Panama and The Wave

Finally, the eve of our departure for Panama has arrived. We are both packed, ticketed, boarding passed, filled with Panama lore from reading books and visiting web sites and watching PBS, scheduled for the full transit tour on Saturday, and booked at what is tauted as the 14th best of 85 Panama City Hotels.



We start at 6:15 on Thursday and arrive in Panama City twelve and a half hours later with intermediate stops in Salt Lake City and Atlanta. I'm looking forward to those twelve hours of sitting in a space not quite big enough for a regular size person.



Here is what I know about The Wave. We have tentatively set the time of The Wave at 10:00 am PST on Sunday, February 6, 2011. If you have nothing better to do at that time and you really want to be involved in The Wave, here are the details:

1. Go to http://www.pancanal.com/eng/index.html
2. Select the Multimedia tab
3. Select the Miraflores High Resolution tab
4. In that view, the canal is at the left side of the screen, you can see a bridge near the top of the screen, and there are buildings, parking lots, etc. at the right and most of the bottom.
5. The Miraflores Visitor's Center roof observation deck is at about the bottom-right quarter of the screen.
6. You can enlarge the view by clicking on the image. This sometimes provides a better view of the deck and sometimes not. You'll have to decide that for yourself.
7. The deck is one large area and there are usually people visable on it.
8. We are going to stand at the upper right corner of the deck (at the side of the deck away from the canal) and we are going to wave from about 9:59 PST until about 10:01 PST give or take whatever part of that time we do not wave.
9. The High Resolution photos refresh about once every minute at a minimum but as quickly as about once every 15 seconds, I think depending upon what is going on in the locks.
10. This will be an ephemeral siting. As far as I know the high resolution photos are not viewable after they are refreshed.
11. If you see us wave, you should immediately report that to the six others of you that are on Facebook or, if you are not one of them, via e-mail to me, and anyone else you want to impress, so I can know that my one minute of fame has been visually recorded.

The time is still tentative and I will update you as we get closer to showtime.

If you have questions or need help, let me know and I'll call Terry.

JCE