Well, back in the good ol' U. S. of A. it came to pass, fairly frequently, that I would get a bad case of the redass at other drivers. Sometimes I would begin shouting at them in tongues, (within the safety of my own car.)

But, here in Pura Vida land, I have turned over a new leaf and I try not to get torqued up over traffic events ... until this week.

It started right away as I passed through the toll booth of Hwy 27, in Atenas, headed to San Jose. Another little car came out of an adjacent toll booth a few seconds before I left mine and he started down the entrance ramp ahead of me. Down hill. Steeply. All set up so that you could easily get up to speed (only 70 kph at this location) to merge with any traffic.

Nah. This phenom of the driving arts poked down the hill and then at the Ceda (yield) sign CAME TO A COMPLETE STOP.

Me? I was flying down that hill, looking to the side for traffic (there was none) so that I could make the decision to merge ahead or behind any traffic. Instead, as I finally paid attention to what was supposed to be an empty ramp in front of me, I had to slam on the brakes to avoid ramming Einstein. 

From his dead stop the clown swiveled around in his seat to gawk up the road to see if some nasty car or truck was fixin to try to hit him. Only after he had triple checked the emptiness of the roadway did he risk brushing against the accelerator pedal and he oozed out onto the road.

Some evil spirit tried to fire me into a state of rage but I resisted and simply commented on the other driver's mother's occupation as I blew past him. Oh, well, into every life a little rain ... and all that stuff.

Have you noticed how unbelievably slowly many many trucks plod up the hills on the highways here? I mean, hey, I lived in California for quite a few years and on those serious mountain highways, if you weren't breaking the speed limit, semis would run right over you. It can be done. Those really big trucks can go really fast uphill. Does this mean that the truck drivers are just doing the snail act to piss me off? Well, maybe, but shouldn't they try to make up for lost time when going downhill on the other side?

No. I think they generally go slower downhill than they do going uphill. How? Why? DRIVE, dammit! If that piece of junk you're piloting has such crappy brakes that you can't control it going downhill at any speed above 10 kph, then: a). your rolling scrap heap cannot possibly have passed its RITEVE (safety) inspection this year, so, b). just drive that piece of shit off the road and wreck it. Maybe you can buy a real truck with the insurance money.

Fortunately, the tollroad has frequent passing lanes allowing all of us driving at the blazing maximum speed of 80 kph (50 by god miles per hour!) an opportunity to scoot around the highway sloths. 

Speaking of passing lanes, here in Costa Rica, they always end with plenty of notification coming at you from both road signs and from warning lines painted on the pavement. In other words, unless you are asleep (or on your fucking phone, you shithead) there is no way to not know that your lane is about to vanish. You'd think.

All of this end-of-lane awareness stuff doesn't really work though if the rutabega operating a vehicle has zero sense of depth perception. Yeah, on this fine day a turd in a BMW SUV was riding my tail and he kept waiting until all of the "Lane Ends" warnings and the Yield markings had flown by. Then he'd jerk his jerk-wagon over into the right lane, floor it, and get about 2/3 of the way past me before he realized that he was staring directly at a guard rail, whereupon he'd toss out the anchor and drop back on my tail. Over and over. Don't animals learn from their errors?

Well, I don't know ... because we all rolled into the tollgate complex near MultiPlaza. He went left for a booth and I went to the far right QuickPass lane.

As I picked my booth/lane, tightly surrounded by traffic all around, a box truck was slowly pulling through ahead of me. Too slowly. So slowly that just as the nose of his truck reached the gate, it lowered onto his bumper and he continued for about two feet, snapping the gate off.

Now, people, in case you don't know it, these gates are made out of soft plastic and they're designed to snap off cleanly without doing significant damage to their mechanism or to your vehicle. If it happens, let it go. It happens every day. Move along.

This truck stops dead in the lane and I'm trapped behind him. Two, three, four, a dozen cars and trucks pile up behind me. "Hey man ... move the truck over to the side." *beep beep*

Nothing. Then the driver's door on the truck opens. "No! Don't get out. There's no booth attendant. Just get out of the way." *HONK HONK*

Sir Thinksalot, the driver, moseys up to the front and stands there staring at the gate, like a goat looking at a watch. Everybody is honking. A cop rolls up in the next lane ... and watches. Oh, yeah, I forgot -- cops are hired to drive around in their cool cars with the emergency lights all flashing, going nowhere in particular. They don't even do donuts. They just drive around. Then the passenger door of the truck opens.

"No! Don't get out. Get out of the way you flaming cretins!" Now everybody is honking.

The passenger s-l-o-w-l-y walks to the back of the truck AND OPENS THE DAMN BACK DOORS! He's going to inspect the load for damage!

That ripped it. I was full tilt boogy flipped out. I was ready to pop a blood vessel. The cops seemed amused. Patricia, my co-pilot, seemed aghast that the Incredible Hulk had just materialized in the seat next to her.

And suddenly ...

The little voices in my head said, "Pura Vida, Mae. Tranquilo." That's right. I had no place to be. What do I care if that DUMB SHIT sits there for the rest of the day?

