Saturday - D5P4 - The Miracle of the Cuts

I got back to the island at 5:30 and beat it up to el rancho pronto. The progress was coming fast now but the clock was running too. In my absence Daniel and Remilio had finished pouring the  footings and splash pads and the team had put the finishing touches on the tank stands. They were ready to be hauled into their respective places and cut to their final lengths. Picking up and moving those stands is no easy work and took as many hands as we could put on. I believe Marianna or Elizabeth may have caught it on video and if I find it I will try to post it here. (One small problem was that as the trip was winding down so were the batteries in the group camera. My solar set up can recharge it but they did not have the charging cable. Toward the end we were pretty much dependent on my camera). Anyways, here are a few shots of the big move.

After confirming the initial placement we eyeball determined what the best height would be, again, trying to find the sweet spot between decent filling  pressure and keeping the spigot high enough to accommodate a good size vessel beneath it. We figured a leg length of 29" would be good but we were unsure as to whether the footings were all at the same level. It really didn't matter as we were committed to making the initial cut then trimming any individual leg to  avoid unsteadiness or rocking.

Now, in the entire history of baseball, my chosen sport, there have been a small number of nearly perfect moments. Babe Ruth's called shot, Bobby Thompson's "shot heard 'round the world", Don Larsen's 5th game of the '56 World Series, Grover Cleveland Alexander striking out Tony Lazzeri in the 7th of the '26 World Series. In my modest, if imperfect, opinion what happened next qualifies to be in that league. We picked up the first of those heavy beasts, hauled it off the work floor of the pavilion, laid it down in the field (the legs were so heavy that we had Ambrosio cut lengths of wood to place between them so they wouldn't snap off when lying on it's side), marked the cut line and gave Ambrosio the go ahead. He fired up his chainsaw, and in what I henceforth will always refer to as "The Miracle of the Cuts", performed an unerring quadruple amputation. We righted the stand and jockeyed it into position onto the footings, and, I swear, no rocking. No wobble. Those four legs made perfect contact with those four slabs of cement. No adjustments. No re-positioning. Nothing else. The stand was done. One down one to go. We repeated the process and the second one required a single additional cut to get it level but overall, it really was pretty damn close to a miracle. Considering the monumental screw-ups I had been party to that day, not only did the tanks stands go in easily but a guy named Howard in a hardware store bought me a Coke. If that doesn't rank up there with one of those perfect baseball moments I don't know what does.

By the time we finished with the stands the sun was down and we were hungry. We knocked off for the day and broke for dinner. We  re-convened the rolling water filtering party after supper; in the heat we were going through about 4 liters per person per day, plus, it was suddenly becoming fashionable amongst the citizens of Isla Popa to drink filtered, chlorinated water. I started to muse about whether there was a market for Isla Popa Water and whether I had stumbled upon a new business venture. We were clearly trendsetters but we were also the ones doing the pump work. Oh well, that pretty much finished off Saturday; the next day was our last full day and was to be devoted to placing and plumbing the tanks (using all those lovely elbows), doing the first chlorination tests in the actual barrels and teaching Ambrosio how to use and maintain the system. It was destined to be a much longer day than any of us had imagined.