Sunday May 9 Day 68

Sunday May 9 Day 68

In addition to a heated bathroom I also really miss a laundromat. It is so easy to go down, dump your clothes in a washer, read a good book, move your wet clothes to the dryer, read some more of your book and get the dry clothes out of the dryer. The only thing that takes time is folding them correctly. NOT so in India. I have just hung my wet jeans and shirt on the clothes line. I only started the process of letting nature dry them 4 or 5 days ago. First you have to turn on the water heater and allow it to warm the water for about 1/2 an hour. That is all the longer it takes unless you forget you were heating water and it goes on for hours. Then you fill the bucket (the one used for a “bucket bath” and a very standard size in India because of its common usage) put in some Tide and add the clothes. You then let them soak for 24 hours. This time the soaking lasted for 3 days because of a storm which lasted to 2 days and the 3rd day was clear and I was out taping feverishly (I had also forgotten about the soaking jeans and I had this bucket full of darkish water with soaking jeans lurking beneath the surface). Today I pulled the very heavy jeans out of the dirty water and got some of the water out of them. While writing this after dark I have just remembered that these clothes under discussion are still on the line. I have retrieved them with help from my trusty flashlight. The jeans are still wet and will be hung out to dry tomorrow morning. I then filled the bucket 2 times with clean water and rinsed them. Then out to the clothes line.

I went out at 1 pm to tape several trails. There were NO clouds today and I stayed out taping until after 5 pm. I ended up where the taxi stand is and there were none to be had. They said that the taxi would be there in 5 minutes. That is 5 minutes in Indian time. Almost 30 minutes later there was still no taxi and I climbed the hill. I got home 5 1/2 hours after I had left. I usually tape for only 2 to 3 hours so today sets a new record. I now hurt all over. It will be interesting to see what happens with my blood sugars in the morning.