I'm tellin' ya. This Costa Rica life is really making me into a nice person. As I eventually rolled past the plodding former lane blocker I almost didn't flip him off. Pura Vida indeed!

Toll Road Followup

Award:

She's out there. La gran estúpida.

This really happened, this week:

Coming south, through the West Little York Toll Plaza, I'm in the Easy Tag Only lane and the usual morons are tying up traffic as they get into the Tag Only lane and then discover (or is it "discover" since I suspect that a lot of this is intentional) that they are in the wrong lane ... and they have to then block everyone while they try to nudge their way into one of the adjacent cash lanes.

So this woman in front of me, with an Easy Tag plainly visible on her windshield, begins to roll smartly along with the traffic as the morons clear away from in front of us.

She gets up to the Easy Tag reader and STOPS!?! (whereupon, I almost rear-ended her; and the guy behind me almost rear-ended me; and the guy behind him ... ad infinitum)

No horn from me, because I'm a REFORMED Road Rage Psychopath and every person has the right to drive safely and with the level of conservatism to which they are comfortable (gack! I want to retch every time I parrot those "good driver" platitudes.)

Away she crept from her stop at the reader. The toll gate went up (don't get me started -- yes, the damn things are back) she rolled up even with the gate and SHE STOPPED AGAIN.!! That ripped it.

She got the horn. I almost got rear-ended, again, and the other good drivers went wild with their horns.

She got moving, so out we all roll. I passed her and looked over to lay my most evil, rotten, "You're sooooo stupid!" dirty look on her but she won't look my direction. Ms. Gotta-stop has the pedal to the metal and is going to break the speed laws. On a mission.

Yeah, genius, stop twice in the toll gate but then get out there and drive 80 miles an hour while everyone else is doing 65-75. Makes perfect sense -- NOT.

That's O.K., I'll probably pass her in the next tool plaza after she stops suddenly, again, and causes a 37 car pileup. I'll save my "look" for then.

Bagging On Bags

I'm sure you've noticed that every product that comes with a storage bag -- air mattresses, tents, sleeping bags, quilts, etc., -- all come with storage bags that are sized so that the intended contents can only be folded small enough to fit back into those bags if you are a professional "Folder," working from a Folding Blueprint, and have arms and hands as powerful as Popeye.

If you're a normal person, chances are that your best efforts, along with multiple re-folding attempts, will only result in a lump of product that either won't go into the storage bag at all or which sticks out of the end of the bag.

WHY?!?

Message to manufacturers: You shit heads! I'm paying hundreds of dollars for your stinking product and you can't spend 30¢ to enlarge the stinking bag ... oh, maybe get crazy and slip in 6 whole inches ... so that normal people can put their valuable purchase away after using it. Sheesh!

Flummoxed

I B Flummoxed. How else can I be?

A bit of background:

My company uses fairly large quantities of hydraulic oil. So, rather than have a zillion steel drums sitting around, we store our oil inventory in 275 gallon "totes."

Totes look like giant cubic plastic boxes. Picture your favorite refrigerator box-wine large enough to hold 275 gallons. Now, replace the cardboard wine box with a steel cage and make the plastic bag have thick enough walls so that it holds its shape. That's a tote.

But, because anything can leak, and because neither I nor the EPA want hydraulic oil running down the street in rivers, all users of big quantities of hazardous liquids are required to set up "secondary containment" around or under all "primary" containers. In other words, if the tote leaks, it has to leak into a tub or something so that it is contained for disposal.

For totes, we use specially made "pallets" that look like a monstrous kid's square wading pool, with a thick grill over the top. The totes sit on this grill and if they leak, the oil simply drops down into the "wading pool."

However, the secondary containment pool has a finite volume. If you let the pool fill up and don't empty it, then subsequent leaks would overflow the pool and run out on the floor. Therefore, one would think that every person would think of that when they saw the pool filling up, over time. Wouldn't one always strive to keep the secondary empty and dry?

One would also think that folks working around these totes and their secondary containment pools would object to the smell of the hydraulic oil emitting up from the pool, if you leave oil in it.

Finally, one would think that just out of general good housekeeping practices that workers wouldn't want all of that leaked oil sitting around out in the open. Oil just seems to get everywhere when you have it out in the open.

BUT ... our pudding heads are not (apparently) folks that think or act in any of the ways that "one" would think!

My morning:

Arrived at 8. Plugged in my laptop and booted it. Shuffled a little paper and decided that it would be a good time for me to do a sweep through the shop, ensuring that safe work practices are being observed.

Walked out the door, into the shop, and there's a tote, perched on its secondary containment, with piles and piles of granulated absorbent heaped up around it.

"What's going on?!?" I gasped.

"That funny tub thing got a leak," said one of the braver workers.

"How ... uh ... wha ... hey. How would the secondary leak? It's supposed to be empty?" I spat out.

"No. It always has a lot of oil in it ... at least since they were filling those hoses the other day and spilled a whole bunch down in there," said Brave Boy.

"No," I said back, "No, there is never supposed to be ANY oil in the secondary containment unless the tote leaks!" I said, starting to lose it.

"I didn't know," said Brave Boy, now meekly.

