I completely removed the 2 foundation fans in the grage and then turned the fans on under the house. The water has gone down but the soil is very wet. Jason from Crawl Tech came as expected at 3:30 today. He and his company are very impressive. He looked under the house and also under the greenhouse crawl space. The greenhouse crawl has standing water in it. He also said that he can not encapsulate the crawl space with the current furnace since it gets it's combustion air from the crawl space. We need a furnace that uses outside air or we need to supply make up combustion air. He called the injection of outside air "fan in a can". It looks like it will be $3500 to waterproof the crawlspace and over $7,000 to encapsulate. He is supposed to send a written quote tomorrow and can start at the end of May. In the meantime I found a device called an In-Forcer which is a blower fan and a box that takes in outside air through a PVC Pipe and shoots it out a 6 inch duct into the crawl space. I'm going to use conditioned air as make up air. Today I put together another Huzzah and rewired the crawl space controller to correctly use 5 volts into the regulator instead of the miswire on the one that burned up. Crawl space humidity monitoring is now back in business! Dinner tonight was spaghetti with cheese sprinkled on and fresh tomato mixed with the bottled sauce.

We got 3.41 inches of rain today and it's not done yet! I went down into the crawl space to see how we were doing and there is running water along the front wall. This is a setback to my encapsulation efforts and must be dealt with before any encapsulation. I reversed one of the foundation fans in the garage so that it blows in but after looking at the 16 inch wall fan at 1200 CFM and the little vent fans at 330CFM I probably should just leave the vents open and draw air straight through. I forgot to practice clarinet today. I'll do it twice tomorrow. Late at night I smelt something burning and traced it to the Huzzah chip in the control closet. It was too hot to touch! It looks like I wired the 5 Volts to the output of the 3 volt regulator which is a disaster for the chip. I'll fix it tomorrow.

Dinner tonight was Pita pockets stuffed with egg salad.

It rained all day today. I spent a lot of time with node-red getting the switch widget to work. I wanted the switch to reflect the state of the fan, this if the fan was turned on by the timer i needed the switch to reflect that. My problem was because I was mixing string and number values for the 0 and 1s. I spent most of the day on this. Libbie made her wonderful pizza again, this time from scratch. After dinner I practiced my Clarinet for a while, trying to hold a C for a long time then same thing for the B which is lower on the scale.

First thing this morning I hooked up a bench supply to the gateway i built yesterday and set it up running on the table in my office. I didn't have time to test it since I went to my Clarinet lesson at 9. In the lesson we covered holding a note for a while without wavering and starting the note with a fast attack. He also suggested trying the scales and fingering in the back of the book. He also detected me missing the metronome count when I cross the break when taking a breath. I need to do some breathing exercises to fill my chest with air. Regarding starting a note, he detected me not starting a note abruptly but instead ramped up to full volume or full steady tone.
After an excellent lesson I drove over to Home Depot at Cary Crossroads and found the Honda tiller was not there even though the website said they had 10 in stock. I finally found a helpful employee who told me the tiller was recalled and on a pallet to go back because of the recall. He suggested a Ryobi string trimmer with a tiller attachment. A few interesting things about the Ryobi. It is a 4 cycle engine head but there also is a head available that is battery powered. This gives the best of both worlds.
I went to Northern Tool and found the honda tiller but it took almost an hour to get it because i had to wait for a fork lift operator who also had to move a truck to get to the tiller. I eventually got home at 11 with the new tiller. Fortunately there was no assembly, just fold the handle straight and put oil in the engine. The engine surprisingly holds only 2.7 ounces of oil which Honda supplied in the box. I like the tiller very much. It's easy on my back. I tilled the spot for the zinnias and then tilled in some potting soil across the top few inches which we also sprinkled with fast acting lime.
Libbie then planted the Zinnia seeds. We now need to addd the Marigolds. After lunch we listened to Eugene onegin wich we skipped todayy at the HD performance because we wanted to get stuff done today. I was so tired I fell asleep during part of the opera. It was a good afternoon. We had the other half of the baby backs from our anniversary along with salad, asparagus and Trader Joes Syrah. After we finished our last glass of wine on the back porch we went over to Brusters and had ice cream cones. It's expensive but they have good ice cream, freshly home made on fresh baked waffle cones.

