going up them. It was pretty much riding from exposed rock to exposed rock, with my butt hanging back off the saddle so as not to pitch over the front wheel. Needless to say, it was lots of fun, and probably more comfortable than it was for Richard and Nancy in the back seat of our rock hard suspensioned Samurai back in Jan. We were in 4WD low range crawling through those sections, and almost bucked Nancy right out of the car at one point. Fortunately Richard grabbed her and held on, like he needs an excuse to do that, ha-ha.

I'll probably ride the park more on Saturdays, until it gets just plain old too hot. The park opens at 8 am. and I got to Slac Bai around 9. Now I'm usually finishing up my long Saturday road bike rides by 9 am, to avoid the sun etc.

The trip back to the entrance took until 9:45, and then I had 45 more min. 'till I got home. I had two Camelbacks full of water with me and was glad to have them, despite the weight at the start.

It will be interesting to see how quickly one can do the basic park loop once all the roads are fixed up. As the weather heats up this month, I'll probably begin driving to the park entrance and riding the bike from there, so as to avoid the trek home in the hot sun. I'll probably bring a waterbottle full of water to spash on my head too. The bottle I had on the bike on Sat. had Gatorade and there was no way I was going to pour that on the old noggin.

Weekend Fun

Mighty Mouse wasn't the only one who was active this past weekend.

We've been going out each clear evening to keep tabs on our Comet buddy. It has been climbing rapidly (for a comet) to the northeast and is much easier to spot now.

I saw it as late as 9-9:30 pm, after an Elder's meeting, on Thursday. It looked a lot better around 8 pm last night. It was a little south of the bright star, Procyon, last night. It will still be near Procyon tonight, maybe more East than South though. The comet is fairly easy to spot, if you know where to look, but it isn't going to jump out of the sky with only a casual glance, at least not in our Bonaire skies.

In binoculars, there seems to be a nice wispy tail pointing sort of East.

Mouse in the House II

The rodent we've christened "Mighty Mouse" continues his nocturnal mischief. Saturday evening, he ate through the cord on Maggie Fuller's trackball, flipped over the device and stole the trackball ball! We have yet to find the ball from her trackball. I've had Stewart Little-ish visions of this guy pushing the ball down the hall with his nose.

We set a couple mouse traps Sunday afternoon, baited with yummy Gouda cheese. The trap in Sandra's office is untouched, but the one in Maggies office has been sprung and the cheese eaten. A sticky type mouse trap that Rich Fuller put in the office was flipped over and the bait devoured.

We are beginning to suspect a rat.

Bonaire from Space AND Map Talk

I'm always on the lookout for cool images of Bonaire from Space. Here is one that shows where I was on my mountain bike last week. I marked a few points of interest on the right side of the picture.
On the left side you can see the two town piers and the soccer stadium pretty easily.
There are some clouds right around where the TWR studios and Activities Building are located, so identification there is kind of iffy.

If you want to see the fine details that are visible on this image, you will probably need to go to my club photo page , click on the thumbnail and then click again on the small image, which will get you the full size image.

For the life of me, I can't remember where I found this picture. There are a few other amazing shots too. I'll have to snoop around online sometime and see if I can find the site, so I can post a link to it. They sell big full resolutions prints of their images for about $40 as I recall. Some of them might just be worth it.

After I go on an exploring Bonaire excursion, I also like pulling out my set of large scale survey maps to try to check up on exactly where I was and what I saw. A number of years ago, Sandra and Sue Felix were able to bag a set of these rare and expensive maps while on a trip to Curacao. Sue had to sweet talk the officials into even selling the maps to them. It helped that Sue is a key player in training tour guides on Bonaire etc.

Imagine my surprise a couple years ago, when an engineer with Intelsat showed up on Bonaire with one of these map pages. He told me he got it on the Internet, and sure enough, when I went to the site, the maps were for sale there. They were just as expensive as ever, but available, (as color copies perhaps.) There are also black and white full size copies of the out of print 1971 version maps for sale at a much reduced price.
Here is where to get your maps.

