21 March 2010 (Joyeux Anniversaire Hina!) La Paz, Baja California, Mexico 24.1635N 110.3254W
I can’t believe my last entry was March 7 and we’re way into the double digit side of March. Town life definitely doesn’t leave much room for expressing my own voice. If our crossing to the Marqueses is on the fast side, we could end up spending more time here provisioning for it, than actually doing it. Frank and I have been abandoning the kids with their homework in the morning, and heading into town for a variety of chores and errands, which seem to reproduce at an astounding rate. Afternoons are then spent with projects, puttering and playing. The kids are borrowing the keys to the dinghy and developing their own social circle (which, if we can get out of town, will eventually be a circle that encompasses the pacific ocean). We’ve also met some neat people, and cruisers tend to be on very relaxed schedules, in fact “schedule” at a scale most of you would recognize (starting with daily events) does not really exist in our new world. Schedule in this life is tied to seasons, weather and the parts delivery guys. It makes for a very non-committal outlook.
Our excuse for not leaving as planned mid-week last week, is a new compressor for our mechanical refrigeration. Our old compressor felt new (we remember Gary installing it), but it was based on the old freon, and it was acting up. Mexico is one of the few places you can still buy the old freon (ironically, Frank says it was a Mexican researcher Mario Juan Molina who discovered that the old freon was partly responsible for the hole in the ozone, he even received a Noble Chemistry prize for the discovery). But in our travels ahead it will not be available. And we’ve taken such an extreme path to reducing our own family’s carbon footprint; going green in this area seems both the practical and responsible thing to do. What’s an extra week in La Paz, next to that justification?! While the compressor did not arrive Friday or yesterday as expected, in the ever resourceful spirit that Mexico’s citizens can be proud of, our vendor took two compressors off his shelf and had a local mechanic merge them to make our needed compressor with a two belt clutch instead of the one belt clutch he had in stock. Half an hour after his delivery showed up without our order, we walked out happy customers. The mañana method in Mexico does build incredibly innovative souls, as well as the virtue of patience (patience – use it or lose it). Innovation and patience being high commodities of the cruising life, I am truly appreciating those aspects of this culture. Innovation is a word that was unfortunately overused in my recent past life as an IT manager. The “make changes in something established” aspect of innovation can too easily become “reinventing the wheel.” And while we humans derive tremendous satisfaction from inventing – innovating before going down the invention path can be the quicker road to workable solutions. It does mean having a thorough understanding of what has already been done first (e.g. studying – ugh). In our own culture of instant gratification, maybe we need to be careful of invention addiction, and develop true skills of innovation. Watch me try to teach that concept to our own budding inventor Kennan, who, though not yet a teen, thinks he knows it all without studying.
Think we’ll make it out of here by mid-week next week? Our new goal is to leave before our anniversary (a.k.a Frank’s birthday). That’s a worthy goal, almost seasonal.
xoxomo