Thursday, August 12, 2010

Hello My Friends

Well summer on Andros is in full swing right now. Every day it is in the mid 90's and for Ginni and I it is a challenge. Remember the old saying "It's not the heat, its the humidity", well here we have both! This is particularly challenging when you have some physical labor to do.
Last week, for example, our groundskeeper rang our doorbell at 7:30AM to get the key to the garage. He wanted to mow the grass before the day got too hot (and before his other job started at the local lumber yard). Fortunately, 7:30 is about the time I'm up, the coffee is dripping and I am lighting my candle for Morning Prayer - so I was up.

He takes the key and happily heads off to the garage. A few minutes later the lawn mower is roaring around the yard and Ginni pokes her sleepy head out of the bedroom door "Is
that the lawn mower?" (Ginni is not a morning person). I nod and she shakes her head and goes back into the bedroom.

Ten minutes later (remember I started this describing the heat), the doorbell rings again. I open the door and Peter is standing there drenched in sweat, but in his hand he is holding our water meter, or what used to be our water meter until the lawn mower sliced it in half. On Andros the island is pretty much one big limestone rock. This means that everything usually underground back in Massachusetts is above ground here (like the water line from the street to your house).

Every house here has a white PVC pipe running from the street to the house, that's your water line. It is above ground and, at the very end, near the street, is a blue ball about the size of a tennis ball, with a tiny window on one side and the meter clicking away in that window. That's the water meter and our lawnmower pretty much destroyed it.

While Peter was indeed covered with sweat at 7:30 in the morning from the effort of mowing the grass, he was also pretty wet from the geiser now rising up into the air in a rather impressive arc and landing out into the street from what used to be our water line. So before Morning Prayer, before my toast and peanut butter, before the coffee has finished dripping, I'm working with Peter to try to shut the water off to all of the Church property - find a way to cap the geiser, then find someone from the water department to figure out where we go from here.

Fortunately for me, the main man at the water department also plays the organ at our church in Cargill Creek. Bottom line, Peter and I were able to figure out how to plug the broken pipe until help arrived. When it did, he was able to restore the connection to the water main without a meter (we need to wait for a new one to be shipped by boat from Nassau - ahh, island life). So for now, we have free water until the new meter arrives.

By the way - the geiser did help cool off my sweaty groundskeeper and I did get back to Morning Prayer (an interesting prayer time that day to be sure), as well as my coffee, toast and peanut butter - God is good.

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