Mowing

Well, a nice packed down bare dirt yard with crushed rock accents is de rigueur here on Bonaire.
See my blog from Nov. 1. You can click the link and scroll down to the bottom of the page.

But we had a really long rainy season this past year and I got tired of hoeing the weeds. Pushing a mower is a LOT easier, so we bought a used mower the other day.

I had to try it out on what is left of the weeds in our back yard.
The mower buzzed the weeds down nicely, but raised a huge cloud of dust as well.


Sandra snapped a picture. It was getting dark and the flash lit up the dust particles, but didn't reach me. Kind of like driving in a snowstorm...... really. :)

Here is the original picture. You can probably download it and have a go at it with your favorite photo editor. It would be good practice, in case you ever take a one of a kind, but really dark, picture.


You can click on the pictures to see them bigger, heh-heh.

Zensens visit Bonaire

George and Joan Zensen, accompanied by their youngest offspring and two of their numerous grand- offspring, have been exploring their old stomping grounds here on Bonaire for the last couple weeks.

I won't name names here on the big bad Internet, 'cause family tree type relationships are still used all too often for identity verification purposes. Wouldn't want to assist any would be identity thieves.

You can click the picture to see it bigger.


We had a fun pizza feed and astronomy session with them.

Happy Easter

For some people Maundy Thursday kicks off the Easter weekend. I've always wondered what that ment, but learned a little about it today from the Slice of Infinity daily devotional email from the Ravi Zacarias ministry.

Here's an excerpt; Today we observe Maundy Thursday. We remember both Jesus's intentional act of love in washing his disciples' feet and his mandate ("Maundy" is the Middle English for "mandate") to "love one another as I have loved you" (John 13:34).

Sandra was at one of the supermarkets yesterday and noticed that they were closed on Good Friday and on Easter Monday, but open on Easter Sunday!

On Sunday, we'll be having a sunrise service on Seroe Largu and an international breakfast at the church before the regular morning service. All of our food fests here have an international "flavor" due to the cross section of nationalities and cultures represented.

Most years, I get in a number of long road bike rides over the Easter weekend, because there aren't many cars on the roads. But the tradewinds have been "nuking" here the last couple days. That makes bike riding pretty difficult. A 25 to 30 mph. wind can pretty much stop you dead in your tracks when you swing into it on your bike. I've been riding my mtn. bike in the hills north of us the last few days. The hills block the wind some and my speeds are pretty low anyway.

Awana Grand Prix

After two Saturday car construction workshops, we held the Awana Grand Prix this past Saturday. Lots of kids and parents came and everyone seemed to have a wonderful time.

More pix of the cars, kids, and race action are on my club photo site. The link will take you to the thumbnails page. Clicking on a thumbnail will get you a bigger picture. Clicking on the bigger picture will get you the full 800x600 image.
Photos from the workshops are at the top of the page, followed by photos from the Grand Prix.


We sang some of the kids favorite songs at the start of the meeting. You can click on these pictures to see them bigger.


Sandra's elephant and my Toblerone bar car can be seen in this shot of the leaders' cars.

Spring has Sprung - New Life in more ways than one

According to Sky and Telescope dot com, Spring arrived at 7:33 am. Eastern Standard Time on Sunday! Does it feel like spring where you live? We can sure tell here on Bonaire.

The heavy rains have stopped, the tradewinds are blowing, and the sun is getting noticeably hotter. I guess those massless photons really do have momentum. One can almost feel the pressure when one steps from the shade into the direct Bonaire sun. Actually, that's not how it really works, but it is what pops into my mind when I step out into the sun without my official missionary pith helmet.

The seasonal changes also mean that there is some dust in the air, so the night sky is not the deep inky black that we've enjoyed for the last few months. But it is still fun to go out after dark and check out the stars, planets, satellites, etc. We saw a mind boggling "fizzy" meteor a week or so ago.

I just came across a letter that was written to one of our cooperating broadcasters, from a fellow stargazer living in a Persian Gulf state. It hit me like a ton of bricks. Darkness can take many forms, as can new life in the Spring.

One night a while ago when I was looking into the heavens and praying to God, my heart was enlightened when I heard your radio program that talked about the true love of God. This was the exact thing that my spirit was searching for. I did not even know that was what I longed for.

For 24 years I was living in darkness and I wasted my life in anger and hatred. Emotionally I was depressed, so when I heard you message about love I could not believe it. Your program showed me that my cold empty heart needs Jesus. Why has no one told me about Jesus before? Now I say, "Dear Jesus, you are my precious one. Without you I am dying. Living Jesus Christ, I know I am a sinner and that you paid the sacrifice to pay for my sin. I accept you as my savior. Please come into my heart now and reveal your truth to me, oh Jesus."

