The Panama Adventure

Last night we had our first band gig since coming back from the US, and the first gig with our new speakers and amplifier. It was fantastic!! The amplifier has plenty of power and the speakers can handle it. And my new bass speaker, just wow!

At first I was using the former bass player’s 15” speaker while he was out if town. It was good. Then he came back, I went full time, and he moved to Colombia with his speaker. Joel made me a cabinet with two 10” speakers that weren’t really made for bass but it’s what we had. I had to be very careful to use clean settings, no distortion, and not turn up the volume too much or they distorted terribly. Joel supplemented by running a fair amount of bass through the PA, but I don’t hear that on stage so my bass always felt weak. Then, we bought a 15” speaker locally for $50 and it was wonderful to have good sound again. It lasted two gigs and went silent. It couldn’t handle the job. Ok,  back to the cabinet with two 10’s.

Then we came back from the US with my new Faital 15” $200 speaker, worth every single penny. It’s clear and strong over the entire range of the bass, and with any effects setting I want to use. I no longer have to be afraid to turn up the volume. It’s built for more than I will ever demand. At one point I had my preamp/effects pedal at about 65%, and my amplifier at about 75%, using a pick. The rest of the band complained I was killing them with volume and the audience had a somewhat dazed look. And, to think I had room to turn it up a lot more?! I had mercy and turned it down but it was sure fun for one song 😁

The PA also sounds fantastic, clear, strong, and big. Who would think upgrading equipment would be so good! We are very glad that our audience enjoys what we do, but we also play for ourselves and to have everything sounding so good, it makes us really happy.

So last night,  we went to Boquete, to Mike’s Global Grill, saw a lot of friends, caused a lot of dancing, loved how we are sounding, and came home with really yummy Asian food…. what’s not to love!

I’m sure that’s way more than you all ever wanted to know about band equipment and bass speakers, but since this has become such a big part of my life, that what I felt like writing about today.

If any of you want to see and hear for yourselves, next Sunday, in a week, we are at the Boquete Brewing Company, 5pm. They love a big sound and are always asking for more bass (it’s where I destroyed my last 15”). It’s outside on the patio so you can listen from a block away if you want to 😉 Then, in two weeks we are back at Mike’s. We do more hard rocking music at the Brewery for the younger Panamanian crowd, and more dance favorites at Mike’s for the gringo people.

We have a Facebook page if you want to keep up with our schedule. https://www.facebook.com/pg/monkeynerveband/events/

If someone had told me I’d be 65, retired, living in Panama, and playing bass in a rock band I never would have believed a word of it!

My daughter lives in Santa Rosa CA. I’ve written in the past about the fires that swept through there and destroyed thousands of homes and buildings. There have been many pictures in the media but they can’t have the same impact as seeing the damage in person. It goes on for blocks and blocks, miles and miles. There is one area where the fire jumped a four lane highway with frontage roads in either side. The winds were that strong. I was quite aware also that the places I saw, not everyone made it out.

Thankfully my daughter’s house and the house of her in laws are fine, but everyone in town knows so many people who lost everything. The hotels are full, and places to rent or buy are very hard to find and expensive. My daughter works for the county and is part of the group working with the displaced people.  They are arranging for FEMA trailers, looking for any other available housing options, and coordinating efforts to help with the multiple needs of so many people. It’s such a huge task though.

But, there are positive things happening too. There has been a huge outpouring of support from friends, the community, and others near and far. Police, firefighters, and others came by the thousands to fight the fires and help people. Now, a month later, there are multiple crews working 24/7 on cleanup in preparation for rebuilding. We even saw them working on Thanksgiving Day. Many of the affected people are working class families though, and the city hopes they don’t lose too many of these people who are vital to the community. Even my daughter said if they came back from evacuation to nothing, they would keep on driving and relocate elsewhere.

Here are a few pictures I took, in no particular order.

Cleanup in progress

This was a mobile home park. The hospital behind on the left was evacuated.

The only thing left of the homes are the fireplaces

More cleanup in process

More cleanup

This scene goes on for miles

This was a restaurant

This was a really nice hotel

I think this was another restaurant

A home in a very upscale neighborhood. Notice how the hills in the background are entirely burned.

So many houses gone

This is only one of many disasters – hurricanes in Texas, Florida, Puerto Rico and other Caribbean islands, fires in other areas, and as we speak fires are raging in Southern California destroying more homes and buildings. We won’t even get into the man made disasters.