Project Progress

Ivan is working on the new 40th anniversary mural

and Rich West is fabricating a heavy duty front bumper for the TWR Suzuki Samurai work beast vehicle. Rich has found that the auto shop vehicle lift also makes a great work bench for his projects.

Mouse in the House

It looks like we've got a mouse or two in the studio building. The snowman candle on my office windowsill has been chewed, Sandra sees mouse doo doo in her office and ..... when I went to sub-1 to see why I couldn't connect to one of the computers over our network, I found a chewed network cable. Hopefully I'll be able to post a picture of a dead mouse soon, heh-heh.

Holiday Weekend bike rides

I got in some good mtn. bike rides over the weekend. I rode out to Lagoen on dirt roads, crossed over the salt flats to the Washi Kimba side and headed south along the big flat shoreside plateau area.

The "rock collectors" have been busy piling up all the coral rocks and boulders to take to the rock crushers. (that's where all the gravel for the concrete used in construction comes from here on Bonaire) So the shoreside plateau looks like a giant white sandy smooth billiard table, instead of its more brownish and greyish original colors.

The waves were crashing up against the shore quite nicely. (washed the salt spray off the bike when I got home)

I fixed a flat tire at Washi Kimba on Sat. and headed onward. I turned around for home at Punto Blanku, when rain clouds attacked from the southeast.

The next day, I was able to continue south along the shore until I got to a big rock wall and gate etc. There is a golf course of sorts past the gate. It is pretty rough (understatement) with lots of rocks and sand and the occasional mossy area. I may see if I can get permission to continue riding south through the golf course. Years ago I rode along the shore all the way to Lac Bay.

There are zillions of dirt roads criss crossing the countryside between the shore and the beginnings of civilization - Amboina and Nikiboko in this case. I've probably been on every last one of them over the years, but only on the main roads lately. So I zoomed up and down and across and back to check them out. There a good number of nice big luxurious Kunuku homes out there now.

Riding home to Hato was all pretty much down wind, hooray hooray.

Monday morning before work found me replacing two broken spokes in my back wheel. It is rideable now, but I think I'll take the time to re-tension the whole thing, because it was in pretty sad shape. If I go on an after work bike ride today, it will have to be on the road bike.

2 out of 3 Comets seen

I saw Comet Neat on Friday evening. It is climbing rapidly to the north east and should be easier to see each evening. It was just barely visible to the naked eye, and looked like a round fuzzy ball in the binoculars. It looked bigger than Comet Linear in the binoculars.

It is still very cloudy and hazy at sunrise and sunset each day here, so I haven't seen Comet Linear again and haven't had a chance to look for Comet Bradfield. I've read that Bradfield is fading quickly, so I may not get to see it at all.

Monkey on the loose in Hato

Our dogs were barking a lot on Saturday evening and on Sunday we found out why. A monkey had escaped and was wandering around the neighborhood. It ended up at the West house (ex McElhaney, ex Britton house etc).

The vet came and used a mini blowgun to stick the monkey with a tranquilizer dart. Amado Felix helped the vet wrap the monkey in a cloth and put it in a dog carrier for the ride home. The monkey woke up quickly. The owners weren't there so the vet and Amado braved the five dogs in the yard and got the monkey back in its cage. Then one of the dogs hopped in the cage too, so they had to remove the dog while the monkey freaked out. It must have been pretty crazy.

Rich West took some photos. Here is a picture of the monkey on the West's car. It wouldn't let anyone approach too near, so they had to resort to the tranq. dart.

Here the vet prepares the tranquilizer while Amado Felix looks on. The dog carrier can be seen in the background.

One out of three Comets seen

There are three comets lurking out there in yonder sky that should be visible with the naked eye this spring. So far I've seen one of them. Clouds and haze are still hiding the other two.

