Annual Kralendijk to Rincon Race

April 30 is a holiday here, known both as the Queen's Day, and for the last 22 years as Rincon Day. It is also the day of the annual running race and fun walk from the Stadium in Kralendijk to Rincon. As I recall this race predates Rincon Day, but I can't figure out how many years it has actually been held.

I always ride my bike to Rincon on the west side "tourist road" on the morning of April 30 and then cheer on the walkers and runners as I head back home on the main road. This year I shot video clips of the various runners and walkers. I may not have gotten everybody, sorry to anyone I missed.

I isn't really that great a video 'cause I was shooting into the rising sun for the most part, and it appears that the ride quality of my road bike leaves a lot to be desired compared to my mountain bike. I think I have shot smoother video off-road on the mtn. bike than I got today on the road on my road bike. The roads here have gotten pretty rough though, and I actually do ride the mtn. bike on the road quite often now to save wear and tear on the old bod.

Rolling On

Perhaps they were inspired by the recent visit of, and the painting prowess shown by, the senior class of the Perry Hall Christian School. A number of the youth from the IBC are using their Easter vacation time to paint the new church building.

I only saw guys working on the church when I visited the site, but the young ladies have swung a mean paint brush in the past, so they might yet take roller in hand this week.

Here we see they guys cleaning up after a long day of work.

Kibrahacha Trees

The heavy rain we had last week has caused some of the Kibrahacha trees to pop. I first noticed them on Monday morning.

These trees are east of Antriol and North Salina. I'm not sure what the trees north of Sabadeco, and up around Goto Lake are doing.

Annual Kite Flying Contest

Sunday was the 33rd (i think) annual kite flying contest here on Bonaire. There was quite a crowd out enjoying the festivities and great weather. The competition was highly organized and the judges were actively involved in the proceedings.

These guys were holding on for dear life to a rather large kite. Eventually they tied it off to a telephone pole.

It wasn't windy by Bonaire standards, but the steady breeze was great for flying kites, as you can see here.

Perry Hall Christian School trip part 2

Cutting in the edges isn't as much fun as rolling paint on large sections of wall, but they persevered and made everything nice and tidy. Dionne, Daphney, and her friend (who's name I forget-sorry) painted the Spanish language TWR sign last summer. The crew shown here made short work of the English language sign this year. Check out the piles of weeds in the background. We had two inches of rain one day, which softened the ground and made weed pulling easier.

Yup, they even painted the part of the building that no one sees. Hooray.

more Perry Hall Pix

Some friendly donkeys came by to check out the freshly painted building. Or maybe someone told them that the young people also trimmed a bunch of bushes and pulled out a ton of yummy weeks. Here some of the team is putting the finishing touches on the front of the office wing. It is looking very nice.

Heading off to the airport with the spiffy office in the background.

They wisely arrived early so as to be at the head of the rather long check in line. Then they spent the next couple hours in the comfort of the air conditioned transit lounge, instead of standing in line in the heat.

Blast from the Past

It was great to have Mr. Solomon (center) at church a week or two ago. I haven't seen him out and about for quite some time. Also in the picture are Amado Felix on the left and Denny Hogan, on the right. Christophe Lusse (left) is here for a week. Denny Hogan is in the last week of his time here helping with the antenna tower rebuild project.

Perry Hall Christian School

The Senior class of the Perry Hall Christian School is here on Bonaire for a week. In addition to enjoying the warm weather, they are doing a bunch of projects for TWR while they are here. Here are some action photos. The office wing hasn't been painted since 2004. We didn't notice how dull it looked until we saw some shiny new paint on the walls.

Um... those pesky cacti, sand burrs and thorn bushes will definately get you if you let your guard down for even a second.

They worked on the shady west side of the building in the morning and the equally shady east side of the building in the afternoon.

I call this one Rambo.

PHCS Monday

In addition to painting the office wing, the group is tidying up the grounds. There are loads and loads of weeds to cut back with the string trimmer.

It was an overcast day, which made for very pleasant working conditions, and a perfect backdrop.

