If I had to choose a single food item that Americans take for granted without even realizing it that would probably be ice. I know I’m always thinking about it at parties and such. But what do you do if you run out of ice? Why just run down to the corner store and get another bag or three. What do you do if you’re on an island that just got rocked by a massive hurricane? You drink warm water for a week and beer that you kept cold by sticking it in the AC duct. So you can imagine that given the opportunity we’d leap at getting an ice maker.
That’s what another guy and I spent a good portion of the afternoon doing. He had actually been at it quite a while before he recruited me to help. He had asked pretty much everyone he could on base. We started calling around appliance repair places to see if they had a broken one that they either were getting rid of or wanted to let go for cheap. Unfortunately most of them didn’t even pick up the phone and the ones that did didn’t have anything. The search is not over, but it’s getting less likely we’ll find something by the time we leave. Was the plan insane? Yes. But really we had nothing else to do, so it helped pass the time.
Other than that I started queuing up posts. Hopefully I’ll get the first set up before we go. As you noticed I’m doing two a day, one in the morning and one in the evening.
I’m finally getting around to watching the Singapore Grand Prix. I had thought that I was actually going to miss every race up to Abu Dhabi (and depending on how long this goes I may even miss Abu Dhabi…but I’ll worry about that later). There have been some pretty intense races thus far, but not one where the three leading cars are taken out in the first 30 ft. of the race. I probably won’t finish it tonight depending on how late I decide to stay up, but in the first 12 laps there are five cars out. It was raining up to the start so the track is slick. They do have wet weather tyres but you can imagine what it’s like driving a car like that at those speeds on a wet track. It’s also apparently the first time that Ferrari has lost both cars in a race. Ever.
What I had forgotten is that there’s a rule in F1 that along with a minimum race distance, no race can last longer than two hours. Given that Singapore is one of the longest tracks and that the cars are much slower given the wet track, I guess there’s a high probability that they’ll hit the time limit before they complete the race.
Crashes happen in racing, of course. But it has to suck for fans who see their driver get knocked out before the first turn. I actually feel really bad for Max Verstappen’s fans. There are always a ton of Dutch flags out from his supporters, but his season has been plagued by retirements that, in a lot of cases, aren’t even his fault! I know there were at least two races where his car just died, and a couple others where he got hit. It has to suck, especially for people who travel to the races, to have their driver knocked out at all.
My favorite driver right now is Daniel Riccardo. Not only is he a great driver, but win, lose or retire he just always seems so happy to be there. I’ll have to get some Red Bull or Australian apparel for Abu Dhabi.
I guess there’s a group coming in from Puerto Rico at some point. There were some people in here this morning breaking down the unused cots, and then in the afternoon they were putting them back up. Who knows what time they’ll get in, if they even get in tonight.
With St. Croix hit now, and Puerto Rico in a 100% blackout chances are we could be here for a while. I hope if that’s the case they rotate us home for a bit. I don’t mind coming back, but I’d also like to actually be home at some point this year.
Infinitely Expanding 