So for our latest newsletter, Clare asked me to write up what a typical day looks like for me. While writing it I realised that some of the stories were worth expanding on. If you're here, congrats, you've found the extended dance remix of our latest newsletter, with bonus footage...
...A Day In The Life of Andrew, Motorcycle and Small Engine Mechanic, Amateur Welder/Machinist/ Fabricator, also Assistant Manager of the SIL AutoShop in Ukarumpa.
(Ha! That fan on my wall was salvaged from inside an old welder I scrapped a couple years ago. Keeps me cool at my desk on hot days when the office AC doesn't seem to be cutting it. When we remodeled our office, I painted the fan white to make it look nice for the manager, who cares about such things.)
After getting up and completing the morning routines...
Okay so our routines are a little different these days--there's a drought on, see? So we are trying to conserve water--we're not out of water, it's just a hassle to refill our house tanks with--what's that? What are house tanks?! Why, they are two 9,000 liter/2,375 US gallon tanks that hold the water for our house, of course! Normally they are filled with rain water, but it hasn't rained in weeks, and the tanks will go dry in a surprisingly short time--in our house, this water is used for everything: drinking, cooking, washing, laundry, toilet, you get the idea. For emergency use, we have creek water that comes from a community run water system. The rain water is potable (safe to drink), but the creek water is not--when we fill the tanks with creek water, we have to treat that water with bleach to make it safe to drink, though the resulting brew does not taste nice. Yeah, so, there's a drought. Means I try to use less water when brushing my teeth and flush the toilet less often.
...usually a few minutes before 8:30 I roll the motorcycle out from under the house where I park it and head off to work. It's only 1 kilometer from our house to the shop, all dirt roads, usually not much traffic. Today I'm balancing an old motorcycle helmet on the tank in front of me--it's one that was given to me years ago by somebody who was cleaning out a shed and found some motorcycle related stuff in there. A PNG friend of mine has told me that he is looking for a helmet, I'll give him this one if he wants it.
He did want it! My old friend Petrus was very happy to get it--a tree fell on his old helmet and smashed it. Petrus's brother Napolean used to work at the AutoShop where I work. Napo and I were good friends, I used to call Napo "A'o" (my own spelling) which is a Gadsup word for "uncle". Anyway, Napo died a few years ago and Petrus and I became closer friends through our shared grief. Petrus helps people in his nieghborhood with their motorcycles and small engines, I help Petrus with parts and expertise. And the odd motorcycle helmet...
I get to work, park the bike, and let myself in. I walk into my office, hang up my helmet, put the other one that I carried in on a shelf and check e-mail. Today there's an e-mail from a translator out in a remote area, describing a problem her airstrip mower is having and asking for advice on what to do about it. Airstrip mowers are high priority, so I respond right away.
Next is a high school aged MK (missionary kid) asking me for motorcycle maintenance advice--I will get to him, but later. He's probably in class right now anyway and won't get to read anything from me until lunch time. Oh, there's an advertisement from an aftermarket motorcycle parts company--I quickly run through their sales, nothing I need today, delete. Next is from a man from another missions organisation, working near Port Moresby, but currently in the US and planning to return to PNG soon. He's asking about our progress on an air-transportable roller packer we are making for him to use at his airstrip. I make a note to ask one of my co-workers who had been doing the bulk of the fabrication on that job how it is going. At that moment, the co-worker in question walks through the office--I stop him, ask him about the job, then quickly fire off a response e-mail, also asking him how his PNG visa application is coming along.
This is an interesting one--some time ago I got an e-mail from an American guy named Mark, I forget what org he works with. He does his own maintenance on the local airstrip where he works, and that airstrip is the only way in or out of that area, (except by foot of course, but that takes days and it's hard to carry much in the way of supplies that way), so he asked me if there was any way we could make him an air-portable roller packer that he could pull behind his ATV for airstrip maintenance. I (and later my co-worker, Chris) communicated back-and-forth with Mark, hammering out the details of the design of his roller packer. The roller itself is made out of a 55 gallon/200 liter steel drum with a reinforcing structure inside of it--when it gets to his aristrip, he will fill it with concrete to give it the needed weight, Chris (with a little help from me on some of the details) built a frame that fits around the drum and can be put on the hitch on the back of the ATV. Hopefully it will work well enough for his purposes.