I saw comet Linear just before 5am on Thursday morning. Once I knew where to look, I could see it with my naked eye. I took a picture, that looks awful, but actually shows about how dim the comet actually was. The lumpy circle of stars just above and to the right of center is the "circlet" of the constellation Pisces. There is a pale yellow arrow pointing to the comet. The blurry white stuff at the lower right is ambient light reflecting off of some bushes in our yard. If you want to see this picture bigger (well someone might have nothing better to do,) go here and click on the last thumbnail on the page.

I should have been able to see comet Bradfield at roughly the same time a little to the north east, but the clouds were thick over there. This comet looks really awesome in pictures taken this week and posted on the internet, so I am anxious to see what I can detect with my eyes and with binoculars.

I've also been looking for Comet Neat in the evenings. Since Bonaire is only 12 degrees north latitude, I should be able to see it pretty easily, but again, serious clouds and haze have gotten in the way. grrrrr

I'm especially hoping for clear skies on the morning of June 8, when Venus will be crossing the face of the sun as the sun comes up here on Bonaire. This hasn't happened for over 100 years, so I'll definitely be out to see it, if the weather cooperates.

Happy Coronation Day

Hooray, it is a holiday here on Bonaire. It is also Rincon day and Rincon is bursting at the seams with visitors. It is also someone important to me's Birthday, but I won't mention any names, since this IS the evil Internet after all.

Sandra has designed a TWR Bonaire 40th anniversary Logo and Ivan is going to make a mural out of it. Last night they used an overhead projector to shine it on the wall, so they could rough in the design. Ivan will paint it next week. It went better than I thought it would. That projector was pretty bright, if not perfectly focused.

New photos posted

I've posted a number of new photos on our Club Photo site over the last week or two. I just haven't remembered to mention it here.

Once you get to the page, you'll need to scroll down to see the
new pix.

For those who would prefer, here are some sample photos. There are variations of some of them on Club Photo at the above link.

One of our house hiding behind some trees in the yard, on Kaya Gobernador Debrot.

One of Udo prepping a flag pole for painting. The poles are now finished.
Some of you may notice the roofless building in the background. That is part of what used to be Hotel Bonaire. The hotel has been vacant for a number of years, has had a mysterious fire, and is in ruins. I'm sure that sooner or later, someone will be able to cut through all the red tape and build something nice on this prime location.

One of Ivan touching up the 800 kHz AM sign on the Studio wall, after spray painting the wall. The walls are now finished and signs for 89.5 FM have been added as well.

One of a Cool Edit 2000 audio editor screen. I see variations on this for umpteen hours a day getting our programs ready for airing.

How to Keep Internet Explorer from shrinking my pictures

My genius son, Richard, noticed my comment about IE shrinking my full size moon pix and emailed me with the way to make IE display them full size.

You can make it not shrink the pictures in IE by clicking "Tools", "Internet Options", the "Advanced" tab...
then scroll down to the "Multimedia" section, and uncheck "automatic image resizing".
Then IE will show pictures actual size.

Sometimes it is nice to have IE make the pictures fit the screen, but it is also nice to be in charge of whether or not it happens. :)

Closeup of Crater Clavius

I've been able to identify the locations a couple of the closeup webcam photos of the moon that I made back on Oct. 17 last year.

Here is a photo where I've labeled the bigger craters with their names. Smaller craters are labeled with their diameters, in miles.

Here is a closeup of the crater Clavius. I didn't label Clavius but it is the biggest crater and contains lots of the smaller craters that I did label. I like this picture a lot.

The smaller craters don't have names but have letters. So Clavius A would be a small crater in Clavius and Porter A would be a small Crater in Porter etc. Here are the diameters, in miles, of some of the "lettered" craters.
B 7, c 7, d 16, J 7, n 8, o 2, R 4, t 5, x 4, y 4
This will help you guess at the sizes of the unlabeled craters. There looks to be a bunch of the 2 mile ones there.
I think I'll forget about the letter names next time and just label them with their sizes.