Was it Tom Sawyer or Huck Finn who talked everyone into white-washing the fence for him? Whoever it was, he's got nothing on these guys.

Cleaning paint rollers is the worst job in the world, but the power washer makes short work of them. It spins the paint right out of those puppies - and all over one's clothes!

Visitors from the North

We've been blessed with some talented and very helpful volunteers so far this year. Cees and Clary came from Canada to help our director, Joe Barker, figure out the new Dutch tax laws. Rick, from California, designed and built a few engineering projects at the transmitter site, and also thoroughly traced and documented all the control circuitry for the transmitter and antenna systems.

Jim, from Pennslyvania, accomplished some much needed electrical projects in the TWR houses.

Pat Hogan came from Ohio to visit her husband, Denny. She made about a zillion curtains while she was here.

Denny Hogan has been here for a couple months, replacing the cross braces on the antenna towers. (and enjoying the view from way up there in the air)

Special Olympics Walkathon

The ninth annual walkathon to benefit the Bonaire Special Olympics team was held on April 3. The event starts at 5am at White Slave and everyone walks, cycles, runs etc. along the west coast, 30 kilometers, all the way to Rincon. By 7:30 there are lots of people walking past our house in Hato. Here is a vido clip I shot on my way to church at 8am. Note Johan at the traffic circle taking his palm tree along for the walkathon. This is at least the third consectuve year that he has taken this tree. Looks like it is getting big and heavy now!

International Bible Church building Progress

The walls are all up on the new IBCB church building and the windows and doors have been ordered and paid for. That covered patio is on the upwind side of the building and will let us keep the double doors open for ventilation during light rains.TWR had some extra cabinets that now look great in the new church kitchen. One of our seasonal visitors has promised some base cabinets this fall when they update their condo.

Above we see Bob Lassiter reviewing the agenda before the monthy Saturday men's breakfast meeting. Pastor Baran is looking out the window.

The inside of the auditorium. The wind was blowing through quite nicely last Saturday, even with the big side doors half blocked off with plywood.

One of the bathrooms, showing off some nice tile work.

Bonaire Panoramas

Bill Heatley just sent me a link to a super cool Web site. It has 360 degree panoramic images of all sorts of Bonaire locations and sites. I've only looked at a couple of them but will be back to check out more as time permits.

BBBJ featured in Smithstonian article

Snndra's cousin, Bud Gillan, has just tipped me off that there is an article about the Bonaire Banded Box Jellyfish on the Smithstonian Web site.

Tuesday Green Flash and Planetary Parade

The sun looked pretty nice as I finished my after work bike ride today, (Tuesday) so Sandra and I hopped in the car and drove to where we could see the sun drop below the horizon. The sun almost set over a cruise ship, which would have been cool. We saw a great green flash, I'd say that on scale of one to ten, it was a ten.
Then as the sky began to darken, Jupiter and Mercury put on a nice display. If you live to the west of Bonaire and you read this soon enough, head outside after sunset and you'll see Mercury a little below and to the right of Jupiter. They are pretty close together tonight.

Bonaire Vortex

You've probably heard of the Bermuda Triangle, where boats and planes check in but don't check out. Well, Bonaire seems to be developing a car eating Vortex that sucks in cars and spits them out all crushed up. It all started a couple weeks ago when two medical students were driving to class, noticed their car starting to swerve around, and the next thing they new they had plowed into the giant boulders that protect the jogging path here in Hato. The car, seen above as it rests in front of our house, was very seriously damaged, but I'm happy to be able to report that the students survived the accident and are in fine shape. I don't know any details about the victims of the other recent wrecks.

This giant hole in the cemetary wall on Kaya Korona appeared sometime between the Kids Carnival weekend and the main Carnival weekend. That is a huge section of wall that has been smashed down there.

