This past Friday (the 24th) Mr. Gonzalez went out to check on his cows. He has one female (the “momma cow”) and three children. Well, it appears that on Thursday night someone cut through the barbed wire fence and stole one of the baby cows. Evelyn and her mom thought they heard something weird at around 10:30 PM, but there are always a lot of weird sounds, so they didn’t think much of it. Later on there was a lot of “mooing” coming from the field, but that’s not all that unusual either.

Needless to say, Ev’s dad was very upset. He really loves his animals and takes good care of them. He called the police and filed a report, but there’s not a whole lot of hope in ever catching the thieves. Cattle theft is pretty widespread down here (as in the states)–a good calf is worth a least a couple hundred dollars and full grown cows in the thousands (especially if good breeding stock).

So, we’ve been spending the last couple of days working around the farm. We had to clear out one of the garage stalls (previously used for horses) so that we can lock up the remaining cows at night. It was back breaking work because there were three pallets full of ceramic floor tiles that needed to get moved out of there–each box had to be moved by hand. Let me tell you, tiles are heavy.

Getting the cows into the stall at night hasn’t been too hard, since they usually follow the bucket of food (they graze during the day and get a big bucket of feed in the evening). Today we had a baby cow get spooked. She ran around the front yard a bit, but we managed to get her back in (once she saw her mom).

Helpful hint: Clapping at a cow means “go away”. If you want to get a cow to come up to you, make weird cow noises–or have a bucket of food in your hand. Boy, I’m starting to sound like a farmer!

Anyhow, the cows now get locked up at night. They are surrounded on both sides by the dogs (Momma on one side, The Boys on the other)–and those dogs hate strangers–they can spot someone walking down the road a block away. It’s pretty amazing–they always see/hear stuff way before we do.

Getting the cows in/out of the pen to/from the field is pretty easy, but, my god, do they crap a lot. Now every morning Mr. Gonzalez has to start his day by pressure washing cow crap out of the barn stall area. Certainly a fun way to start the day!

So, rule of thumb: If you can afford it, make sure to have a steel / cast iron / strong chain-link fence around your property if you have animals. There is chain link around most of this land, but there are a few parts that are only three strands of barbed wire, and that’s exactly where the thieves cut through.

I’ve uploaded a couple of new pics to The Finca (Farm) area. Mainly pics of the dogs. Also a shot of some of the “baby” chickens–all grown up now (three are named Moe, Larry, and Curly).

I’ve uploaded the newest pics from our trip to Lago Luchetti and Bosque Susua.

There are some interesting shots at the lake, including some nice perspectives of the dam there (it’s quite big, probably the second biggest we’ve seen so far). There are also pics of some Oxen (we think) that we saw on our ride down.

The forest is in the southwest, therefore it’s a dry forest. Some pics of stuff like a cactus, some weirder plants, etc. Lots of rocks. Highlights include a herd of goats in the road and the hauling of a gigantic who-knows-what.

Finally, I added a couple of pictures to the Panoramic Route area. Includes some shots of an old (85+ years) stone bridge.

As you can tell, we’ve been a bit quiet over the last couple of days. Well, it was for a good cause. As of this morning, Evelyn accepted a position at the Arecibo Observatory. She is going to be a Systems/Telescope Operator. Which means she’ll be doing stuff like monitoring the telescope, moving the thing around, and even working on the antenna platform (which is 500 feet in the air).

It been a long saga, and now that she has accepted, we can give you the full story. (We’ve been keeping very quiet about this because it’s been a long and hard process and didn’t want to get anyones hopes up [especially our own!].)

It all started back around Thanksgiving. We were sitting in a Quiznos eating dinner when we saw an ad for a position open at the Observatory. It seemed like interesting work, something that Evelyn would enjoy, so we checked out Cornell’s site (the facility is run by Cornell University) and saw that the position was still open–with a deadline of Dec 1st. So, we quickly updated Ev’s resume, wrote up cover letters, etc, and sent them off.

We waited to hear back during December, but didn’t hear anything. That wasn’t too surprising, since most people are off during Christmas. Then we started to get into January and still hadn’t heard, so we figured that we’d have to write it off. After all, it had been nearly a month an a half since we submitted everything. Then Ev got the call for a first interview.

Her first interview was in the middle of January, where she met some of the team. Of course, her wacky work experience (ex. monitoring missles being shot at a helicoptor being suspended by kevlar cables across a canyon, driving through White Sands at 110 MPH, etc) really impressed the team. It was certainly a concern of ours that she would be out of the running being “over qualified”.