There is also an e-mail from one of our pilots, asking me about changing a rear tire on his motorcycle. I check inventory, start to reply, then remember that I really should double check the inventory myself in person, since sometimes the computer and reality don't agree. I head out of the office and over to Spare Parts, make my way deep into the bowels of Spare Parts and physically check the tires we have in inventory. I also realise that we are getting low on tires and I will need to order some more. Back in the office, I send him descriptions of what we have, prices on each, recommend a new inner tube and ask him if tomorrow morning will be an okay time for changing his tire.
Then I hop on the internet, go to my favorite tire supplier website and spend some time researching tires Pick out some 21" front tires, some 17" inch and some 18" rears, make up an order for a few of each and send that off to my department manager who has the shop credit card and will make the actual order from the supplier. He'll have them shipped to our office in North Carolina who will handle shipping them here by sea. It will be at least 6 months before they get here and yes, by the time they get here they will be twice as expensive, but what am I going to do? Availability of that kind of thing in country is spotty at best, and when you can get motorcycle tires, they are usually the worst quality tires out there and still cost almost as much as the ones I am ordering today will end up costing. Sigh.
Finally I get out on the floor. There's an airstrip mower I need to look at, also a locally owned sawmill engine and a couple of motorcycle jobs.
Airstrip mower has thrown the magnet from its flywheel. Rust got in behind it and loosened the epoxy the factory used to hold it in place. Well, that explains why it doesn't run. I guess I'll need to talk to the person responsible for it about getting a new flywheel. Put it aside for now.
Yeah, that job blossomed into kind of a mess. It has been a few months now and the mower is STILL in the shop, STILL waiting on parts from overseas. Ah, I miss the old days when we could get parts in about a month or so. Some time ago our supply chains took a real hit and have never really recovered. 2-4 months wait is totally normal, even for air freight, and $10 a pound for shipping from the US is normal, or $11 a kg from Australia. Sometimes, once in a while, something will get here in a month, but that's rare.
Start to look at the sawmill engine, but before I get too far, the secretary--a lovely PNG lady named W--comes to me and tells me that somebody at the front wants to talk to me. I go to see what he wants. It's a Papua New Guinean man, and our conversation goes like this, but in Melanesian Pidgin:
"Morning! What can I do for you?"
"Morning, morning! I need a motorcycle wheel."
"Ah! A motorcycle wheel, okay! What kind of motorcycle wheel?"
(thinks for a moment) "18 inch!"
"Hmmm. Yes. 18 inch! Good, good! There are many motorcycles that use 18" wheels and there are hundreds of different shapes and they don't all interchange. What kind of motorcycle is it?"
(thinks for a moment) "Honda!"
"Well, there are lots of Hondas that use 18" wheels. What kind of Honda is it?"
(thinks for a moment) "125!"
"Yes, I see. 125. Hmmmm. There are a lot of Honda 125's out there and oh! they all use different wheels. What kind of 125 is it?"
"Honda!"
(Chuckling) "Yes, okay, Honda 125. There are many Honda 125's. Do you know what kind of Honda 125? Maybe XL125? or CB125? maybe CR125? " (this last one, the CR125, is a long shot as it's a race bike, but there have been CR125's in this area and you just never know what is going to pop up!)
"18 inch!"
(Thinking quickly, changing my approach) "Does your motorcycle have a wheel on it now?"
"yes."
"What is wrong with it? Maybe I can repair it." (If I can get the whole bike in here, I am certain I can adapt something to fit)
"The studs that hold the sprocket on are broken."
"Okay! Broken studs! Maybe you could bring me your wheel and then I will be able to tell you if I can fix it or if I have another one like it."
"Okay!" off he goes.
