10/09: A Rainy Night in Chapala
A thunderstorm is roaring up again tonight....lots of lightening flashes no rain yet though. I heard that two of the big Bayan trees along the Chapala-Jocotepec carraterra in La Floresta fell down today because the ground is so saturated...oh there's the rain coming down now. Satellite reception just faded out because the rain is so intense. It's the rainy season all right. They say that Lake Chapala is sixty percent full. The highest level since 1992. The rain has caused delays in my reconstruction work on the "Villa" . The one armed driver who travels from Ajijic to Tapalpa, a pueblo in the mountains about two hours drive from here has been unable to get the rest of the piedras laja -black and brown flag stone that I'm laying around the pool. My Maestro Guadalupe who's nick name is "bone" in Spanish laughs about the "stone" guy because his big flat bed truck is a stick shift and his good arm is his left...how the hell does he drive and shift?? Another Mexican mystery trip.
I'm over one year into this remodling project that has been draining the bank account and stressing out the family. Oh well , the final product is going to be my master piece of "just in time" architecture...something I often call "custom by crash". The villa is thirty years old and I've essentially rebuilt it...all new windows, doors, floors, pool, kitchen, bedrooms, bathrooms...all the Mexicanos laugh and say that I could have built a new one for the money spent remodeling. They are right of course but I'm a stubborn gringo of Swedish ancestry and way past the point of no return. Funny thing about it all is that it all really started back on 9/11 2001. The telecommunications company that I founded in the late 90's dotcom boom had just been sold to Mitsubishi Corp. and our business with ISP's in Pakistan and India was immediately impacted ...most all of our customers(large ISP's) taking our satellite feeds from Hawaii stopped paying after the word flashed around the world that the US had been hit by a terrorist attack. Fast forward to 2002 and the company was bankrupted by ISP's not paying their bills and a little telco called WorldCom...Mitsubishi ran for cover and let the company go into Chapter 7. Out of a job, I immediately set to work remodeling my Hawaii house located on a hill above "the worlds best beach" , finished it in two years and sold out at the top of the market in 2005. In 2006 I bought the Mexico villa and moved the wife, kids and dog down here to Ajijic, Mexico in beautiful Jalisco state. The move to Mexico is a story in itself and now after a year and four months, and the night before the sixth anniversay of 9/11 I'm starting to write about it all.
I'm over one year into this remodling project that has been draining the bank account and stressing out the family. Oh well , the final product is going to be my master piece of "just in time" architecture...something I often call "custom by crash". The villa is thirty years old and I've essentially rebuilt it...all new windows, doors, floors, pool, kitchen, bedrooms, bathrooms...all the Mexicanos laugh and say that I could have built a new one for the money spent remodeling. They are right of course but I'm a stubborn gringo of Swedish ancestry and way past the point of no return. Funny thing about it all is that it all really started back on 9/11 2001. The telecommunications company that I founded in the late 90's dotcom boom had just been sold to Mitsubishi Corp. and our business with ISP's in Pakistan and India was immediately impacted ...most all of our customers(large ISP's) taking our satellite feeds from Hawaii stopped paying after the word flashed around the world that the US had been hit by a terrorist attack. Fast forward to 2002 and the company was bankrupted by ISP's not paying their bills and a little telco called WorldCom...Mitsubishi ran for cover and let the company go into Chapter 7. Out of a job, I immediately set to work remodeling my Hawaii house located on a hill above "the worlds best beach" , finished it in two years and sold out at the top of the market in 2005. In 2006 I bought the Mexico villa and moved the wife, kids and dog down here to Ajijic, Mexico in beautiful Jalisco state. The move to Mexico is a story in itself and now after a year and four months, and the night before the sixth anniversay of 9/11 I'm starting to write about it all.
I am a wild and crazy guy who spends money on construction like it's "agua mineral con gaz." Find out about my adventures in Lake Chapala here!!!!!