After hearing your program, I went all over to find some christian literature but could not find any. I only found anti-christian literature. Finally I received a page from the Holy Bible from somebody and it brought me much joy. Now my only source of teaching is your program. I need your help. Please guide me and tell me how I can become a Christian and a servant for Jesus Christ. I pray that God will give you strength so you can continue to share the Gospel with us. My depression is gone. Jesus has healed me.

Kralendijk Waterfront

I shot this picture of beautiful downtown Kralendijk last week, when we flew to Curacao for some medical testing. Click on the picture to see it bigger.

Bonaire Visitors

The Hixons were visiting here on Bonaire recently. It was good to see them and they had a great time tracking down all their friends here. But I didn't have my camera around at the right time, so there are no pix for the blog. grrr

Janet Ludlam also came for a visit. She exercised good timing and was able to enjoy a food and fun night at the church. Here we see Sue Felix and Janet digging in.

You can click on the picture to get a better look at that yummy egg roll on Janet's plate.

Awana Update

We had our second Awana Grand Prix car building workshop last Saturday. Many of the cars were at that all important, "get as close to 5 oz. as possible" stage. The races and judging are this coming Saturday.


You can click on the picture to see it bigger.
We drilled lots of holes and glued in lots of lead weights. I learned that glue-gun glue stays hot for a long time when one uses it to fill up a hole in a model car.

Antenna Testing

The tower painting is finished for now. We're thankful for perfect painting weather and for the safe completion of the first tower and part of a second one.

On Friday, we ran the transmitter at low power and took signal strength readings in a big circle around the antenna array. I would find our pre-determined test locations with a GPS receiver and Rich, Jon, and Bob took readings. Another Rich was inside with the transmitter and switched the antenna from North, to South, to Non-Directional; at each test spot. We took readings every five degrees around the circle.

Here is our intrepid crew out in the field. You can click on the picture to see the guys bigger.
This spot was under water a couple months ago!


We had to snake our way through some brush to find the test spots, but fortunately, it was the non-thorny variety. We've gotten pretty scratched up on earlier ventures into the wilds of Bonaire.

AWANA Grand Prix

It's Awana Grand Prix season again here on Bonaire. It is a three week event, with model car building workshops for two saturdays and then the actual races on the third saturday.

We had the first car construction workshop with the kids on Saturday.


The kids are cute and have a great time designing and working on their cars.


We had some parents come with their kids this year, which is a nice change. More parents will join us on race day.

I've posted lots more pictures on my club photo site. You can click the pictures here as well as the ones on club photo to see them bigger.

Bonaire Electricity Update

The WEB power plant by our house has a bunch of new generators to fill in for the ones that burned up on Feb. 7. You can see them in the containers in the foreground.

According to the Bonaire Reporter, each of the units can generate a megawatt. Four of the units are running now, and we can hear them quite clearly from our house. But the are running smoothly and are nowhere near as obnoxious as the big old ones the burned up.

There should be enough power now, to meet Bonaire's peak demand, so hopefully scheduled power outages will be a thing of the past. These rented generators, from www.aggreko.com, will be used until the main power plant can be repaired.

The Bonaire Reporter also reported that one of the burned diesels has been written off as a total loss by the insurance company, but that the second one should be usable after extensive repairs.


We certainly enjoyed the peace and quiet while the plant was out of operation, but appreciate the hard work that WEB has done to restore full power to the island.

I have set up our TV room / home theater with a third-octave sound analyzer (one of the perks of being a recording engineer) and there used to be a HUGE peak of ambient noise from the power plant at 45 to 50 hz. It actually caused the cement walls to vibrate in one of our rooms, where some sort of resonance was set up. It also pretty much drowned out the subwoofer unless we turned it waaaaay up, which hurt our ears.

These new generators produce background noise centered at about 90 hz and "only" 18 dB above the sound level for the rest of the spectrum. That is still a lot of bass energy, but it is a big improvement, and we are hearing the soudtrack of movies as never before. We just watched The Hunt for Red October, which has lots of low frequency "ambiance" inside the subs etc.

Brazil Monitoring Trip

A TWR team with members from the US, Europe and South America is in the Amazon region of Brazil right now. They'll be traveling around and checking the signal strength of our broadcasts.

They are especially interested in the signal in the north west corner of the Amazon area, because that is were the Ticuna tribal group is located. We hope to begin broadcasting to them soon.