It took a while, but the man eventually did come back and he did bring me a wheel. It was like no Honda wheel I had ever seen and I was really not sure how I was going to help this man until I saw the little Suzuki "S" cast into the hub. Once I knew it was a SUZUKI wheel, I was able to find one relatively quickly in my junk pile. We agreed on a price and I ended up throwing in a used tyre that was better than the tyre he had.
Back to work on the sawmill engine. Ah! Another broken connecting rod (this is a common problem on sawmill engines around here). Let's see, yes, the crankshaft is also damaged, as is the crankcase. sigh This is not going to be cheap. Put that aside for now. Make a note to explain to the owner that if he changed his oil more often, this would not have happened and oil is always cheaper than having to rebuild or replace an engine.
I did get word back to that guy through his brother about the sawmill engine. Never heard anything back, which is odd. This is always kind of awkward for me because we can't let the shop fill up with broken stuff that nobody ever claims, but at the same time I'm never sure when I can start selling parts off of a dead machine to recoup the cost of the time spent on it. We have signs up saying that machines abandoned for longer than 30 days are subject to being sold to recoup costs, but...
The secretary comes back again, "Dr. L wants to talk to you." Uh-oh. Wonder what he wants? Dr. L works in our clinic. I go to see him at the front office, turns out he has this device that they use for treating some kind of cancerous growths. It's from the US, but the liquid nitrogen they can get here to use with it won't connect to it; the US uses one kind of connector and PNG uses the Australian style, which is different. Is there anything I can do? I ask him to leave it with me, I have an idea. After he is gone, I rummage around and find one fitting that fits the device and another that fits the hose on the Aussie style liquid nitrogen bottle. Both are made of steel, which is good because that means I might be able to weld something together. I get on the lathe, machine both parts so that they will fit together nicely, then carefully weld them into one adaptive part. Later I call the Clinic, they send over somebody to collect the device, and a few days later I hear that the doctors have tried it out and they are happy with it. Good!
This one happened some time ago--I forget now exactly how I made the US and Aussie parts play nicely together--I do remember that some lathe time was involved and that the job was a success in the end and as far as I know they are still treating cancerous growths with it.
12:00, the horn on top of AutoShop goes off, lets everybody in Ukarumpa know it's noon.
Around this time, I realise that school is probably out for lunch, so I send a quick reply back to the kid who wanted motorcycle maintenance advice. Then home for lunch.
After lunch I go back to work, as I park the bike, there's a PNG man waiting nearby to talk to me...
Sometimes people will wait around near where they know I usually park in hopes of talking to me before I get in the door. For some reason, some people don't want to go through the receptionist/secretary.
...As I get my helmet off, he approaches and tells me that he is from Madang (260 km away) asks if I have any motorcycles for sale. "No," I tell him, "I'm sorry, but there's nothing for sale right now." He wants to give me his number and asks me to call him when something comes up for sale. This never goes well, I'll just lose his number or will forget to call him. Besides, when a motorcycle comes up for sale here, it usually sells in less than a day. I stop him and explain that I don't usually know when things come up for sale, usually they change hands before I ever hear about them being for sale. He's disappointed and I feel bad for him. Once again I wonder how difficult it would be to become a dealer in affordable motorcycles. Maybe something from China or India? Every week I am approached by people who want to buy motorcycles and every week I have the same conversation with them. There's a rumor out there that there are hundreds of cheap motorcycles for sale here at Ukarumpa all the time and that I am the man to ask. This rumor has never been true, but it sure is persistent! I usually ask people why they want to buy a 30-40 year old Honda when they could buy a brand new Chinese copy of a Honda in town for less money. Even though either bike will end up lasting him about the same amount of time, nobody wants the Chinese one. It doesn't make sense to me. I also wonder why some enterprising person hasn't opened a store here in PNG selling Royal Enfields or Hero motorcycles. I reckon Hero would be a prefect fit for PNG. If the prices could be kept low and if maintenance and repairs could be done inexpensively, they would probably sell well.
