December 2nd - Rain on the way

Nancy, Kirk and I went to the ferrateria in La Colonia this morning.  After admiring the machete display, (and only slightly injuring myself attempting to wield one) I picked up some medium and fine sandpaper to start sanding down the square edges on the steps before we paint them.  So where's the photos, you ask?  Well, here's the thing.  There's a serious hardware store vibe going on in there.  The guy running the show is a maestro, with a couple of assistants sourcing things, he deals with a gathering of at least four men at the counter (no line-ups here), laughing and everyone is having a good time.  While dealing with the counter traffic, he reaches over everyone and hands a walk-up guy a chain saw chain, nods and the guy leaves.  The counter flow continues, as he smiling slides through the crowd and discretely accepts some folding money, and slips it into his pocket from another walk-up who smiles and leaves, all without a break in the transactions at the counter.  It was a thing of beauty, and I just couldn't pull out my phone and geek it up by taking pictures...

There's a lot of stuff in that small tienda, I'll take some pictures when there's not a crowd.

Nancy picked up some groceries next door at the Baja Market, and back to the park we went.

There's rain in the forecast, thunderstorms tonight graduating into steady rain Saturday and maybe Sunday.  There's an issue with our sites being on a hill.  When there's enough rain to create overland flow, the water runs down the road and then through our sites.

Our uphill neighbour has had a gravel berm put in to deflect the flow, and shovelled a drain into the gravel (which you can just see in the photo above as the lighter streak parallel to the road).

So what happens is, the water runs down the road/drain, and then comes cross country against our site wall, around the end, and runs across our site, pretty much where our lovely new wooden steps reside.

Nancy talked with Antonio & Tatcho; Tatcho came by and scoped out the situation, and told us he would have Carlos fix it up.  Nancy asked if it would be done before the rain.  Oh yes, we were assured, but it may not rain until tomorrow.

There is a complicating factor in that in order to get our neighbour's 5th wheel onto his site, due to assorted trees, even Glen, the driver extraordinaire, who parks half of the 5th wheels in the park (a real pleasure to watch) has to rub the tires across the end of the site wall.  Any length or height extension to the wall will have to be temporary, or the neighbour's trailer won't get out in the spring.  The rain started lightly around two o'clock, by three, more heavily.  Carlos showed up, dug a small trench extending from the end of our wall, which he filled with a horizontal run of bricks.  Later he trailered in a small amount of gravel and banked up the bricks to run the flow around the front end of our site.  

Of course, it was raining and dark by then, so the photo is sub-par.  We will adjust the structure as the water arrives.  Better photo tomorrow.