Libbie worked on the garden and said the spot where she wants to put zinnias is like concrete. I decided this was a good time to get one of those small tillers I was thinking of getting last year. I tried to buy a small roto tiller at Home Depot with a 10% off coupon but the Honda they show as being in stock was not there. I picked up a 1x6 board to mount the projector and lens for my telecine machine. I also picked up a 1x3 for the shelf brackets inside the garage closet where I'm adding more shelves. Today I managed to wire up the moteino to the huzzah to grab Davis ISIS packets and put them on WiFi as MQTT packets. i finished the project but did not have any more 5 volt supplies to test the combination. We went to dance at 8 and had a great time. Ken and Anita were even there after a many month absence. Anita had a stroke which kept her away. After the party we all went out to Spirits in cary. Libbie and I shared a plate of loaded Nachos which came with chili, sour cream, guac, tomatoes, cheese and other goodies. We each had a Red Oak Amber to go with the Nachos.

This morning I worked on cleaning up the Davis ISS moteino code, paring it down so that it only sends Temp, humidity and dewpoint out the serial port. This was a success. I also blocked serial port transmissions until good packets were received for bot the temp and humidity. Next step is to build a little perf board with the Huzzah, moteino and power terminals. I'll have to program the Huzzah without the moteino so I don;t blow it up with 5 volts on the Rx/Tx lines. Once the FTDI is disconnected the ESP Huzzah to the Moteino communication will be 3 volt only so there is no danger. I'm going to use the Huzzah onboard regulator to power the moteino which I hope won't be a strain. It should consume less that 100 ma worst case and typically 40 to 50 ma.
After lunch I filled the gas tank at Costco at 2.19 since we didn't have any Kroger points built up to get cheaper gas. You need 100 points for each 10 cents per gallon discount. i went to Walmart and picked up the Progresso soup which was $1 per can cheaper than Kroger although selection was limited. nancy came over this morning. I fooled with her Honda CRV. She said the navigation system was yelling at her. The icon doesn't seem to be there. She said it acted strange since her oil change. We left at 5:50 for Esquires and got caught up in a traffic jam on the beltline starting at crossroads. We decided to get off at Jones Franklin and eek our way along mostly parallel to the beltline, going to Hillsborough and then getting on Blue Ridge eventually getting to the beltline at Lake Boone. I'm not sure if this saved us anything in time but we kept moving. Our normal table at Esquires was full, Bill and joan were at the table so we sat with the 2 pilots , Bob and his wife as well as Jocylyn and Greg. We stayed until after the break, leaving at 9:30. I was really tired and hardly made it around the dance floor for our last dance.

I woke up and looked at the crawl space humidity and was surprised it went up overnight with the fan running all night long. i then found that the outside humidity had gone up to 83% due to patchy showers in the area. I turned the fan off and went under the house to measure the crawl space vents then went to home Depot and bought some foam board. They have some very nice 1 inch sheets measuring 24x24 for $6 each. I bought two for the two foundation vents, cut them up but did not install them. i worked quite a bit on the MQTT Huzzah gateway that will bridge a Davis ISS Moteino to WiFi and transmit the data using MQTT. We had a great Tango lesson with Robert learning some flick and runs. After having a salad with salad shrimp for dinner we went back to the studio and learned a Foxtrot pattern. In attendance where Ken High, Jennifer, Laurie, and Dawn. We were mismatched boys to girls but learned a fancy pattern I think we can use. I called a crawl space encapsulation company. Deborah on the phone said it would be $4400 minimum to encapsulate. Jason will be coming over next Tuesday afternoon to give me a detailed quote.