Full size pictures can be found here by clicking on the thumbnails etc.

Moon Craters Identified

I've been curious to identify the various craters on the moon pictures that I have taken, and I'm making some progress.

I was able to download a free photo atlas of the moon that is pretty nice. It is called the "Virtual Moon Atlas" and can be downloaded here. It was originally produced in French, but it is available in a number of languages.

The VMA lets me see what the moon looks like at a specific date and time. This makes it easy to figure out what any given picture is showing, as long as I can remember when I shot it.

Here are a couple of the pictures that I took back in March with the names and sizes of some craters. Picture 1 Picture 2

If you want to see the pictures at a larger scale, you can get them here by clicking on the thumbnails etc. You may have to download the actual full size image and view it offline to see it really big, because I notice that Internet Explorer scales them down quite a bit when it displays them.

This atlas could prove handy, even for someone who doesn't take pictures but merely looks at the moon with the naked eye or with binoculars, and wants to know what they are seeing up there.

Missionary Secret Revealed! (or how I sound so knowledgeable on furlough)

Trans World Radio produces an award winning magazine that I find quite useful, especially when furlough time rolls around and I have to be able to explain to people what TWR is up to all over the world. There is always good stuff to share with our friends and sponsors.

Now you don't have to wait for me to regurgitate this info to you. You can download an online version here. It is a slightly less than one meg pdf file.

The one available online right now is a special 50th anniversary issue. It gives a great condensed overview of what TWR has been up to for 50 years and outlines our ministry goals and plans for the future.
I highly recommend it.

One more Jupiter image

I had another go at one of my Jupiter images from March 28. I blew it up bigger and fiddled with it until I can detect Ganymede's shadow on the left edge as well as just barely see Callisto's shadow on the upper right edge.
The two spots in the middle are from left to right: Io's shadow and Ganymede.

Jupiter's Moons

Easter Monday is a holiday here on Bonaire, so I was able to spend some quality time on the computer processing some images of Jupiter that I took at 4 am. on Sunday, March 28.

Jupiter has four large moons that are easy to spot in a telescope. On the morning of the 28th, three of them were casting shadows on the planets surface at the same time. So if your were a Jupiterian living on Jupiter, you could have seen an eclipse of the sun from three different locations that day.

Jupiter was low in the west by 4 am that morning, so the view in the telescope wasn't that great. Observers further west would have had a better view, and could have seen the event at a more decent hour as well. For example, people in California could see it at midnight. But this was a rare event and I had a good time imaging it.

Here is a montage of images of Jupiter that I took from 3:47 to 4:11 that morning.

The top row of images shows from left to right: Io's shadow, Ganymede, and Callisto's shadow. They are all moving from left to right across the planet disk.

The middle row of images sort of shows what I set out to see: Ganymede's shadow creeping onto the left edge of Jupiter, and then Io's shadow, Ganymede, and Callisto's shadow creeping off the edge of Jupiter on the right side.

The left image in the bottom row shows Ganymede's shadow, Io's shadow, and Io from left to right. Callisto's shadow had definitely vanished off the right side by then.

The right hand image in the bottom row was taken by Gu Yu in West Virginia and clearly shows what you can almost see in my middle row of images. :) The three shadows and Io are labeled on this image.

AquaSpace boat ride

One day last week, we went for a sail on the AquaSpace trimiran. We had all the usual boat ride fun, with the added attraction that just about the whole center hull of the boat is clear Plexiglas.

Being down in the hull is like being in a submarine with picture windows on both sides! It was fun to look at the fish and sea floor, even when we were just sitting at the dock.

Here is a shot of us on the AquaSpace as seen on one of the Bonaire Webcams cams.

