Progress Continues...

With sadness we said hasta luego to our hard working friends from St. Louis Park. They left last night  for some well deserved R&R at the Arenal Volcano Observatory Lodge in La Fortuna.  Meanwhile, the Perez family, Chato, John, Jeff and I stayed behind to wrap up our work.  

Today was a bit unusual with some unexpected excitement.   Our 16 year old, hardworking friend John from Melrose opted to go into the forest via horseback to check out a herd of cattle with the dad Perez.  Because we knew it would be about 2 hours to the herd, then two hours back and in the middle of the forest, John decided to take his epipen since he is highly allergic to bees.  Smart kid!  So, he showed it to Chato and Chato then showed it to Perez. During the demonstration, believe it or not, Chato gave himself a shot!  (Really?  Seriously???)  I could hardly believe it but I guess John thought it was pretty funny and was rolling on the ground laughing.  Chato felt pretty stupid.  Imagine that!  Unfortunately, John did not go into the forest without an epipen and Chato spent the rest of the morning calling clinics, pharmacies and doctors to locate another epipen.  Fortunately, we have been getting lots of great laughs out of the story as most of the folks know Chato pretty well and would all agree that the episode fits his character well.  The only bummer was that when Perez reached the herd, there was a cow who just had a new calf.  tI would have been a pretty cool ride in the forest, pretty cool experience just hanging out with Perez, and pretty cool to see the new baby calf being born.  Especially since the breed of this calf at birth is about the size of a 3 month old holestene.

I am happy to announce that we did get a couple hours of work out of John today while Chato was making the phone calls.  Once they were able to locate a new epipen, they left for the city and the rest of us continued to make great progress.  

We made up for the time lost yesterday.  It's finally looking like an oven.  Today we finished the dome and prepped the base for the chimney.  Tomorrow we will finish the chimney and a couple final fire bricks.  We will probably leave the last layer of cement that will go over the dome for our last day so the refractory mortar has more time to set before we add that much more weight to the top of the oven.  

So, until tomorrow,  blessings to all!  

Thanks again for your prayers and continuous support.

The C.R.O.P. clan