After the grocery run to pick up our weekly essentials I mounted the Huzzah in a box with power supply and hooked it all up to the probe wires coming from under the house. What a shock, the crawl humidity is over 90%. We need to seriously do something about this. I created some gauges in node-red that i could read easily of the crawl temp, humidity and dewpoint. I used some manual MQTT commands to activate the fan and found i can lower the humidity to about 80. I let it run all night long after we went to bed. Eugene Onegin was live from the Met this evening. We caught it late but still enjoyed the remainder of it. I fell asleep upstairs while it was still going on. Dinner tonight was spaghetti with cheese using fresh basil and leftover grocery store tomatoes. It came out quite good. The 8mm lens came. i screwed it into the M12 mount on the Arducam Pi camera and had success in rendering an image that was only 6 mm wide and spanned the entire horizontal width of the screen. This used the 8mm lens plus the Surplus Shed lens. The issue now is the camera has to be verv close to the film gate and there is no apparent room. Possibly i can remove the old projector lens housing but i need spring pressure against the film guide which uses the housing to support the spring loaded fingers to apply pressure on the gate/guide. Ideal would be a lens that could be located further away. People seem to use old enlarger lenses. I have an M12 to EOS adapter coming so I will be able to see how the 100mm macro works with the bellows if needed as optics for the Pi camera.

I finished the MQTT code for the humidity-temp-dewpoint sensor and mounted it under the house in the crawl space. I didn't hook it up to the Huzzah inside yet. I played a little with the lens on the Pi camera. I certainly need better optics to resolve a little 8mm frame. I spent the rest of the day reading a many many chapter novel on Literotica which I became absorbed by. It's quite good. Dinner tonight was egg salad in Pita pockets which was quite good. Libbie's Irises are coming along quite good. I mowed the backyard around the Irises as well as the rest of the backyard grass today for the first time this season.

Did some AVSA website editing of the events editor now that Jeri is taking it over. To have multiple editors of a node, edit the node and select the tab named "Grant" then search for the additional ID you would like to have as editor then grant edit and view permission when found.
In the afternoon I hooked up a DHT sensor which I had on a length of CAT-5 and verified functionality using the Dewpoint test program labeled DHTtester. It expects a pullup resistor on the DHT data pin. I have data hooked to Huzzah GPIO 13. This probe will be the under the house probe.
I played with the telecine some more. I decided that I needed a better lens so i ordered an 8 mm lens with M12 mount on ebay for under $9. I also ordered an adapter to go from M12 to Canon EOS. This will allow me to attach the Canon 100mm Macro lens i bought on eBay last year. I also have the extender bellows for Canon along with extension tubes that could be interesting.
Libbie made her excellent pizza tonight with fresh tomatoes and fresh basil. She had a problem getting the pizza out or in, the crust folded under and some of the cheese and tomato sauce ran onto the stone making a mess. The pizza still was great. After dinner we watched a BeeGee tribute which was quite good. Various singers and musicians performed BeeGee songs rearranged for their voice. The issue with performing a BeeGee song is the falsetto sound that was unique to them so when others try to perform the music they need a rearrangement of the melody.

The lenses from Surplus Shed arrived today. I got 2 lenses, a 27mm and a 30 mm. I got a Pi running with a new image and hooked up the camera that came yesterday and then played with the lenses. I was not successful in rendering a closeup image. I had to leave for Shriners before I could continue. We left for Shriners around 6 and had no problems with traffic, mainly because it was Saturday. The band was the troubadours, a band that played mostly Swing music which was disappointing. The food was a seafood buffet which was pretty good. I had fried fish, clams, shrimp and shrimp and grits with a hushpuppy. Veggies were red potatoes and corn. We stayed until a few songs after the break. It was a fun night. The only people from our studio were Anne and Paul. Libbie thought the Rumleys and Lana and Ken High were coming but they didn't come. We heard earlier from Nancy Leaver that the band was mostly swing music.