Here is a shot from the boat showing the shore of Bonaire where our old house was located, before TWR sold it and the buyer demolished it and built a big fancy house. The Bonaire Webcams seacams are located on the beach hut that you can see in the lower left of the picture. More on the bonaire webcams, set up by our old neighbors and buddies the Richters, can be found here.

Here is a shot of some scuba divers down on a reef and some of the coral formations that we saw.

We sailed along the coast of Bonaire as far as oilslick leap and then headed out to Klein Bonaire for a snorkel. We then motored straignt in to Bonaire and back along the coast to the dock downtown. We went right by the old Bonaire Pastor's house and the old guest house.

More pictures from our AquaSpace adventure, including shots of my mom and dad and aunt and uncle, can be found if you go to our Club Photo page, and scroll down to the bottom.

For more on the AquaSpace sailboat and the types of outing available, check out their website. You can click on the various photos on their site, even the ones that are moving.

Nukove

While my parents were here, we went on the bumpy dirt road around Bopec and out to Playa Frans. It was clear and not that windy, so we saw Curacao pretty easily and there were lots of "nose gnats" as one MK calls them.

We also saw flamingos in Goto Lake and Salina Frans. We stopped at Nukove to check it out. There was some damage resulting from the backwards waves of Lenny in 1998, but it looks like there is still a lot of coral to see out there.

Here is a picture of the world's smallest beach, located at Nukove.

Here is a picture showing the coral rubble piled up in what used to be a snorkeling area.

Here is another shot of the beach taken from an area that used to be under water.

Here is a friendly Trupial that looked at his reflection in both side view mirrors of our pickup.

Thumbnails and larger versions of these pictures can be found on my club photo page here.

End of Cruise Ship Season

The last scheduled cruise ship of the season is visiting Bonaire today. It's a big one with around 1500 passengers.

To commemorate this "changing of the seasons" here on Bonaire, I thought I'd let you see what we see as we drive/ride along the road on the way to work at TWR during Cruise Ship Season.

Can you find the "brainless quadruped" (that's what the drivers license manual calls 'em) in the picture?

If you want to see this picture in a bigger format with more detail, you can click on the thumbnail at the bottom of the page here, and then click on the larger image, to see an extra large image.

Expedition to Spelonk

We piled into the trusty pickup truck and headed out to Lagoen, and then North to Spelonk. The dirt roads were bumpy and dusty. We had to stop and clear the back and side windows at one point because the dust had made them completely opaque. The roads are also wider then they used to be because lots of trucks are hauling rocks and sand from the area these days. I wouldn't want to cycle out there except on Sundays and holidays, because of the truck traffic.

We got to the Spelonk caves and found that the parking area had been cleared somewhat recently, making it easier to spot from the "main road." It also seemed to let a little more breeze into the area, which was nice.

These caves are very user friendly, because one can just walk in the large opening and wander among the forests of stalactites and stalagmites. You just have to watch your step in the semi darkness and watch your head because of the stuff hanging down from the ceiling.

I've posted a bunch of pictures of the caves on my club photo site. Using a flash in the caves is discouraged, because it might disturb the bats, so I brought along a tripod and made time exposures.

We also went to the Spelonk light house. I included one picture looking south from on top of the light house. I have other pictures of the Spelonk light house from another trip there a couple years ago.

As usual, you can click on the thumbnails to see bigger versions of the pictures, and click on the bigger pictures to see even bigger versions.

Moon Shots - the Astronomy type

My parents and aunt and uncle have been here visiting us for almost a week now. We've had great times exploring Bonaire, drinking home made root beer, making puzzles, and hanging out. They are also enjoying weather.com to see how yucky the weather is back home, while they are basking in the Caribbean sunshine.

I went out at 3 am on Sunday morning to see the shadows of three of the moons of Jupiter cross the planet's face. I may or may not have seen all three, but did see two of them for sure.

Sunday night we went out and observed the five planets that are visible in the evenings these days. We also looked at Saturn, Jupiter, and the moon in the telescope.

