Day 2 "Ten Hours in Santiago"

After an adjustment sleep we left to go buy supplies - more groceries; kitchen things; stuff for the house we're building, and most importantly - wood.

First of all, we're buying wood to build a small house.  So this isn't a couple of 2x4's.  So we wander down to Ferreteria Ochoa which is the local equivalent of Home Depot or Lowes.  And it's not around the corner; it's about 70km away in Santiago.

By the way, Wendy is fanning me as I type this.  Talk about service!

Back to the store.  So after an hour or so we finally agree on a list of materials and price for all the building materials we need.  And because everything is in pesos, it makes it hard to comprehend whether this is a good price or not.  "How many pesos to the US dollar is it again?  38?  238?  1,000,002?"  But we get the list.

Now we have to go to the lumber yard.  It's across town.  Off we go.  We start with the lumber guy.  After he counts and stacks most of our lumber we realize that some of the lumber is dimensional, and some is full-cut.  For example consider a "2x4".  A dimensional 2x4 is actually 1-5/8"x3-1/2", whereas a full-cut 2x4 is 2"x4".  Now if you're not a construction expert that's okay, just understand that you can't mix dimensional and full-cut lumber.  It just doesn't work.

That made the lumber guy mad.  So Benjamin and Mike had to go into the office and straighten it out.  And the guy behind the desk doesn't do that, the girl that handles exchanges does and she's on lunch.

Whatever.

While Mike and Benjamin are working on this, Galen and Greg realize that the roofing that they call "3x6 foot" is in fact "2.7x6.1 foot".  After some brief calculations we're short two sheets of roofing.  Another trip to the customer service desk for Mike and Benjamin.

Whatever.

Now we get all our lumber from the lumber guy.  But where's our roofing sheets?  Oh that's the roofing guy, and he's somewhere around.

Whatever.

Now we realize that we don't have the nails that we bought.  And it's hard to build a decent house without nails.  So off to the nail guy.  But our paperwork is missing a magic yellow sheet, and the nail guy won't budge.  No nails.  "Non clavo".

At this point Mike goes back into the office to "discuss" the situation with the nail guy.  And he returns with nails.

We all feel at this point that Mike needs to change careers and become a hostage negotiator with the NYPD.  He'd be so good that if he was dealing with a hostage taker with one hostage, he would talk the guy down, free the hostage, and get another hostage in the deal for free.

Now we have the lumber.  We need to travel back to Montellano.  It's about 70km back from Santiago.  Halfway back the wood starts sliding off the truck.  After stopping the delivery guy we attempt to go "North American" on the situation and solve it.  He just ties some more rope around it and off we go.

Whatever.

Long story short, we get the lumber to the site and unloaded and stored away.

There's lots more about our trip to Santiago but time's wasting.

Tomorrow we start building in earnest.

Or so we hope.