Day Off and its Friday

I have the day off today from the work site.  Today is sort of a national holiday.  I asked the men at work if they wanted to work today, but they quickly said that they wanted the day off.   However, my day hasn't been exactly my own to plan. 
First a little housekeeping.  Had breakfast, but not my normal  - oats (raw, just flakes, not cooked) with powdered milk - yummy - today was eggs because I had run out of oats.  While I was eating breakfast, I heard the generator running - but it wasn't running smoothly - thought to myself - guess I should look into that.  Just a minute or so later, Pastor Michel came upstairs in the guest house to ask me to look at it.  By this time he had shut the generator down. 

After I finished breakfast, I went down to look.  Of course you know what happens - I started the generator and it was working fine - running smoothly.  I noted though that the fuel filter looked dirty and thought that it should be changed.  Went to look for one in the tool room, but didn't find one.  By this time, the generator was still running better than before, but a little bit unevenly. 

The generator was needed for power today to run the services being held by Pastor Michel for the national day of prayer. 

I decided that I should go get a filter, but before I did that, that I should clean the current one, so that it would hopefully run better while I was away.  Did that, of course each time you break into the fuel system on a diesel, you want to make sure that you get the air out so that it will start again - air in the system with a diesel fuel pump is not a good thing.  I purged the air. Bit rough to get it going, but not too much trouble.   

Now, I was dirty and thought I'd better clean up a bit first; and with the diesel now running, it was also a perfect opportunity for me to get a load of laundry started.  Did that too - or so I thought.  Had a few power issues to work out on the washing machine - hooked up the water and once I had done that got my laundry started. In North America, there is so much convenience - the machine is just ready to go - all hooked up - just turn it on, and any time you want - day or night.  Simply not so here. 

Off I went to get the fuel filters that I needed.  Noted on my way how light the traffic was - incredibly light - the rough roads that are usually bad to go on and congested with traffic were a breeze on my bike without the other traffic to contend with.  And on some of the main roads I was able to get up to 80-90 kms/hr.

Should have been a clue - circled around past a hardware store that I wanted to go to - it was closed.  Clue #2 and then I went on to the place that has the parts for the generator - they are both in the same vicinity and down towards the airport.  Also closed. 

On my way down, I was forced to make a few detours.  The first one was on a main road that I use - Delmas 31 - the army had it blocked - as I looked up past the roadblock, I really couldn't see a reason, but it was cordoned off - I thought about asking if I could get through - but decided wiser - there guns were pretty big and there were many of them - just one of me.  Thought I'd take another road and detour around - went down it a little ways before I decided I had better backtrack and go another - more traditional route. 

I am guessing that there may have been food distribution going on and the area may have been cordoned off to control the flow of people.  The reason that I think this might be so, was that as I approached the roadblock I saw a number of people carrying bags of rice on their heads - this is becoming a very common sight as food distribution is occurring by many different organizations throughout the city on a regular basis. 

So, I turned around and went another way.  Again along the way there are many side streets that are more or less equivalent to get you to where you want to go.  Selected one of them and went down - about a block down, I could see rubble from a building covering the street and I knew that I wouldn't get through - so again I back tracked.  Selected a street a couple more over and went through with no trouble.

In Haiti you drive by sight - i.e. turn at the red building.  Sight doesn't work so good anymore becuase many of the landmarks are now gone.  Thought that I might have been lost a couple of times, but came out okay. 

I decided that since the traffic was so light, that on my way back up to the house, I would swing by the main road - Delmas.  So I did that.  Again not much traffic and I breezed along - don't think I stopped all the way up except to take a couple of pics and again at times likely go up to about 80 kms/hr on Delmas as well - certainly a first for me.

Oh, and my laundry - never got it done, its now soaking and waiting.  After it washed about 5 minutes - I guess the generator was shut off and someone turned the machine off - there are many things that we don't run on batter power - refrigerators and washing machines are among them. 

The generator seems to be running okay for now - that won't last - we do need to change the fuel filter.  Problem number two - broken water pipe - not that uncommon - no hardware stores are open today - so it'll still be on the list for tomorrow along with trip #2 to get fuel filters for the generator.