Adventures in Variety

Unfortunately, my photos from my hike last weekend are inaccessible, due to a cracked solder joint on my camera card reader. So, until I find an appropriate soldering iron (if I can, it’s sort of a delicate electronics repair), we’ll have to be content with photos from my compact camera.

Here’s a glimpse of Mount Kadam, the nearest mountain, as seen from where I’m working on the trucks. It’s not exactly a representative depiction of the region, considering Karamoja is a large plain, but it’ll have to do for now. If you click on the image, you can view a larger version.

No, not the calculus kind. The kind that make trucks go. Or should. Unless they look like this.

See those missing teeth? That’s what we call a bad thing. So, the agenda for this week includes swapping in a replacement axle, since those teeth aren’t the only problem.

The theme of the last couple of weeks really is front axles, the other one being on a Land Cruiser pickup. It’s now rebuilt and installed, but something appears to be wrong with the transfer case, so I’ll be dropping that out for inspection on Monday. Hopefully we won’t see results like above.

And, yes, I’m loving this sort of work. It’s like getting to do my hobbies every day! It’s hard to believe I’m already past the half way point of my visit here. If only I could stay longer; a month seems so short.

Well, I accidentally discovered a solution to jet lag. No guarantees that I’d be able to reproduce it, but it worked! Here’s how:

1. Only sleep three hours during the night before the trip. This way, you start out sleep deprived.
2. Stay awake all night on the overnight flight over the Atlantic. Weird Al can help with this.
3. On the afternoon/evening flight take two Benadryl to deal with the perfume in the cabin and then forget that you took Benadryl and order wine with your dinner. It doesn’t have to be good wine, even the stuff that approximates vinegar will do the job here. Sleep like a rock for five of the eight hours even though it’s the most crowded flight so far, which is good, because you have negative legroom. An extra bonus: when the flight attendant asks if you want ice cream a few hours later, you’ll barely be coherent, but just enough to manage to say “yes”.
4. Get picked up from the airport and go straight to bed at the motel and sleep until you wake up.

Hey, it worked and I appear to have zero jet-lag effects! Of course, getting up at 0600 instead of 0430 helps… But don’t argue with success. I’ll gladly accept my blessings when they come along like this.