I finished the taxes this morning and wrote a check for the State. The Federal taxes were set up to auto deduct when I eFiled. They wanted $25 to eFile the state but I used a stamp and mailed the state tax returns with the check. We owed $900 to the State and $1500 to the Feds. I sent more time today watching DIY telecine machines. The Pi cameras came today. I accidentally ordered one from Arducam without an M12 mount so I ordered a second with the mount that comes with a 3,7mm lens. Dinner tonight was a salad with eggs. We went to dance tonight which was the first time in a long time. Attendance was light but we had fun. Afterward we went out to Abbey Road grill in Cary. We sat outside and had a beer. Libbie and I split a Quesadilla. The Cains as well as Ken and Lana joined us. We got home around 11:30 PM.

Our garbage can was super heavy today. We filled it with the discarded invoices from Bluebird and pushed it out to the street for pickup tomorrow morning. I installed three more LED landscape lights in the front yard that I picked up in Lowes. Earlier today Libbie and I went to AgriSupply and bought a new fence charger. This one was a 15 mile one that pulses like the one under the dogwood for the azaleas. Dinner tonight was pork chops and sweet potato with some French Bordeaux that we picked up in Trader Joes yesterday after our dance lesson.

I practiced my clarinet today for the first time since we got back from Central America. Finished the K-1 partnerships. Now I only need to edit the stock sales and I can send this stuff in. My goal is Friday. I ordered a lens from Surplus shed today for the telecine although my next project needs to be the crawl space. We went to dance today and did Tango flicks. We didn't do too bad recalling what we learned so far in Tango. Dinner was a pocket pita stuffed with tomato and egg salad. We had gone to Trader Joes and picked up Pita Pockets, wine and almonds. Libbie has been going through invoices from the attic in prep for Apex shred day on April 22. We brought down three huge tubs of invoices. There's still more up there.

I spent almost the entire day researching telecine machines. I ordered a Raspberry Pi camera with an M12 lens mount and read about the optics required.
Did the grocery thing since it was Tuesday. Dinner was a salad with egg and cucumber.

I made a lot of headway on the taxes today using TurboTax. I also downloaded the state form. We're going to owe around $3,000. I also contacted Uncruise about our voucher. They updated our booking to include the frequent traveler third time discount and the $500 each coupon but didn't include our $1500 deposit we made April 7. I'm sure the system will catch up. Dinner tonight was spaghetti with cheese.

After a pretty smooth flight from Miami into Raleigh we got our suitcases nearly the first. They were marked priority. I guess it was something to do with business class which I really liked. We also were the first one off the Park and Relax shuttle. It was cold at 45 degrees. There was a college girl across from us coming from Houston in little short shorts. She was concerned about a broken nail she had. We got home around 1:30 AM and brought the suitcases inside then went to bed. Woke later in the morning around 7 and did the morning thing. Opened the mail, paid some online bills, etc. Libbie did the wash from our trip which was many loads since we went through a lot of changes of clothes. I worked on classifying and backing up pictures. Dinner was Libbie's wonderful pizza which was so good after not having it a while. Everything in the hosue seemed to be OK. The big item was all the leaves were on the trees and many things were in bloom including the azaleas.