Here is a picture of the moon from Sunday night showing an interesting trench-like feature that looks to have been scooped out with a giant garden trowel.

Here is a picture of the other side of the moon showing lots of craters. The moon was pretty much right at its first quarter phase that night.

Here is a link to some other pictures of the moon from last year.

Venus and the Moon report

Well Venus and the Moon were very pretty Wednesday evening. I took a picture during game time at Awana - around 6:30 pm. I then took another one during council time at around 7:40 pm. I took a last one at home at about 8:40 pm.

When you compare the pictures, you can see that the moon is moving up (to the East) with respect to Venus, even during the course of a couple hours. By tomorrow night, the moon will be pretty far from Venus and near Mars.

Planets put on a show

We've been staring at the sky regularly after sunset and finally spotted the planet Mercury low in the west on Monday evening. Then it was easy to trace a line upwards (eastwards) and see Venus, Mars, Saturn, and Jupiter.

You can use the moon to help identify some of the planets in the sky this week. Once you find them, it is fun to see how they move with respect to the star patterns, which don't change. I think the word "Planet" comes from a word that means "wanderer", which is exactly what they seem to do against the regular backdrop of the stars.

We can see lots of the sky, here on our desert island in the Caribbean, so we'll have fun keeping track of all these planets for the next week or so, until Mercury dips back below the horizon. Here is a writeup on what to look for.

Venus and the Moon will be close together tonight (wednesday). I posted a picture of a pairing like this a few months ago. Venus and the Moon should be easy to spot, even in a brightly lit suburban area. I'll be looking at it tonight, from the TWR activities building, where we hold our Awana club on Wednesday nights.

The moon will be near Mars on Thursday evening, to help you locate that planet, as well as the Pleiades star cluster, which looks like a teeny tiny dipper. You will need darker skies to see the Pleiades. By this time next week, Mars and Venus will have moved eastward and Venus will be near the Pleiades.

The moon will be near Saturn on Saturday.

The moon will be near Jupiter on Friday, April 2. But Jupiter is bright enough that you might be able to find it without the moon's help.

Instant traffic Jam

One of our couples was late to our staff meeting this morning. We were joking about how they must have gotten stuck in the fearsome rush hour traffic here on Bonaire. But then again, they could have been held up by a herd of goats crossing the road, or a construction crane in transit, or even a boat like this one.

I just wrote our April quarterly prayer letter before work this morning. We'll ftp it to the TWR offices in North Carolina and they will print it up for us and mail it out shortly. Most of what I covered in this quarter's letter has first appeared online here.

If you are not on our mailing list and would like to be, just drop me an email. A link is at the right side of this page. Be sure to reference this blog in your email subject heading or I might just delete it along with all the spam that I get at my hotmail account.

Bonaire Scenes for wallpaper

I posted three vistas of Bonaire, as seen in Washington Park, on my Club Photo site. One is kind of dark on my screen at work, but looked ok at home, so monitor settings do make a difference. If an image works for you, great.

If you click on the thumbnails and pictures, you will eventually get to a 1024x768 size image that you can download if you want to.

Root Beer

We are looking forward to my parents and Aunt and Uncle visiting us soon. A family tradition in the summer has always been to make home made root beer, so I mixed up a batch to get fizzy for their arrival.

The Hires Root Beer extract that we used to use when I was a kid has become impossible to find, even in New England, home of Root Beer lovers. Fortunately my parents have retired out in Pennsylvania Dutch country, and it turns out that the Amish make their own root beer too. Shanks extract tastes amazingly similar to the old Hires extract. Yippie.

Five gallons of root beer fills up about two and a half cases of the small bottles we found here on Bonaire. Maybe we'll look for a case of old Brookdale Beverages bottles the next time we are on furlough in New Jersey. Filling bigger bottles would speed up our root beer production process.

Action photos are here and here.