We'll be transmitting test broadcasts between midnight and 3 am, in addition to our regularly scheduled broadcasts from 6 pm to midnight and from 3 am to 8:15 am. The first test is tonight and they will continue until Thursday morning.

Please remember this test and the soon to be sleep deprived team in your prayers.
Thank you.

New Improved Comments Feature

Blogger has recently improved the way the comments feature works. So if you've tried to leave a comment on my blog in the past, and found it to be too much hassel, it might be better now.

Flamingos all over the place

The weather is starting to change some. It is more sunny and windy and not so rainy as it has been the last few months. All of the low areas and salinas are still flooded though, and flamingos can be found in many of them. There are still flamingos hanging out in the stink pond behind the TWR offices and in the flooded areas between town and the airport. They can also be found in the salt flats along the road from Bel Nem to Sorobon.

As you drive or ride into Washington Park, this salt flat is on the right near the entrance. It is usually dry and dusty all summer. You can click on the picture to see the flamingos.


These are the salt flats near Pos Mangel in Washington Park. The flats are starting to dry out, but the flamingos are still happy to be there. You'll need to click on the picture to see them.


Here is a web page that has interesting information about the park and what you can see there. Here is another page that has a cool clickable map of the park.

Great Washington Park Group Ride

A bunch of us old geezers and a few Dutch younguns did another group ride at Washington Park last Saturday. It was breezy and cool, for Bonaire that is. The temps were probably in the low 80s. The park was busy with bird counters (the annual Lora census) and goat wranglers. We saw a rainbow at the start but didn't actually get rained on ourselves. The dirt roads were hard packed but bumpy.

Here is our happy group near the start of the ride. You can click on the pix to see them bigger.


February is the perfect Bonaire month for outdoor activities. It is starting to dry out a little, the wind is picking up a little, but it's not too hot yet and the Sahara dust hasn't started blowing our way from Africa, so the skies are nice and clear.

Here we see, from left to right, TWR missionary Jon Savage, and Laura and George De Salvo, of the "Bonaire Reporter." Bonaire lovers can get an online subscription to the Bonaire Reporter. We have one, 'cause we don't always get to pick up one of the print versions.


There is an amazing large shady patio at Slag Bai now. You've got the gorgeous water on one side, flamingoes on the other side, and a nice cool breeze this time of the year, even at 11 am.

One could just hang out here for hours.

I didn't 'cause I still had a long ride home. It takes about 45 minutes to get back to the park gate from here, and another 40 to 45 to ride back home from the park to Hato.

Trip to Curacao

We flew to Curacao on Valentines day to visit a doctor. We'll be back for some tests in the near future. Had a great Valentines day lunch at Pizza Hut and visited a warehouse type store. Big stuff after one has been on Bonaire for a couple years.

We flew on a Divi Divi puddle jumper plane. There is a great picture of it on their web page. They do a great job with charter and commuter flights. They fly low and slow, so taking a cue from my father in law' s success last summer, I brought a camera along and took lots of photos. Next time I'll bring the camera as well as a cloth to clean the plane's window!

Here is a view of our neighborhood. The squiggly black arrow points to our house.


Notice the clear aqua water and the way the bottom drops off to the deep blue depths quite close to the shore.

You can also see the water and electric plant that had the fire recently just below the middle of the arrow. The big generators are still out of commission, so it is nice and quiet at our house, but we still have the occasional rolling blackout.

The majority of the houses in this picture weren't there when I first came to Bonaire in 1975. In fact, the Dutch marines were having war games in the area just above the arrow my first night on the island. Woke me up about 2am, scared to death and wondering just what sort of third world disaster I had gotten myself into. Then I looked out the window and saw the Lowell kids out in the street watching the action and decided that, appearances to the contrary, it must be safe. I found out the next day what was going on.

The marines and their gear proved to be great "kid magnets." It was amusing to see the soldiers try to cope with finding their carefully camouflaged machine gun nest - ambush site swarming with curious kids.

College Rankings

Yahooie, the Princeton Review college rankings for this year are out. Now that our son, Richard, will be graduating from Bucknell in three months, it is fun to think back to those good old college selection days.
Wheaton College turns up on a number of the lists, including the number one rank for best food.
There is a box towards the bottom of the page where you can enter your favorite college and see if it turned up on any on the lists.

Rolling Blackouts

Well, Sandra and I are going to Curacao on Monday to see a Neurologist, but that is not the kind of blackouts I'm referring to.