So, we waited another week–and got a call. She was asked to come in for a second interview, this time to meet with the head of the NAIC. There was a lot of focus on how she could get along with others, difficult situations, etc. Well, working on live-fire situations and having generals screaming around you is pretty good experience, so she seems to have passed that test.

Another week goes by, and we get the next call. She was asked in for a third interview. This time she learned that there were two other people in the running–a man and another woman. In fact, she even met the other two people. Kinda weird, I think, but it did give her a chance to see the others’ skills. They both seemed like very nice and smart people, but appeared to be right out of school–and could not have had the kind of real-world high-pressure experiences that Evelyn has had.

The third interview was much longer–I think I was sitting in the parking lot for over 3 hours. (No use in me seeing the museum again–I had pretty much memorized the exhibits by the 2nd interview.) She spoke with some more people, including the head of the site.

As a final test, they took the group up to the platform. This is where I wished I was up at the museum (I could have seen it all)! Evelyn got to take the little tram/trolley across to the center platform–which is about 500 feet above the dish. She got to look around up there, while the interviewers checked to see if she was afraid of heights. Of course, Ev was her usually chatty self, asking all sort of questions. (She was annoyed that I had made her wear dress shoes–she wanted to look around more.)

After the third interview we were naturally eager to hear the outcome. A week turned into two and we finally called them to see what was up. The delay was due to a big site visit they were having, so they weren’t able to get together sooner. They said “next week”.

Later that same day, we got a call from HR with the job offer. Early the next week (this current week), we got the letter. We had a number of questions (benefits, deductions, hours, taxes, etc), so we stopped by yesterday to get more info. The HR department put together a really nice package of information which answered most all of our questions. We then talked with them a bit more and went home to mull over the numbers.

After running through the numbers, and going over all the info, Ev called this morning (Friday) and accepted. We sent off the acceptance e-mail and are stopping by later today with some of the filled-out paperwork.

So, that’s the Top Secret project that we’ve been working on over the last two or so months. It’s been quite stressful and, at times, discouraging. In the end, Ev put in a lot of effort and worked very hard to earn the job. She’s very excited to be learning some new stuff and to apply her real-time “failure is not an option” experience to the position. It should be a lot of fun and I know that she’ll really “knock their socks off”. She starts on March 1st.

I’ve added a new photo gallery called “Flowers”. Unfortunately, I don’t know much about plants, so they are not properly labeled. If you know what they are, let me know, and I’ll update the gallery. (P.S. More pics of lakes and dams are on the way…the internet has been slow recently).

Today was another road-trip day. We headed pretty much due south, toward the town of Yauco. We wanted to go there because there is a lake to the north and a forest to the west (near Sabana Grande). All of this is toward the south-west part of the island, west of Ponce.

We took route 128 down. It’s a very scenic route, though washed out in places (with various debris and rockfalls to keep things interesting). Since the road is small, and it goes through the Cordillera Central (the central range of mountains), it has many many twists and turns. This was Evelyn’s turn to get car sick, since I was driving. Luckily we had some Dramamine on board, which helped a bit.

Note to tourists (and locals): If you are gonna hit a twisty mountain road, make sure to pop a Dramamine beforehand. It will make things a lot easier. Even people with iron stomachs get sick on some of these roads. In fact, as we are documenting our routes, we are marking down the “car sick” sections.

Our first major stop was Lago Luchetti. It’s quite nice–about 1/2 to 1/3 the size of other lakes we’ve been to (Guajataca, Dos Bocas, Caonillas). Once again, it’s man-made, which means–another dam! I tell you, if you like dams, this is the place to be. Every lake of any size we’ve been to has been man-made via a cool dam of some sort. Most were constructed between the late 1940′s to the late 1950′s. There are some trails here, camping, boating (bring you own), and fishing. Plus, there are lots of picnic tables with BBQ areas. It’s quite nice. I’m sure it’s very busy on weekends.

From here we had lunch in Yauco at the Very Exotic Wendy’s. Sometimes you just need a triple cheeseburger and fries. Damn! I should have had a Frosty, too. Oh, well. Maybe next time.

After a late lunch (it had taken us over two hours to get from the house down to the lake–we ate at 2 PM), we headed to the west toward the Bosque Estatal de Susua. You take a long, long road into the forest area–it terminates at a campground and a huge picnic / outdoor event area. It was dead quite there today, but I’m sure it’s hopping at other times.