I’m so thankful to be here for so many reasons. We have brush fires in the dry summer but I’ve never seen a burned house. Maybe the fires happen enough that there isn’t much to burn, and a block house with a metal roof isn’t easy to burn. (But the CA fire burned a fire proof fire station to the ground so nothing is guaranteed, apparently). But in my experience here things burn themselves out fairly quickly. People keep their yards free of burnable material and protect the perimeter with a garden hose if necessary. If/when the firemen come they put water tanks on their backs with squirt nozzles and wet the perimeter.

An old photo from a fire in our area, a fireman at work

I know there is always someone else who’ll has it worse, and there is so much worse suffering in the world. These people will get through this and rebuild their lives. Still though, it sucks to lose your home and everything it contains, maybe your job if your place of business burned, and then find yourself living in a FEMA trailer for months and months, maybe years.

We are back in the US. I have things in mind to write about, but with the whole family here including three young grandchildren, there is minimal quiet time. You can credit this writing with being on the west coast with the tree hour time change, and today I am up before the rest of the family. (For 10 minutes as it turned out, so excuse any disjointedness in the rest of the post)

The trip here is always long but usually uneventful. We started with the long bus ride on Monday. The buses are big and comfortable though, and stop in Santiago so you can stretch your legs and get something to eat. There are usually movies on the bus, usually action adventures movies, but this ride was quiet which is fine too.

We stayed at the Costa Inn in Panama City, our usual place. It’s an older hotel with occasional unusual features, like the room with two bathrooms, but it’s always clean and the people are nice. There is also a very good 24 hour restaurant on site. At $38, with breakfast and an airport shuttle it’s a great deal. But, we had to catch the 5am shuttle to make our flight so it was a short night and too early for breakfast.

We flew Delta and I had downloaded their app on my tablet. Technology does some cool things these days. I checked in with the app and tracked the status of the flight. It even sent me a message when my luggage was loaded on the plane, and unloaded at baggage claim. How cool is that.

I have flown on Delta the last few times because they had a good price, good travel times, and I really like the free movies and electric outlets for your devices. With a 4 1/2 and 5 1/2 flight to San Francisco, the movies really help pass the time more pleasantly.

An aside, we qualify for the jubilado (retired people) 25% discount on airline tickets which is a significant savings. You have to go to the airline’s office though, or use a travel agent. Our agent, Andrea Cook, makes the whole ticket buying process super easy. Viajevacations@gmail.com

So, we made it to SFO without incident, hopped on the Airport Express to Santa Rosa where my daughter and grandson picked us up. Now my other daughter has arrived with her husband and little girl, so the whole family is together. Thanksgiving was yesterday at the in-laws. What a beautiful time with the whole family here! It is enough to totally melt a Grandma.

Now though, people are getting dressed and ready for this morning’s adventure, an adventure outing to the children’s museum. It’s going to be fun. Hasta lluego.

That sounds scary! These water heaters are actually very common in this part of the world, and if you can get past the idea of electric wires in (actually above) the shower they work quite well.

Hot water isn’t standard in Panama. There are many people who never had a warm shower in their lives. I’ve seen neighbors bathing the children outside with the garden hose. Of course this is the tropics and cold water isn’t especially cold. To me it feels like a swim on a hot day, maybe a second to get used to it and then it’s refreshing and really nice.

We have an on demand gas water heater on an outside wall with lines to the shower and kitchen. When I moved in a neighbor pointed it out as something really special. It’s temperamental though. You need to turn on the hot water and when it’s hot, then turn on the cold and hope you get something pleasantly warm for a minute before it turns totally cold. Repeat the process as needed. I quickly decided this was more trouble than it’s worth and just took cold showers.

The water heater stopped working. It’s been so long I don’t even remember when. New batteries didn’t help, and we didn’t care enough to try anything else.

Now though it’s the height of rainy season, and we’ve had a few very chilly days with little to no sun, and temperatures down to 70 at night. Ok, I can hear most of you laughing and rolling your eyes, but we are acclimated to heat and happy in the 80’s. This is why we don’t live in the mountains. We like it warm.

A long time ago we bought a suicide shower to help a friend. She ended up fixing the one she had so she didn’t need it. They are inexpensive enough that it wasn’t worth taking back to the store, so it’s been in storage. Then it dawned on us. If we don’t want cold showers on chilly days, we could get it out and install it!

These heaters draw quite a bit of power so always use a heavy duty wire. You can see the circles on the unit, black for hot, white for cold, and half and half for warm. Black tends to pop the circuit breaker, but warm with a slower water flow (less to heat) produces a very nice, comfortably warm shower. I don’t mind a cold shower at all but even I will admit it’s very pleasant to have warm water sometimes.

