Unfortunately, not that it mattered, we had also forgotten the zinc. In our haste to get back quickly Elizabeth and I had forgotten to load it into the boat from the dock. In fact, we had never even seen it at the dock. In fairness to both of us, it turned out that Richards had delivered it to the wrong dock so it's not like we stepped over it as we boarded our boat. In any event, it was all academic because we needed those elbows and I was heading back to Isla Colon, one way or the other. This was starting to get pricey and I felt pretty low about the whole affair. To his everlasting credit, Mike tried to buck me up saying that neither of us had put it on the list. Still, what the hell was the whole point of the trip, huh? We huddled with Ambrosio (quite embarrassing) and arranged for another ride back to Bocas. This time I would go solo, pick up the elbows and the zinc and get back. Fast.
Between the first and second acts in the boat trip drama we got our celebratory lunch. Surprisingly, it's not what I had had in mind, but then, perhaps I need to learn to let go of my preconceived notions. Despite the time crunch to get back to Bocas I thought we would break for lunch and have a nice sit down meal at the restaurant. Instead, somewhere around 12:30 Ambrosio re-appeared at the work site with a plastic bag full of styrofoam takeout containers. Again, not quite what I had imagined. Each one was generously filled with fresh green salad, delicious stewed chicken, rice, and a potato-egg salad. Now, not to look a gift horse in the mouth, but it was Chip himself who made the observation that what I had purchased at the butchers in Bocas was chicken breast (3 lbs each for Ambrosio, Daniel and Ramon) while what appeared in our containers were thighs and drumsticks. Looks like a bought a Porsche and drove a Hyundai out of the dealership. God bless the old switcheroo. All I can do is chuckle about it - hell, the chicken was still tasty and someone else had cooked it. Who was I to complain about a little scam? We broke off to eat as our individual tasks allowed, but it really was a treat to have an actual midday meal for a change.
In the meantime, work had continued nicely. Mike and Chip and the others had staked out and measured the sites for excavation for the footings. Daniel and Remillio had dug them out and were busy mixing and pouring concrete. This was done in the vestibule of the school kitchen, with the guys mixing the concrete right on the walkway then hauling it over in buckets to the footing holes. The biggest challenge was in figuring out how high to make the final pour level as we somehow had misplaced our string level. Even if I had known, it would have been too late to buy one during the day's first trip to Richards as the concrete was already being poured while we were in transit. In the end, that too did not matter as we had no real way of knowing if the legs of the tank stands were "true". Ultimately, we would need to cut and trim those legs in position to their correct lengths. The problem with this approach was that, barring a miracle, we would need to place the stands on the footings, measure and cut the legs once to get the initial length, place them back on the footings, check to see if they rocked and then pick them up and make a few very fine cuts to make them sit level on the footings. Hopefully this would only take two sets of cuts as the stands are quite heavy and no picnic to move around. Hey, maybe just once we would pick up a stray miracle and we would get it right on the first try.
At any rate, I would find out later. In the meantime, I had a 2:30 boat to catch.
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