Back in the shop, I sit down at my desk, check e-mail again, a missionary from another organisation working in Africa has written to me, says he bumped into an acquaintance of mine who used to work in PNG who gave him my info and told him that I would be able to advise him on his motorcycle problem. I write back with some suggestions, ask him to let me know how it goes.
While I am still at my desk, I hear a commotion at the front desk, an angry ex-pat woman is chewing out my secretary. I pause what I am doing and listen. Apparently there was some sort of work scheduling conflict. I consider getting involved as I don't like how she is speaking to my secretary, but I keep listening and am impressed at how W is calmly and empathetically handling the situation. I can understand why the ex-pat lady is upset, but her proposed solution is not one that we can realistically implement. Within a few minutes tempers are cooled. Afterwards the secretary--W--comes to tell me about it. I listen, afterwards I tell her that I overheard the whole encounter and that I thought that she handled it well. She thanks me and goes back to her desk. PNG can be a high stress place to work and sometimes people lose their cool. Most of the time there are factors we know nothing about--trouble with family back in the home country, maybe a troubling health diagnosis, financial difficulties, maybe a conflict with a co-worker, could be any of a hundred things. Often the best thing to do is to let them vent and not to take it personally. I'm thankful that the secretary apparently understands that--I make a mental note to talk to the manager about it later and to tell him that I was impressed with how she handled the situation.
I remembered! In a later conversation with the department manager, I mentioned this conflict and how well I thought W had handled it.
Secretary comes by again, says a man at the front wants to talk to me about a lawnmower. I tell her to tell him to go around the corner to the Construction and Maintenance department and ask them if they can help him. I've had to stop working on little lawnmowers because they take up a lot of time and parts are hard to get, especially for the Chinese made ones that seem to be taking over the market. I've been down the road of ordering lawnmower parts from the US or from Australia before, but it takes a long time for them to get here and shipping drives the price way up and sadly it just never ends well. I used to buy parts myself for some of our commercial customers and then sell them at cost, but I've been told by management to stop doing that. I used to buy parts myself for some of our commercial customers and then sell them at cost, but management has put a stop to that. I'm not crazy about the decision, but I am submitting. I understand the reasoning, I just wish I could help everybody who asks for help.
This has always been tough for me. Obviously we need to make a profit on order to keep the lights on and to cover all of our other overhead costs, but it's hard. It all makes sense, but it's hard. I often remind myself that if we can't cover our overheads, then we can't help anybody.
Back to normal work, there's a Honda that belongs to an employee at a local coffee plantation--the engine in it is dead, zero compression, but I happen to have a Chinese Honda clone engine with very low miles on it. I talk to the plantation owner--who is paying the bill for the repair--about putting my Chinese engine in the employee's bike. He says go for it. The cost of rebuilding the Honda (it's an oddball Brazilian Honda that I have found will be difficult to get parts for) would be far higher than what I am asking for this Chinese engine--in fact, I'm offering to trade my engine for his straight across so that I can tear apart the Brazilian engine and learn all about it. I'll only end up charging him for the labor involved in installing the Chinese engine. I begin installing the engine. It's pretty much a direct bolt-in, even the electrical systems are easily adapted to work together.
So far, this is going very well. I've had it started now, but haven't ridden yet. There are still a few parts I am waiting on before it's really to go. That Chinese engine sounds really good and I was very pleased with how well the systems integrated.
Our parts man stops by my work area with an armload of small packages, "Your parts came in!" he says. It's like Christmas! Fork seals for that KLR650, swingarm bearings for that XR400, a seat cover for that DR350, new air filter for the IT200, voltage regulator which will hopefully work on that Chinese diesel generator, that kind of thing. I spend some time sorting though the newly arrived parts, arranging them on a shelf in my office. While in there, the secretary comes to me again, says Mr. B, a PNG man who I've known for 20+ years and who used to work for Construction and Maintenance, wants to talk to me. I go to see what he wants--turns out he needs some work done on his Honda XR400, and wants to know if I will take his old Bultaco Alpina 250 in trade for the repair bill? I really want to help this guy, so we make a tentative deal, neither of us is very sure what the Bultaco is actually worth, but I'm sure we'll come to some kind of agreement. Do I need a Bultaco? No. But I really want to help this guy and I know his income is not very high.