I'm thinking, "Yeah, but there are a half dozen "old salts" standing around you that know damn well that there isn't supposed to be oil in the secondary," but I sucked it in and kept the thoughts to myself. Time for a safety meeting -- for sure!

"Wait," I said, "That's a new secondary. How could it leak?"

Now the troops within ear shot are starting to look REALLY busy. Way too busy to be a part of this conversation.

Brave Boy goes on, "Well, we were sliding the plastic thingy into the pallet rack and when he backed out, his forks were tilted up too much and he ripped a hole in the bottom of the thingy."

Two more stirs.

The metal cage around the tote has fork lift channels under it so that one can lift these totes up off of the secondary containment for filling or discharging them. Steel. Strong. Fully protecting the tote's plastic bladder. In contrast, secondaries have narrow, thin PLASTIC grooves under them so that you could, if you were stupid, lift directly under the plastic wading pool to lift the pool and the tote, together, as a unit. Well over a ton of load on the little pool bottom.

Huh. I wonder why it split?

So-ho-ho-ho-ho, now I have a ripped open, useless $2,000.00 secondary; plus, another 10 gallons or so of liquid contaminated (hazardous material) oil to pay someone to dispose of; plus several 40 lb bags of "kitty litter" oil sorbent, soaked with oil (hazardous material) to also pay someone to dispose of.

Maybe if I'm lucky, tomorrow somebody will jam a forklift fork through this tote's steel cage and gash the plastic bladder open. I've always wanted to see if those oil containment booms work well. I wonder if we can get them deployed before the oil seeps under the office wall and into the office carpet?

Learning From Our Mistakes

What ever happened to “learning from our mistakes?” Is this time-tested precept of the higher apes also passing away as a distant memory of a few elders in the clan of mankind?

One of our “experienced,” albeit newer, employees was hired to lead some teams and sort of take care of the newbies and the dolts, thereby avoiding losses, embarrassments or accidents. To hear this guy’s personal testimony, he’s waged wars, fought fights, conquered countries and validated virgins from Timbuktu to infinity and beyond. One would think that there had been a few teensy mistakes along the way and our hero, who I call “Slinky,” should have learned a thing or two.

Nah.

Many weeks ago, my company mobilized large machines, portable control rooms and gobs of tools to rig out an offshore demolition boat. (Our parent company manufactures machinery that cuts apart pipe and steel structurals, under the sea.)

A critical little tool – a cutter – is terribly expensive for its size so we don’t keep hundreds of them on the shelf. We don’t have to. One of these palm sized little cutters will zip a 3-inch diameter hole through a sunken deck plate in minutes and keep on “punching” more holes all day. At almost $500.00 each, they better. So, we had only about 20 of them in stock.

Slinky supervised the load-out of the equipment for this boat, knowing full well that this would be only one of many boats to be equipped from our inventory. But, a couple of days after everything was shipped out, the boss, Tree Tall, went looking for a few of these cutters to be used in a demonstration. The shelves were empty.

“Where’d they go?” he wanted to know.

“Well, I sent them all out to the boat,” said Slinky, lamely.

With no love in his voice, Tree asked, “So what were you planning to send out on the next boat?”

No answer.

That’s when I got sucked into the fray.

Tree wanted at least two (preferably 3 or 4) cutters for his demonstration; and, he knew that another boat was coming up for outfitting in a couple more weeks. He turned to me to locate more cutters.

I contacted all the vendors and discovered that our normal cutters were 4 to 6 weeks delivery. Another vendor proposed an alternate cutter design which we accepted out of dire need. We cleaned that guy’s inventory out, bringing all 10 of the available alternate cutters into Houston on Fedex Next Day. I also promptly put in an order for 10 more from the usual vendor who would build them to our regular specifications.

I sort of lost track/interest in the cutters after that, although I did notice that “da boyz” were doing several extra demonstrations that might eat into the cutter supply. No worries, I thought. These guys have just been through the wringer over these things and they’ll tell me when they need more cutters. Besides, in about a week we should have the second order of ten pieces.

Then came an order for a third boat.

And in came an order for a training demo.

Both used these hard to find cutters.

But, I’m not aware of these events, so I don’t bump up the inbound order quantity.

This immediately past Saturday, Slinky and da boyz worked like maniacs to get everything out the door for boats two and three. The training demo is tomorrow (for divers who will eventually work from one or more of the boats we’d outfitted.)

Today, Tree wandered out into the Houston shop to grab cutters for the training demo.

“Who moved the 3-inch cutters?” he said. He probably had a knot in his stomach, fearing that he knew the awful answer. He dialed Slinky’s cell phone. “Where are the 3” cutters, Slink?”

“Why? I sent them to the boat.”

Worst fears confirmed.

“All of them,” said Tree, more as a statement of resignation than a question. He looked at me. I shrugged. He shook his head. The same stupid move had been made again.

The 6-week-delivery cutters aren’t due in for another couple of days. I found one dusty old cutter on a vendor’s back shelf and that’s the best we can hope for.

Do I think that there’s a possibility that Slinky and his team learned anything this time?

What do you think?