Took a shower on the boat at 6 AM then packed up the remaining dirty clothes before going to early morning coffee. Sat with Karen and talked about lodging on the Ossa peninsula. Had the breakfast at 7:30 while they moved the boat to the dock. I had bacon, eggs, fruit and a cinnamon roll with coffee. We sat with Jane and Dan and discussed the week. They are pretty negative people and of course their expectations are much higher than ours for a birding expedition. We got our passports back along with a thumb drive of all the pictures. Boarded a very comfortable bus and headed on our way to San Jose. We had to wait 15 minutes down the road because 2 people were on the wrong bus. this was the couple that had created many other problems during the week. Rey was our guide on the bus accompanying us back to San Jose to the intercontinental Hotel. The hotel is beautiful, we retrieved our suitcases for the airport transfer which we were doing with another couple, Muffy and Mark from Palm Garden Florida. They were going through Panama City while we were going through Miami. We had easy sailing through the San jose airport which seemed very crowded and confusing but American Airlines help us tremendously and we even got the equivalent of TSA Pre through Costa Rica security. We had business class which included a beef lunch which wasn't very good. it was a piece of chuck steak that was tough but the free wine was OK. We had a glass of white then a glass of Cabernet on a mostly smooth flight across the Caribbean. We checked into the Admirals Club in Miami. This was pretty good. They had free drinks, peanuts and cheese and chili. We each had a glass of Champagne. Libbie had the cheese which was a very good Swiss while I had the black bean Chili.

Early morning wakeup then 6:30 breakfast which was a half bagel
wit egg and cheese as well as a fruit plate. We saw a beautiful
sunrise before boarding the skiff at 7 AM for our bird walk with
Karen. It was noticeably cooler and dryer when we headed out
this morning. We took two skiffs for a wet landing at Curu
National Wildlife refuge Park camp. The walk down the gravel road was
rewarding. When we first came ashore a pair of scarlett MacCaws
greeted us then we started seeing many varieties of colorful and
beautiful birds including a woodpecker that resembled the
pileated. There were many many varieties that we spotted. I
thoroughly enjoyed the walk with Karen and really appreciated
walking with Karen. She is an open book and shares her
knowledge freely. We ended up at what they called a lagoon but
was a large pond with an island. Saw a lot of waterbird birds
in the pond including an egret and a beautiful family of brown
birids with green necks with their babies. Came across white
face onkeys along the river on our way back as well as a few
hummingbirds. Back at the camp we encountered white face
monkeys again, this time everywhere. At the lodge we bought
some tee shirts which were made in Costa Rica and also Libbie
bought a grandchild toy, a pair of monkeys. Lunch was a
delicious black bean chili with rice and green onion rings. I
had a blonde ale beer by ???? which was quite good. I was
scheduled to take a skiff tour this afternoon with Archie but
cancelled. Tim, the Hotel Manager, sold us a coupon for our
next cruise and also collected our tip money and the $170 we
owed for the two Uncruise shirts we bought. We have run out of
clothes. In the afternoon i downloaded the Camera and got caught up
on some of my writings of this week.

In the evening we had dinner which is the Captains dinner which
was a tenderloin in wine sauce with potatoes and veggies. We
ordered a bottle of Macelus Cabernet with dinner. Desert was a
delicious chocolate torte. After dinner we adjourned to the
lounge to watch the uncruise creted slide show for the week. It
was pretty good. We're going to get the pictures on a thumb
drive from Uncruise tomorrow morning.

We went to a sandy beach for a wet landing in pretty rough surf
and walked the Cathedral trail in Manuel Antonio National Park.
We walked the cathedral trail with Dani which was fun. Although
there were many steps, the overlooks out to the ocean were
breathless. We saw quite a few monkeys down on the beach as
well as many nice bikinis. The crowd was surprisingly crowded.
We walked past the rest room area and found a sloth that louis
guided us to. We would not have found it without him. The Sloth
had a baby with it and just hung out in the tree canopy. The
surf was incredibly rougher on the way back. We hung out in the
lounge and drank beer. I finished my bike about making music.
It was a relaxing day. Dinner was Prawn Shrimp with Chipotle
sauce. We enjoyed our company with George and Susan from
Richmond and a couple from Arkansas. After dinner we went to the
lounge and watched Rey give a presentation about monkeys which
was quite good since Rey is a dynamic kind of guy.