After the big fire last weekend, there isn't quite enough generating capacity on the island to meet the demand, so we are having four hour long power outages in the different neighborhoods of Bonaire on a rotating basis. Our power in Hato was off from 8 pm to midnight on Tuesday, from 4 pm to 8 pm on Wednesday, from noon to 4pm on Thursday, and from 8 am to noon today.

The TWR studios and offices are on a different schedule, but it is predictable, which helps a lot. Long time readers of my blog will remember my posts about our new standby generator at the studios. (see the January 2004 link in the archives list on the right margin of this page)
I'm happy to report that it is working well, and it is saving the day right now.

WEB, the power company has done a good job of making sure our big AM transmitter has power when we need it for our international broadcasts. We are very thankful for that. Our local FM transmitter, on the other hand, is off for four hours each day, on the same schedule as our home in Hato.

Some of you who have lived on Bonaire may remember Sigfried Quarton, an Engineer with the power company. He went in to work when the fire started at 4:30 am and didn't get back home until 3:30 am the next day. Then, after a short sleep, he was out again. His wife says she has hardly seen him this week. So the WEB guys are working hard on fixing things.

A big standby generator or two arrived from Curacao on Wed. night and they hope to have them online by the end of the weekend. (the CAT genset I saw filled a whole 40 foot container - so it's a wee bit bigger than the one we installed last year)

Picture of fire damage at WEB

You can see the fire damage on the walls of the WEB diesel building.
Click on the picture to make it bigger.


We just got our power back on about 15 minutes ago. (7:35 pm) so we are very happy for that. The last I heard, no one knew much about how the fire started. We do think that supplying the island's full power needs is going to be iffy with just the plant out by TWR in operation. But if we have power all night, and our fridge and freezer get cold again, we'll be content, even if they have to do the rolling blackout thing from time to time.

Big Fire on Bonaire

There was a BIG fire a the WEB power generating plant right next to our house early this morning. You could see the flames from "all over the island." Bob Thorp saw them quite easily from the TWR studios at any rate.

I woke up when our power went off around 4:45 am because the UPS that we have our computer plugged into started beeping. The crazy thing is that I didn't notice the fire, because there are two big water storage tanks between our house and the power plant, and apparently they blocked everything. I did hear the heavy equipment roaring around over there etc. They brought over some of the monster sized foam equipped fire trucks from the airport to put out the fire.

So, we have no power at home and there is no power in Belnem and at the transmitter site. So we are thankful that they place didn't blow up and level our house, but are praying that they will be able to get the power restored, especially to our transmitters, soon.

Brandaris Climb 2005

Jon and Debbi Savage and I climbed Brandaris in Washington Park yesterday. I took a GPS with me and measured about 1.2 miles of hiking and about 700 feet of vertical from the base to the top. The summit is about 780 feet above sea level.

It was fairly cloudy and there was a light breeze, which made for wonderful climbing conditions. The heat in Washington Park can be brutal some times of the year.

Here is the beginning of the path to the top. You can tell we've had a lot of rain this year. The trail has become quite eroded and the vegetation is almost lush.

You can click the picture to see it bigger.


Looking towards Playa Funchi from the top.


I've posted four more pictures from yesterday's trip to the park in my club photo site. The first six pix in the album are from 2005. The rest date back as far as 2002.

You can click the club photo thumbnails to enlarge the pictures, and then click again on the pictures to see them at full 1024x768 resolution.

WEB Based Internet Chat

Because of security issues, TWR has decided to remove all Instant Messaging apps from the computers and workstations within TWR offices etc.

If we want to IM we'll need to use web versions of the IM services. They run as java apps on the local machines and should be safer. These web apps seem to work well, once you tell XP to not block popups on these particular web sites.

These web based IM sites are also useful if you are temporarily using a different computer that doesn't have your favorite IM client installed on it. Pretty cool.

Here are links to the web versions of the three main chat systems.

Yahoo!: http://messenger.yahoo.com/ - link at bottom of page for Launch Web Messenger

AIM/AOL: http://aimexpress.aim.com

MSN: http://webmessenger.msn.com

More Flamingos

Here is another picture from up on the lighthouse, looking north west. In haze in the distance you can see the hills at the other end of the island. Also on the horizon are the salt piles from the salt company, and in the middle is a big pink blob consisting of zillions of flamingos. You should probable click on this picture to make it bigger to see the flamingos.

The View from the Top

From time to time, for one reason or another, the door of the Willemstoren lighthouse, at the south end of Bonaire is open. Right now is one of those times. The stairs inside are in great shape, much better than those of the Spelonk Lighthouse. (which is almost always open)

The sky was pretty clear, but not clear enough to see Curacao or Venezuela. (I'm assuming that would be possible if it was clear enough - they saw both from our radio towers recently)

Here is the view looking to the East. You can tell from the sea that the trade winds are finally coming back. You can click on the picture to make it bigger.