So, if you find one of these in a shower, don’t freak out. It won’t electrocute you. It will just give you some nice warm water.

It’s been quite a while since I’ve been here on the blog. There just hasn’t been much to talk about. I’m finally recovering from that dang cold that hung on forever. The band has been keeping me busy between gigs, practice, and learning new songs. There is just way too much interesting music out there, and we always find more songs than we can possibly learn!

Life in Panama is going on as usual. After five years everything is just normal life, and it’s easy to forget that to others it’s all new and interesting. We woke up today to no power and very little water. The power came back shortly, but now it’s out again. The power is usually quite reliable so this is unusual. Oh! It’s on again, just a short outage, never mind.

The water is less reliable. It may be inconvenient but it’s not that big a deal. We have stored water on hand, and it’s usually out for a few hours or maybe half a day. It’s been out longer only a couple times but they sent a water truck around to fill any container you gave them. Today was a short outage, and if you want more water there is plenty pouring off the roof at the moment.

We are in the rainiest of the rainy season right now. The rain should taper off over the next month until it stops entirely in mid/late December. I know it’s a hassle for people out and about, but I love the rain. Morning are usually clear and beautiful, a good time to be out if there are things to do. Then, come home in the afternoon, enjoy the rain when it comes, and enjoy the cool air. I love sitting on the terrace and looking at the yard when everything is so lush and green.

Oh yes, earthquake! We were driving home from a gig last night and didn’t feel it, but many others did. It was a 6.5 in central Costa Rica. We have felt quite a few others though. It’s a very odd feeling to have the ground under you shaking and moving, and a good reminder that we are only small beings on this massive and powerful earth.

Otherwise… we still have birds, bugs, lizards, and other wildlife, often in the house. There was a very interesting bug in the shower the other day, like a large, long legged spider with a beetle body, but only six legs so not a spider. I should have taken a picture but I was busy trying to trap him while Joel stood on the drain where he had seen the bug escape before. I managed to get it outside where it scurried off PDQ.

The rain seems to be tapering off, but the thunder is still strong enough to set off a car alarm nearby. I have a good size metal baking pan that I use as a birdbath. It was empty when the rain started and now it’s overflowing, and I’ve seen it rain way more than this at other times. But, this is the tropics where the air is warm, and the water that falls from the sky is also warm so life goes on through it all.

Life in Panama… it’s a pretty chill life if you want it to be. Nobody cares if you haven’t mowed your yard in a month, or if your dog barks, or if you are having band practice in your house for four hours, or if your laundry has been hanging in the carport for days. Enjoy life. Don’t sweat the small stuff. It’s all small stuff. Life is good.

There is nothing pressing on my mind to write about, but of course that doesn’t mean I won’t rattle on about something. Right now, it’s just daily life, mostly music and coughing. A cold has made its way though the band until it finally got to me, and the cough hangs on and on and makes it hard to sleep.

The music, however, is going really well. The more I play the more comfortable I am. The audience and employers alike have been very positive and enthusiastic. There is a Panamanian bass (and guitar and piano) player who is beyond amazing. The other night he went out of his way to compliment me. That meant a whole lot, coming from him especially. I see a trend which I really like. The musicians,  both gringo and Panamanian are coming together, supporting and helping each other, and becoming friends. It’s a nice feeling of community.

We have outgrown our car though. The Hyundai Atos that we like so much will be on the market soon. With both of us taking equipment it’s packed like a 3-D jigsaw! If any of you are interested in a well behaved, inexpensive around town car ask me for details.

Otherwise.. my daughter and her city of Santa Rosa are starting to recover from the fires. She is part of the effort of finding housing for displaced people and says it is very frustrating. There are something like 6000 homes destroyed, but no place to house all these people. It’s going to be a long hard road to recovery and the city hopes it doesn’t lose many of its young working families, people vital to the culture and functioning of the city.

Here in Panama we are in the height of rainy season. Some days are hot and sunny, but by afternoon there are usually clouds moving in followed by rain. Do your laundry and errands in the morning! There are some days with no or very little rain and others, like yesterday, where it felt like the sky had opened up. Those big downpours don’t last long though, and then settle in to a steady rain through the evening.

So, just life, chores and errands, hanging out, playing music while it rains, going to the gate to find a pot of flowers from the neighbor, petting the dog who thinks she must be no more than six feet away from me at all times, and waiting for the latest bananas to ripen. Mi vida difícil en Panamá.