We made a deal that we were both reasonably happy with. He got the work done that he needed done, but I still haven't seen that Bultaco... He will probably remember it the next time he needs work done.
As soon as we are done talking, another PNG man walks up, an acquaintance of mine, friend of a friend, really--he hands me a bag full of 3 big cabbages. He is very polite, smiling broadly and assuring me that he just wants me to have these cabbages because we are friends. I smile in return and politely accept the cabbages. I know he'll be back tomorrow--or another day--to ask for something, and I'm hoping I will be able to help him. Over the years I've learned how these interactions go. He'll be back sooner or later and will be needing something.
I think I ended up giving him a used battery for his Land Cruiser when thieves stole the one he had.
Just about to go back to work and the secretary stops me again, "There are several boys here who want to see you." Odd. I wonder what they want? I go out to talk to them, they are all MK's and it turns out one of them is leaving and going back to Australia. He is one of the kids who rides motorcycles and he asks me if I want his collection of accumulated motorcycle junk. He's got a whole pick-up truck load of wheels and frames and engine parts, etc. I take it all. Parts are hard to get, so I take what people give me and I recycle it to keep other bikes going for as cheap as possible. In years to come I will probably build a couple of kids' bikes to sell out of combinations of the junk he is dropping off and junk I already have.
About to go back to work when the manager calls me to his office--"Just got a call from Mr. P, his son was backing their car out of the driveway and he put it in a ditch. I've got a meeting I need to go to, can you handle it?" "Sure."
I grab the keys to our rescue truck, a 2002 Ford F350 4x4 with the 7.3 liter turbo diesel. It's a truck I have come to love because of it's impressive capabilities. We once used it to pull a Land Cruiser out of a ditch sideways just to prove it could. I motor up the hill to Mr. P's house, see the vehicle in the ditch, see the teenage driver looking embarrassed. I get out, tease the kid for a little a while, try to put him at ease. While hooking up the recovery rope, I tell him a story about another teenager who rolled his dad's car, think how much worse that was than this! Shortly thereafter, the F350 effortlessly pulls the car out of the ditch. Mr. P and I walk around it, checking for damage, nothing serious this time, that's good. Back to the shop I go.
This particular rescue is fictitious, but rescues very much like it happen all the time. Also much more difficult rescues far from home, but those usually take at least a full day of work and are worthy of blog entries of their own. The AutoShop F350 is in the pic below, along with the rescue trailer my friend Napo built at the AutoShop years ago.
At the shop, another Aviation guy is waiting for me--we had scheduled a safety inspection for his motorcycle today. I do the safety inspection (short and sweet). As expected, his bike passes inspection. Most of the Aviation guys take good care of their bikes. I do the paperwork for him and hand it over. I warn him that he will likely need a new front tire before the next time he comes in for an inspection (6 months from now) because I won't pass it next time. Today's safety inspection cost him the princely sum of $12. That price is set by the PNG government.
About to get back to work when the 5:00 horn goes off. Already?! The boss, the secretary, the mechanics all leave except for me. I stay until 6. It's part of an agreement I made with another manager years ago--since I tend to stay until 6 p.m. every day anyway, why not make it official? In the morning, I come in at 8:30 instead of 8:00, and after lunch I come in at 1:30 instead of 1:00. In return I stay until 6 and I make sure the shop is all locked up when I leave. Also, if somebody needs to come pick up a vehicle but is unable to come before 5, I can help with that. Today I have a wheel to rebuild--the new spokes arrived yesterday and I'll use this last hour to cut out what is left of the rusty old spokes, clean up the hub and rim, then start reassembling the wheel with all new, heavy duty stainless steel spokes. I like building wheels and it is something I am good at. I appreciate having no interruptions while carefully lacing and truing the wheel. Once it is done, this wheel should never give anybody any trouble again.
And that's it! A more or less typical day for me, though admittedly this one has been made up of (mostly) actual events from a number of different days.
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