I usually ride by here on my Saturday morning bike rides. There is an all too brief downwind leg just to the west of the lighthouse.

Here we are looking a little south of west. As you can see, this end of the island is really flat and not much above sea leval. A number of ships and boats have crashed into Bonaire over the years that I've been here.


The view pretty much due west, looking towards red slave. The friendly flamingos featured in a recent post were right where the green water to the right seems to meet the road and the sea at the horizon.

Friendly Flamingoes

I've been fighting a cold all week and have either been home in bed, or slouched in front of my audio workstation at the office. Haven't been up to blogging. But I'm feeling pretty good today, not good enough for a bike ride, but up to posting a couple friendly flamingos.
You can click on the pix to make them bigger.

Freddy is nosing around in the muck looking for yummy critters to eat.


Freddy and Flossie Flamingo feeling brave. Usually one only gets pictures of the hindquarters of flamingos, because they tend to start walking away as soon as they spot you.

Tower Painting is Underway

We've got five guys on the tower each day. Rich hopes that the first tower will be finished by the end of February. Right now we are expeniencing great tower painting weather.

Thru the Bible Program talks about TWR

I just finished auditioning the TTB program for Friday, January 21. Thru The Bible is a Bible study / survey that covers the entire Bible over a five year period. They are just starting to look at Hosea, an easy to read book with a powerful message, found in the Old Testament.

At the start of the Friday program, the annoucer spends some time talking about TTB's partnership with Trans World Radio in broadcasting to the Indian sub-continent. I thought it was a pretty good overview, so be sure to catch it if you can.
Here is a link to a list of the stations and times that TTB is on the air.
You can also listen to the program online at at the TTB web site.

One of the key components in the ministry to India is the TWR station on Sri Lanka. As you know, Sri Lanka recently got hammered by the tsunami. Friends and contacts there say it will take many months and even years to get things back to "normal."

We are very thankful to the Lord that the TWR studio and transmitter facilities weren't damaged by the tsunami and that none of the TWR staff was killed. This is not to say that they weren't affected. For example, one of the guys working at the transmitter site lost 20 family members. So do remember to pray for them in their time of personal loss and as they help with relief efforts.

TWR is also working towards coordinating long term relief care for people in this region. You can learn more about that on the TWR web site.

New Kids Missions Materials

TWR has produced a great new Kids Missions Curriculum. It's designed to fit a variety of Christian education contexts, including Sunday school, church missions emphases, Bible clubs, VBS and home school. TWR plans to release new curriculum supplements annually, focusing on children in a different country or region each year.

Bonaire Medical School Graduation

Back on Dec. 17, one of the medical schools here on Bonaire held a graduation service at the Activities Building. The class president and the Lt. Governor presented a great Christian witness / challenge to the students and the many guests.

Lt. Governor Domacasse addressed the class and also gave the benediction.


Here's a group shot of the graduating class. Click on the pix to see them bigger.


We enjoyed lots of good food after the ceremony. The activities building was packed.

Long Time no Blog

Whew, I haven't posted anything for a week. We've been enjoying having our son, Richard here.

I'm still keeping up with my bike rides, having logged about 190 miles so far this year. I don't normally keep track of my mileage, but this year I'm trying something new and logging my rides at www.bikejournal.com.

It still rains every day and sometimes it rains quite hard. Some days are overcast all day, which is quite rare for Bonaire. It is also quite cool at night, for Bonaire anyway.

We still go out in the evening and look for the comet Machholtz. It is pretty easy to see with the naked eye if you know about where to look. We don't see much of a tail, even in binoculars.

Happy New Year

Bonaire again greeted the new year with the sounds of exploding fireworks ringing in our ears. This is something that has to be experienced to be believed.

We're enjoying having our son, Richard, here for two weeks. He's jelling out and enjoying the fact that he has a good job lined up after he graduates from Bucknell in May.

We've been observing comet Machholz most every evening, clouds permitting. It is pretty bright as comets go, that is one can see it with the naked eye if one knows about where to look. It has just passed a little to the west of Orion and Taurus, and will be near the Pleiades on the 7th. That night it will be pretty easy to find, if you know anything about the stars at all. Sky and Telescope has a easy to use chart. On Saturday and Sunday night, the horns of the bull (Taurus) were pointing right at the comet.

We've been watching satellites like the International Space Station and Iridium flares do their thing in the early evening sky as well.