Vacation

Sandy and I are going to take a couple of weeks to travel up the east coast of the US. We are going to be camping and visiting friends. Because of this trip, I do not expect to have any posts for a couple of weeks.

Off track

Even though I am here in America for awhile, I have been working on the project in Thailand. Unfortunately, the guy who had promised to do a lot of work for the children has turned out to be a total slacker. He promised to organize meetings and didn't. In addition, the head monk has not been assertive (which of course monks never are) and the teachers at the school are not performing their jobs properly. The new headmaster is going to start soon, but it may be too late. The donor for the school, who happens to be in a different part of the same organization as the slacker, is frustrated that the school has not gotten its' act together and may pull the funding.

Sandy and I are considering making another short trip back to Thailand to try to get things back on track before we go to another country. We will decide soon enough.

Black dog, no lights, motorbike, bad combination

I had a story that I wanted to write about the whole time I was in Thailand but I knew my mother would be a little stressed, so I have waited until now to write about it.

One evening Sandy and I were riding down the road at a reasonable speed on my motorbike. There was a section of the road with no street lights. Then, Sandy yells, "DOG!". A black dog ran in front of us. I swerved to miss the dog (breaking the cardinal rule, "don't swerve, hit the animals"). We took a spill onto the pavement. Luckily for Sandy, she had me to break her fall. I had the handle bars.

I was smarting a bit and decided to lay on the pavement. Soon, there was a big crowd around me. Because my ribs were hurting quite a bit, we made the second big mistake; we called an ambulance. We later found that the ambulance drivers are at home, so we had to wait for them to drive to the hospital and then the 1/2 mile to pick me up. This took about 20 minutes. To make up for the slow pick up, they sped around the corners on the way to the hospital which caused me to turn on the gurney (ouch!).

We made it to the hospital in the ambulance (which was a full size van with a little gear in it) they pull the gurney out and, in principal, the legs of the gurney were supposed to pop out. They violated this principal and I fell on the gurney about 3 feet to the ground. I am not much for cursing, but it seemed to appropriate at that point to growl, "you have f#!king got to be kidding me". I felt a hand on my shoulder and it was my friend Dr. Kitima, possible the sweetest, goofiest doctor in all the world. Dr Kitima said, "I am so sorry". I quickly gathered my composure and we went on our merry way.

It turned out to be bruised ribs...took 2 months to feel normal again. Every time I saw Dr. Kitima, she would just start laughing like a school girl.