Innovative tech wizards

We have lots of UPS battery backup capacity in our studio building, so we are going to put most of our office computers on the UPSes. We want to distribute the load evenly so we needed a quick way to determine which AC power phase (there are three) each office computer system was connected to.

Udo and Rich used this high tech tool to do the job. Not the scopes.... but the red thing in the picture that looks like a heavy duty hair dryer. I'm not sure what it's called, but I use it to shrink heat shrink tubing when I'm making mic cables and the like. It blows REALLY hot air.
Maybe it's called a flameless heat gun or something like that.

Well, Rich went into each office, plugged in the heat gun, and switched it on and off a few times. Meanwhile, Udo was watching the volt and amp meters for all three phases. When Rich ran the heat gun, the meters for one of the phases reacted noticeably while the others all stayed calm. Udo then told Rich which phase he was plugged into via walkie talkie.

In a related note, after much head scratching and dedicated decective work, we discovered that the new standby generator doesn't like us having a Laserjet printer plugged into it the UPS system. When someone sends a print job, the printer has to heat up the part that fuses the "ink" to the page. That draws about 10 amps. When this hits the UPS, it in turn draws some 30 to 35 amps, on one phase. The generator didn't like that at all, so now the finance office Laserjet is just plugged into the house power, like the other laser printers.

Visitors from the Frozen North

Scott Hollinger and Joe Barker have been here on Bonaire this week. Both Scott and Joe, and their families, have lived here on Bonaire in days gone by. They are now operating out of Trans World Radio's offices in Cary, North Carolina.

The both are involved in a number of aspects of the ministry of TWR, but Scott is mostly wearing his English language Ministries Director hat this week while here on Bonaire.

Besides his Americas region Technical Director responsibilities, Joe has begun to function as a liaison between Bonaire Director Rich Fuller and TWR-Americas-Region head honcho, Tom Corcoran.

It's been great to see Joe and Scott again and to catch up on what has been going on in the greater TWR world.

Here are two more pictures of Scott and Joe.

More Airconditioning work

Over the last few weeks, I've posted pictures of the airconditioning plant rebuild. Here is what the chiller barrel area looks like now that Udo has finished fabricating panels to close it all up. This unit used to hold the condenser coils for the old system. The new condenser unit is located directly overhead.

Here is a shot from the other side of the wall, showing the compressor, and controls that run the refridgeration plant.

On the other side of the same room are some of the pumps that circulate the cold water created by the plant. Here Udo and Rich examine out what happens when different pumps are switched on and off.

Painting Continues

Here is a shot of Ivan cutting in a window on the office wing. The unoccupied office wing I might add. We've pretty much all moved over to the Studio building, since there are only a handful of us rattling around the facility on any given day. We have more computers than people around here, but hey, they run the station for us.

Speaking of computers... we have a jazzy new firewall connecting our LAN to the Internet. The firewall is the teeny tiny blue box. The old firewall was the size of a normal computer because.... it was a normal computer. We can administrate the new firewall with a web interface, which is a lot easier than the old one, which was running a command line interface under Linux.

The really cool thing about the new firewall is that it lets us connect our LAN up to both our Internet connections at the same time. It performs load balancing and other magic to make sure we are always online and can get those radio program downloads as speedily as possible. It also maintains a secure connection to the TWR offices in Cary, NC for business info.

Paint is Flying

Here is a picture of Benny using what is the longest paint roller extension that I've ever seen. You know how paint speckles sort of fly off of a roller? Well when Benny rolled way up high on that wall and with the Bonaire winds, the paint was sailing to amazing distances. I still have paint on my jeans, and I was halfway across the parking lot.

We are beginning to spruce up the buildings and grounds, partly because they need it from time to time, and partly because we want to look our best when we celebrate TWR's 40th year of broadcasting from Bonaire.

The celebration will probably be either the weekend of Aug. 7 and 8 or the weekend of Aug. 14 and 15. It will depend on the schedules of the various luminaries who might or might not be attending. In other words, nothing is firmed up at this point.