Up at 5:50 AM and breakfast at 6:15 AM for an early morning bird
walk. We boarded the skiffs early and landed at a Biological
Research camp. Our guide was Karen on a small bird walking tour.
We climbed up the hill and once in a garden type area of the
camp Libbie spotted a Blue Macaw but we couldn't get the
spotting scope on him. Walking into the woods we came across
some smaller birds and then a rare mammal that looked like a pig
that was called a Tapir. When we got further back into the
woods we came to a waterfall. Above us were spider monkeys that
were remarkably agile in how they moved from tree to tree. At
one point they were throwing branches down at us from above. On
the way out we saw a baby spider monkey who was cute. it sat
in the tree and played hide and seek with us. We also saw a
Toucan with a yellow bill. He was beautiful. In the afternoon
I canceled my beach time and instead sat upstairs in the sun
area and drank 2 martinis, two distinctly different drinks. One
by jesus hardly had any Vermouth while the one by Danielle ahd
the normal amount of Vermouth and tasted much better to me.
Dinner tonight was surf and turf. I had a ribeye steak along
with a nice fish I couldn't remember the name of. After dinner
Karen gave a talk about the Ossa Bird Center that she is a
director of.

We had a regular breakfast today consisting of bacon, potato and
an egg sunny side up along with coffee and juice. In the morning
we had to stay at port docked in the bay while customs boarded
and did our paperwork. When they were done we moved the boat to Golfo
Dulce in Costa Rica. After a lunch of black bean and avocado on
a Tostada we boarded the skiffs and went over to Golfo Dulce
where there was a house with landscaped gardens and fruit trees
as well as walking paths in the woods. We did a nature walk
with Archie then did a bird walk with Karen. The owners of this
property allow Uncruise to use it for nature stuff and also sell
native crafts in their tiki bar. Libbie bought a Costa Rican
Rainforest mask for $90 but we had to borrow the money from
somebody on the ship. Later that evening during dinner on the
ship we found the couple and paid them back. Dinner tonight was
a Lligosto fish with veggies and cheesecake for dessert. After
dinner we went to the lounge and we listened to Erica tell us baout her home country,
the country of Costa Rica. I'm running out of clothes and ended up buying
an Uncruise shirt for $85.

We had to have breakfast at 6:15 so we could leave at 6:45 for
our bird Watching hike. It's a beautiful day in the tropics. our
group went out with Archie, a guide who seemed to know quite a
bit of the birds. it was hot and incredibly humid as we hiked
up a fairly steep hill. I was breathing pretty hard. We saw a
number of tropical birds but I was having trouble since we had
to look straight up and it was difficult to do that all the time
so it limited my bird viewing. I need to lose a significant
amount of weight but it's not going to happen on this trip since
they feed us so well. Our guide Archie had some trouble with
his diabetes on the walk. He radioed for help and another
guide, Ray showed up to take us back and also brought along
Louie, our ship doctor to tend to Archie. Louie ended up
running back to camp then came running back with a can of coke
for Archie. The beach was wonderful and was a typical tropical
beach. We were in the shade of a large Mango tree on a white
sandy beach. Several Palm trees with coconuts contributed to an
idyllic tropical scene. After the hike I sat under the Mango
tree and enjoyed the beautiful beach as well as the tropical
breeze in the shade. It was literally heaven. After a while
we had to leave the beach and take the skiff back to the boat.
We had a nice lunch of a falfala tostada which was a mixture of
beans into something like a bean burger. This was my thing. My
shirt was soaked so I washed it in the sink and hung it in the
shower to dry. I put a green polo shirt on for our afternoon.
We went to another little tropical island with a white sandy
beach. This too had some kind of fruit trees for shade and an
assortment of palm trees as well as volcanic rock outcroppings.
While Libbie went to snorkling 101 class i hung out on the beach
under the shade of one of the fruit trees. I stood in the water
a little bit as well as walked around and enjoyed the sunshine
before we got on one of the skiffs going back to the Safari
Voyager. My green shirt was now totally soaked as well as my
shorts so I hung them up as well and changed shirs once again. I
used my camera to take some sunset pictures but the point and
shoot does not do the sunset justice. In a funny moment one of
the young ladies on our boat went to the bow of the boat in a
short mini skirt. Of course the wind blew her skirt up over
head exposing her black panties. The dirty old men sitting in
front of the bridge thanked her for the entertainment. She said
all men are dirty old men no matter what their age. She has it
all figured out! In the evening I once again put a different
shirt on, my third shirt today!!!! I only budgeted one shirt
per day so this is not going to work very well this week. We had
a rum drink in the afternoon, Daniel recommended a Queens Park
Hotel rum swizzle, a rum drink from London. It was mint, rum, punch,
grenandine and some bitters. The drink was pretty with multi
layers of color adn tasted delicious. Dinner tonight was
Corvina, a mild white fish that I also had in Panama City.
Dessert was a flourless chocolate cake with fruit sauce. We had
a few glasses of Cabernet during dinner. After dinner we joined
our Ornithologist Karen in the Lounge for an excellent but very
very long presentation on neotropical birds. She showed many
many very good slides of tropical birds. It wasn't over until
9:45 PM. Many of us were very tired.