It’s been exactly a week since my daughter and her family fled Santa Rosa in the early hours of the morning as the fires rushed into the city. I know there are disasters in many other places but this is my daughter’s city, my US address, and a city I’m familiar with. This has hit too close to home.

My daughter and family came back home last night. Her house is fine, as is the house of her in laws. There are still fires burning though and areas are still under evacuation. She said the air isn’t too bad because the winds weren’t blowing the smoke at them, but they could see the flames in the hills.

Many weren’t so lucky. According to this article, 40 people lost their lives. Hundreds are still missing and more may be found dead. 217,556 acres have burned and 5700 homes and businesses have been destroyed. 100,000 people have been evacuated and many won’t have homes to return to.

But, in all this trauma and destruction, thousands have come forward to help. There are more than 10,000 firefighters and police in the area from all over, and national guard, Red Cross, FEMA, and many other personnel. My daughter said it looks like an air show with all the planes and helicopters overhead fighting the fires. Individuals are also helping with an outpouring of donations, food, shelter, services, and tons of care and moral support. Even I, because I have a Santa Rosa address, I have received emails from Schwab and other banks offering support and any services they can offer to help get through this difficult time.

some random photos…

A very smokey sunset in San Francisco.

Photo taken by my daughter as they left their neighborhood in the early hours of Monday morning

Numerous planes and helicopters fight the fires

There are signs everywhere thanking the firefighters and others who have come to help. There are also signs of hope and support, like this one.

Photo of blackened hills taken by my daughter as they left Santa Rosa

Not sure where I found this photo…

Firemen, police, national guard and other helpers camped out at the fairgrounds

There is a FEMA center where people can go to one place for help with everything – housing, insurance, FEMA assistance, replacing vital documents, drivers licenses, etc. There is an article here. My daughter, who usually works for the county, will be there helping with housing.

Its a daunting task to rebuild all those structures and lives, and to recover from the stress and trauma. There were people who literally ran for their lives in the middle of the night with nothing more than the clothes on their backs. I thought the fire chief was going to break down in a town meeting when he described putting every resource on the fire and being unable to stop its progress. But, with the amount of help and support being offered, I think in time people will be able to move forward and rebuild their lives. I certainly hope so.

I try not to pay much attention to what goes on in the White House. It’s better for my blood pressure that way, but has the president even mentioned the California fires, let alone made plans to visit? At least congress is sending money which is enormously helpful.

I am very glad to be sitting in my block house with a metal roof. I’ve seen many brush fires here but I’ve never seen a burned house.

Tuesday, Oct 10, five years ago was when I arrived in Panama intending to make it my new home. Joel followed in November after wrapping things up in Florida.

I came with few expectations. I figured there would be problems with the language barrier (there were). I knew there were comfortable homes and stores that sold pretty much anything I would need so I wasn’t worried about setting up my new life. The people we had met on visits had been nice so I wasn’t worried about getting along. I figured I’d just move forward and just let things unfold.

I never expected it would be this good though. I never expected to feel happier and more comfortable here than I ever did in my native country. How could that be? Why is that?

• People accept and respect you as you are. Nobody cares about your religion, politics, net worth, appearance, relationship status, how you spend your time, or any of the things we judge people by in the US.
• Of course no place is 100% safe but we worry much less about our safety and property than we did anywhere in the US.
• There are no hurricanes, tornadoes, blizzards, or other weather disasters. After living in tornado alley and hurricane prone Florida, it’s a great relief to be here.
• It’s warm. I do not like to be cold. I am very happy at 80+ degrees in shorts and t-shirt.
• It’s affordable. It’s a relief and peace of mind to have enough for everything you need and most everything you want.
• As one of the uninsured for most of my life, it’s a huge relief to have competent and affordable health care available.
• We live with happy people. Greetings are genuine and smiles light up like sunshine. People don’t get upset  and life unfolds at a relaxed pace. So, the water isn’t on today, or there are weeds in the yard, or potholes, or the neighbor is blasting music. The strongest reaction is probably an eye roll. It can feel inefficient and messy at times but I’ve come to love it.
• Panama is a gorgeous country with mountains, beaches, and everything in between. There is always a new bird, bug, fruit, story, recipe, remedy, or cultural belief to learn about so it’s endlessly interesting.

Of course there are downsides. No place is all rainbows and unicorns or the paradise some publications promise it will be. You have to be prepared for many things being quite different, and sometimes confusing and frustrating. But if you can just go with it, it can be a great experience. It’s one of those things you have to experience to understand fully but now that I understand, I definitely plan to stay.