Email: It Is Good For Something--Finally!

It occured to me today that email has been relegated to the role of work tool. I check my Facebook with joyful anticipation, but I check my email with anxious trepidation. I don't mean to imply that I do not try very hard to remain connected or that I do not wish to use email better. I only mean to say that I tend not to expect anything truly enjoyable to be in my inbox.

I have a phone that is supposed to connect to my work email. It connects to my Gmail just fine, but I realized today that it had been some time since I had gotten that familiar buzzzzz--the one I normally get MANY times a day--notifying me that I had new work email. It took some time to relearn the menus on this new phone, but I finally managed to reconnect it with our email server and waited for the soothing buzzes to return.

The first buzzzz was a useless email (I need to get that filter set up to delete everything that does not contain the phrase "free food"), and I took a moment to think how nice it had been to be disconnected. The second buzzz was an email from "Luis Marcelo." Who?? Those who know me know that I am horrible with names, even in my native tongue; give me names in another language and I am hopeless. I am, however, very curious so I opened the email (there was no mention of Viagra, after all) and was very happy to find out that Luis Marcelo is the Luis from the Santa Cruz R/C flying club!

When I left the flying field that happy Bolivian day, I did attempt to get some contact information for the guys there, but when I got home, I discovered that I had no email addresses, just phone numbers. I was planning how I could get a translator to help me make contact with my new friends when this email came in. (I must admit that I shamelessly added my email address to the blog entry about the club in hopes that one of the guys would use it, but that would require one of them to find their way to my blog and actually read it. I didn't know if any of them would, but I really wanted to make contact with the flyers again, so I took a shot.)

Thanks to Luis, we are now connected! I can't stress enough how welcome they made me feel; it was like I had been at that field for years. I am planning to take a little electric pylon racer down with me next time I go to Bolivia. You know how I like to go fast and turn left! I am designing all my new plane projects to fit in a shipping box. My air fare down might be nothing compared to the cost of the toys I take. I don't think I have crashed in another country (if you exclude landing in a tree in Africa), but I bet I can fix that if I work really hard at it!

Thanks Luis for making contact. I hope we can stay in touch and do some flying in the Fall. Anyone want to do a humanitarian/R/C flying trip?

P.S. Take a look at this Video taken from Pablo's plane.