Saturday, January 12, 2013

Mike Relearns His Multiplication Tables


Today Mike and I woke up early (6am) to beat Dr. Steve out to the work area, something that has not been accomplished on the past few trips.  We watched the sun rise as we drilled holes in the aluminium for the replacement pieces of the solar racks.  After breakfast, the team headed to Bafoussam in order to check e-mail and post all of the blogs we had written while here.  The first internet cafe we tried was closed, the second only had one open computer in a cramped corner.  The third internet cafe that we found had internet that was so slow after 15 minutes we gave up. Luckily, Dr. Steve knew of a nicer hotel (Talotel) that we could connect to their wifi using his laptop.  A couple hours later, the blogs were succesfully posted, e-mails had been sent to our parents, and a copy of the book had been downloaded.

When we got back to Bamendjou, Mike and I stayed at the mayor's to finish drilling the holes in our solar rack while Ramsey and Dr. Steve went out to the system to take another look at the float switches and see what had been accomplished.  While drilling, Mike and I learned that the previous holes on the two racks were 5/16" while the bolts we had now were 3/8".  However, upon counting the number of bolts that had been bought before the trip, we learned that we were quite a few short.  Mike realized that he somehow managed to multply 6x8 and get 24 rather than 48.  This wasn't an issue though as we decided to use the old nuts and bolts that will fit in the holes on the racks in those holes, and the new, slightly larger bolts for the connectors.  The new issue is that we were 7 nuts and bolts short.  A quick trip into Ndang allowed us to pick up the remaining pieces, and Mike and I were able to finish putting together the supports.

When we finished this, we needed to spray paint a pipe wrench gold for the ceremony on Monday.  Unfortunately, the nozzle of the spray paint came off in the tool bag while in transportation to Cameroon.  Mike managed to get the nozzle back on, but in the process of painting, gold paint covered his hand, giving him the "Midas touch."

Ramsey has packed the team a few surprises, and has been down in the kitchen with Martine cooking, and we are excited to find out what this surprise will hold.

-Erica

No comments: