Not Worth Writing About

Jungle Clearing

Breakfast, blog, cleared about 300 feet of jungle knocking down substantial trees with my machete, the first few more difficult as there was little room to swing in a lattice comprised of branches intertwined with vines that yield rather than cleave from the blows. In such a mass it is impossible to obtain the correct angle on a swing and there is little room to do so. Felling the first tree it strained the vines and branches making them much easier to cut.

My roomies thanked me not for the wake up call but I'm not doing this in the heat of the day. Feel free to don some boots and give it a try, it's work.

Adding to the difficulty is the problem of standing on a wet steep slope while trying to watch underfoot for the very deadly fer-de-lance viper and making sure one doesn't grab a tree with a palm or eyelash viper, though I've never seen one at sea level, I know they are here. One must also avoid the bullet ants, the sting of single one which will put a person in agony for 24 hours.

By 8:30 I had cleared maybe 300 square feet of growth which was collapsed on the ground, downhill in a mass 10 feet high. Let it sit for a month, and then cut the new growth while hacking off the branches. Lying on the ground they will rot in a couple of months, I hope. Trying to clear them out would be a massive amount of work and counterproductive as the red clay soil needs all the nutrition it can get.

The technician from my Internet provider showed up in a 12 foot skiff and after dicking around finally switched me over to another carrier, now my internet connection is usable my bandwidth varies from one to one and half megabits per second, not near what I had back in Texas, but hey, there I didn't get to overlook the sea from my deck.

A run into town, dropping off the girls. 50 kilos weighs a lot more than it used to. I used to throw these bags around,now carrying one bag of fertilizer a  hundred yards and throwing on the boat is an effort. What part of stop smoking did I fail to understand? Checked my email. Damn, 10 PhD's can't figure out the implications of my proposal? Do I have to dumb this down? I'm just a jungle boy.

My right hand went numb.  Damn, too much impact with the machete I guess, self diagnosed temporary problem by caused by nerve trauma.  It cleared up in a couple of  hours and then came back.  Fuck getting old.