I got up early and after a shower and shave went to the lounge
at 6:30 AM where I had a cold toast sandwich with egg and
sausage, fruit and a muffin and coffee while I read my book.
Later in the morning after a safety talk about the skiffs and
other water vessels we went down to a brunch which was a ham
sandwich wrap with bacon and optionally eggs, etc. It was a
very nice brunch. After lunch we took our skiff tour with
Heather as our driver at 2:20 PM. As a bonus our Ornithologist
Karen came along with us. We saw Frigates, Boobies, pelicans and
other birds. Karen was helpful in supplying trivia about the
bird species. Once we got back we heard about tormoorows
activities. Libbie and i had a couple of rum punches
accompanied by totilla chips, plantain chips and a delicious
salsa. Libbie had the guac which was freshly made and
outstanding. For dinner tonight we had Snapper in a peach
ginger with potatoes and accompanied by a glass of Cabernet. We
had the chocolate Biscotti in a creme de cafe sauce which capped
the meal off wonderfully. After dinner we got an excellent
overview of the national parks of Panama and Costa Rica that we
are going to visit. The presenter was a Costa Rican woman who did an
outstanding job selling her country.

After a very nice hotel breakfast we settled our bill with the
desk for 2 charges - one for the Moijitos last night and one for
dinner the night before. We checked our bags into Uncruise
hospitality on the 4th floor. We then called an Uber and got a
ride out to Panama Viejo.

Our driver first took us to an old ghetto area then found we
wanted to go to Panama Viejo. He then entered Panama Viejo into
his GPS and took us to the correct place. The ruins are just
that, ruins. We only bought Park admission and skipped the
museum. We walked around a while, read some of the signs then
called for another Uber to take us back. This time I requested
an English Uber and got Juan Diego. He was an excellent
conversationalist. I ended up tipping him $5 for the $5 ride.
We got back to the hotel and filled out passport papers then
waited. Finally the bus was loaded outside the hotel for the
long ride to Colon. There was an accident on the North Way, an
overturned Cement Truck. We finally got going and got to our
boat where we disembarked. At the top of the gang plank our
greeter was Heather from our Alaska tour. What a surprise. The
bartender was also from the Alaskan boat, Daniel.

We got boarded by a fantastic Canal Pilot. Each boat is required to
have a pilot. our guy has 44 years experience and can captain large
cargo ships or Nuclear submarines.

We had a buffet dinner on the deck with plenty of wine. I had a
slider with salad and veggies. Later I got a second Bean burger
slider. Dessert was an ice cream bar where I had chocolate ice
cream topped with berry sauce and some coconut and fruit. Wow.

The canal transit was very cool. What fun to see the
locomotives attached via cable on each side to keep us centered.
I did movies and pictures through all three locks on the
Atlantic side. I fell asleep but woke at 2 AM to see the last
of the lock transit. I made it through the first 2 but fell
asleep for the third. It was 3:30 AM.