This forest, like many at this part of the island, was much different than most of the terrain you see in PR. It’s much much drier down here, almost like a desert! This is because the mountains in the central part of the island “stop” the rain. You end of with a lot of rain to the north and east, and very very little in the south west. As we were driving we even spotted cacti!

We didn’t stop to hike, but there are a lot of spots to stop along the road, so we did that. This area reminded me a lot of New Mexico. Very dry. Very rocky. Very different from the lush green that you see elsewhere on the island. It was also SUPER quiet. You could hear a pin drop out here. No cars. No planes. Nothing. It was very nice to get away from the usual honking and other human noise that you hear around the island.

From the forest we headed west, toward Sabana Grande. Stopped at a nursery there and picked up a couple of flowers for Ev’s mom. If you are into flowers and exotic plants, this is the place to be. So much stuff grows so easily down here. Even though it’s the dry season right now, there’s still much to see.

(Skip this next paragraph if you get sick easily. It’s not that gross, but I want to give fair warning.) 

After the nursery, headed up 2 toward Mayaguez and did some shopping stops. Nothing too exciting there, except for the kid who decided to puke all over the floor in K-Mart–right at the Express Lane (ha-ha) register. Ev got a bit sickened by that, but it was nothin’ to me. (From my years as a mechanic, et al, I’ve stuck my hands into some pretty disgusting places. Pull puke out of drains with my bare hands? Yea, done that. More than once. Ah, the life of A Man Of The World.) On the bright side, it looked like the kid didn’t have lunch. Maybe it was too much Coca Cola and Pop Rocks.

(And speaking of Coca Cola, we now carry our camera nearly every day, so I’ll take a few snaps of the next International truck for Mike [he used to work for International, a la Navistar, a la International Harvester]. Funny thing, the other day we passed a fleet of school buses, all made by International. They had the big red “roads” logo in their back window! I tell you, these people love that company. Too bad it was run into the ground by a bunch of f**k ups. It used to be a great company.)

Okay, so that was our day. There are a ton of pictures (including a lot of flowers for Erika) that I’ll be posting in a bit (it takes time to re-format them and do all the captions). We got ones of a cool stone bridge built in 1920, the lake, the forest, and even some vultures. Of course, there will also be pictures of the dam.

I’m happy to announce that “Dave & Tiff” team has won the Site Redesign Contest. They both provided some very helpful input and comments along the way. I’m much happier with the way the site looks now and feel more comfortable with WordPress now. We’ll be mailing their Special Award (no, it won’t be a leg-lamp in a big crate) shortly.

I’ve just posted some new photos of the Lago Dos Bocas area. For you dam lovers out there, I’ve got quite a few good shots. Also, don’t miss out on the pic of Gorilla Rock or the pics of the Dragon House.

Today we went “out east” to the Vega Baja area and checked out on a farm that’s for sale. It’s 10 acres and has a house. We were hoping for something decent, since people said “the owner is a millionaire”–however, I’ve come to find that anyone who makes over $50K down here is a “millionaire”.

Well, the house is a disaster (would probably need to get knocked down)…as I was walking in the downstairs area I could hear the concrete creaking, which is a really horrible sign. Plus, the farm hasn’t been kept up very well. Let’s not mention the squatters on the land! It did have some positive stuff, like a giant (25,000 gallon) watertank, and a place to raise rabbits. But, in the end, too much money (nearly $300K) for way too little. It was a good experience, though, as it helps us to compare different places and get a feel for the prices down here.

For example, the farm we visited in Anasco was slightly bigger (12 acres), had a small (but livable) house, a perfect section to build a new home, and the farm was maintained beautifully. Plus, it was $75K cheaper than the one we saw today. The key to buying a farm is the make sure that there is a decent house, a place to build a new house (if the existing one isn’t too hot), and that the land has been well maintained. The last part is almost the most important, because you’ll spend literally months cleaning up un-maintained land.

I really like the Anasco farm, but it’s too far from Ev’s potential work at the telescope. However, if she’s not able to get into the telescope, it would be a great location–near the bigger cities on the west cost of the island…15 minutes from Mayaguez. However, we can’t buy land without one of us working, so it’s a bit of a catch-22. We’ll see what happens.

On the way back we took the scenic route, since Ev’s Mom was with us. We finally took some pictures of Lago Dos Bocas and the dam there. I’ll post the pics shortly. It’s probably the biggest dam we’ve seen down here so far.

There is a cool site that combines the NASA night photos with Google Maps. Worth taking a look at. See how much PR stands out! (Site is a bit slow down here, it’s probably faster for those with broadband.)

Google Maps Nighttime!

(Found on the MakeZine Blog.)