El Salvador, again again
August 29th, 2006 by: cheyenneOur flight back was uneventful with no delays, no lost luggage, no hassles in customs, no plane crashes, etc.; we emerged from the airport into ninety-degree heat (in the shade) and insane humidity. By the time we lugged all our books to the bus stop, we were already drenched in sweat. Welcome back to El Salvador. It’s bloody hot here.
Even with three bus changes and five extremely heavy parcels, it went pretty well. Nobody was in the bar waiting to give us a ride out to our boat so we hung around and had a beer waiting. Finally we gave up and called Santos on the radio since we could see his dinghy on a neighboring boat. The Time Machine looked totally fine. Oh, except for the major eyesore that are the amas with their sanded paint and flat grass-green primer blaring through. God it looks bad and I’m really not looking forward to facing that paint again. The bilges were dry though despite assurances that it had been raining cats and dogs lately and everything seems to be generally in good shape.
Just for kicks, I took a look at the barometer. It looks like this:
For those of you who have never paid any attention to barometers, the top scale that wraps around the device is the atmospheric pressure. Lower numbers mean lower pressure and higher numbers mean higher, it’s all pretty straightforward. The fancy italic words “Rain, Change, Fair†printed just below the scale is such bullshit that the first thing the instruction booklet that comes with the device says is to totally ignore them. The words are on every barometer I’ve seen; I guess it’s just some Ye Olde design nobody is willing to give up. More appropriately, the word, “Rain,†might be changed to “Hurricane, maybe;†“Change†might be better expressed as, “Damn near anything possible;†and “Fair†could be “Damn near anything possible, but most likely gnarly wind.â€
Back to the above photo. Note that the indicator has BOTTOMED OUT on the scale. Apparently it can’t even measure how low the pressure is. Here’s another picture of it.
The silver dial is a moveable indicator that we use to mark the pressure when it is changing. I’ve moved it to where it was before we left for the states a month ago, and even that is totally weirdly low. I seem to remember when we got the thing in San Diego and installed it and watched it as it measured pressure around Baja and Mexico, it used to hover in the 995-1005 range.
I’m guessing that it is broken. This can’t be right. There is a hurricane heading toward Baja right now but it is very far from us. There is no atypical weather around us at all.
Anyway, you might also note that the temperature when I took the photo (in the cabin, in the shade) was 92 degrees; the time was around 10am. The humidity was 60; it is now showing around 63%.
This part is most definitely not broken.
August 29th, 2006 at 6:03 pm
I just spent about half an hour in a google stupor learning about barometers and looking at pictures of antique barometers. Looks like they’ve had the ‘rain change fair’ text on them since at least 1840. Some of the old ones also say ‘stormy’ all the way to the left and ‘very dry’ all the way on the right. I also learned that “The barometer is lowest of all during a thaw, which follows a long frost.” So maybe it was really freezing cold in El Salvador while you were gone and now its thawing.