As I set out on my bike ride yesterday morning, (March 12) I saw the remains of this van resting within a few meters of the place where the medical students had their accident. Normally one would be tempted to blame Big Mo (mv) or his evil cousin Kinetic Energy (mv squared) for damage as serious as this. But all three of the above accidents happened in residential areas with 40 km per hour speed limits so I am driven to conclude that some sort of mysterious car crushing Vortex is at work. (he said tongue in cheek)

I first thought that the Bonaire Vortex was centered in Hato, and maybe had spread as far as town, but this car (also photographed on March 12) is out at Boca Onima. So it looks like no location on Bonaire is safe from its effects.

I hardly ever ride my road bike any more. Part of the reason is that the paved roads are full of holes, but the other reason is that I feel a lot safer on my mountain bike on trails and paths where cars can't go. So far it looks like bicycles are immune from the Bonaire Vortex, although come to think of it, a few weeks ago DJ got swallowed up by a large muddy bog out Lagoon way.... But that's another story.

TWR E-Snapshots

Here is a story from this month's TWR E-Snapshots newsletter. You can sign up to receive the E-Snapshots on the lower right side of this page.

A girl who lived in a refugee camp in Tanzania for ten years recently visited the TWR-Burundi office to tell how she had been blessed by the good news through our programs.

She said, “I used to listen to your program from the refugee camp in Tanzania. It was a blessing, not only to me but to the other Burundian refugees in the camp because we could hear a program in our mother tongue while we were away from our homeland. The messages in that program caused me to change my life and surrender it to the Lord Jesus Christ. I am amazed at how, from this studio, you are able to reach people thousands of miles away.”

It’s exciting that these programs reached her in crisis, they reached her within her cultural framework, they reached her with Christ and they reached her from another country! There are not many other means of outreach that can achieve all four of these at the same time other than radio!

You can read the full version of this story and see a picture of the TWR Burundi recording studio here on the TWR Africa Web site.

Southern Cross Rising at Red Slave

Here is a time lapse video showing the Southern Cross (SC) rising at Red Slave here on Bonaire. I drew lines along the outline of the SC in this picture, so that you will be able to recognize it in the video. You may need to make the picture bigger so you can see the SC. The SC appears at about nine seconds into the video clip.

The red blob low in the sky near the middle of the picture, is the Eta Carina nebula. This area of the sky is actually loaded with interesting objects to observe in binoculars or a telescope. Many of them show up nicely here.

This video represents about three and a half hours worth of pictures, taken at a rate of about two per minute.

The video looks best at 720p resolution and full screen. My internet connection is a little slow for 720p, but the view is worth the wait. Oh... these astronomy videos look quite different on each and every computer monitor I've viewed them on, so if you are curious, look at it on a couple different computers and see which rendition you like the best!

Star Trails

I've been taking more star pictures to prepare for some time lapse videos this summer. But most of the time it has been too cloudy. Above is a typical 3o second exposure and below is a combination of a bunch of them showing the movement of the stars over time.

The star trails photo really brings out the colors of the various stars.

Cloudy Nights or Orion Over the Huts

The moon is in hiding right now, so if it wasn't so consarned rainy and cloudy, I'd be outside every night soaking up the beauty of the Bonaire Sky Park, as George DeSalvo calls it. But, since I had already gotten soaked during my after work bike ride yesterday, I stayed inside last night and played with some images from last month. You can see Orion a little above and to the left of center in the photo below. The Pleiades are just barely above the middle of the roof of the right hand slave hut, and the Hyades (the horns of Taurus the bull) are to the upper left of the Pleiades. The photo above is a combination of five or six 19 second exposures at ISO3200 with the camera on a fixed tripod. Combining a a number of individual images helps cancel out some of the random noise that one sees when imaging in low light and with high ISO settings. I'm pleased that some of the star colors were preserved (check out Betelgeuse and Aldebaran) and that you can even see a hint of Barnard's loop arching above Orion's belt.

This is a close up of Orion's belt and sword that I shot from the back yard last month. It is a combination of 2 minute exposures shot with a 85/1.8 lens at f4. I processed the heck out of this image to try to bring out the red nebulosity that abounds in this part of the sky. What I really need is longer exposures from a darker site. (like Red Slave) You can see hints of this same nebulosity in the top image, and that does impress me, since the exposure time was so short for that shot.