PANAMA 3 - Panama City Tour, part 1

When we arrived at the hotel, Gary had inquired about the possibility of hiring a car and driver to take us to a cigar factory he had read about in a guide book. The factory is located in the Province to the west of the Canal Zone.

Early on Friday morning the phone rang in our room. I answered it but the person on the other end couldn't hear me talk. I hung up and within 30 seconds the phone rang again. Same problem. A few minutes later there was a knock at the door. It was a bellman come to tell us that our ride to the cigar factory was downstairs ready to go whenever we were ready. I went down to the lobby and met Ricardo, a thirty something Panama man who, it was revealed later, makes his living as a personal tour guide in the Canal area. He speaks excellent English. After a few phone calls he figured out where the cigar factory is located and quoted me $250.00 to take us there. We had budgeted $50.00 for the trip so I declined.

Ricardo suggested that we might like an all day tour of Panama City and environs which he could provide for the outrageously good price of $90.00. We decided to take the tour. (At five photos per post, it will take five or six of these posts to get us through it.)


If you were to draw a schematic map of Panama City and the surrounding area you could draw a rough rectangle about two miles wide and six or so miles long lying on an east-west axis. The Bay of Panama would be on the south, the "new" City would be in the southeast quarter, Tocumen Airport in the northeast quarter, the "older" City and the Causeway just west of center from the Bay inland, and the entrance to the Canal on the west end.

The American influence is seen especially on the west side of the rectangle and then runs roughly north and west from the rectangle to the Canal itself. The housing in these photographs is now privately owned. The houses and buildings shown have been extensively remodeled, in contrast to some that have been abandoned and are in tear down condition.


These buildings were all built originally about 1905 or so. They comprise barracks, officer's housing, commissaries, offices, warehouses, hospitals, everything it takes to house and service a community of about 10,000 and their dependents.

There are hundreds of buildings that appear to be part of the original building effort. Many of them have been nicely restored and are used for various purposes, from single residences to duplexes and triplexes, to commercial buildings. Some are still used by the Canal Authority and some are private. Some are simply abandoned looking. Ricardo told us that some were purchased by speculators when they were sold to private individuals and are awaiting rehabilitation. Some seem to be moldering into the ground. It wasn't clear what their status is. It does make me want to get one and remodel it.

After driving for twenty minutes or so we entered the Canal Zone proper. the first thing you see is the power generating plant where power for the Pacific end was generated and is still generated. It appears to now use oil fired boilers rather than the wood fired originals. A little further on you can see maintenance areas and old bone yards of equipment waiting to be cannibalized or re-used. Some of it looks like it may have been waiting a long time. Kind of like the bone yards on our places.

The first real look at anything that might be a canal is the spillway, at the right (or maybe above), that controls the level of Miraflores Lake. Miraflores Lake extends from the head of Miraflores Locks (the first two locks on the Pacific end of the Canal) to the foot of the Pedro Miguel Lock. I think it is about seven miles long and not very wide. It comprises the Culibra Cut which was, after building the structures themselves, the most arduous part of building the canal. Something like 125 feet of cut had to be made in places along the Cut. The earth removed was put onto rail flatcars which were on rails laid especially for the purpose and moved at will. The railroad ran downhill to the bay where a big angle blade scraped the earth off and contributed the material to make the Amador Causeway and parts of the islands at its sea end. Ultimately, this spillway helps control not only the level of Miraflores Lake but also Gatun Lake, which is the huge lake created in the center of the country by building a big dam on the Atlantic end and flooding the entire area with the water of the Chagres River. All of the six locks (two at Miraflores and one at Pedro Miguel on the Pacific side and three at Gatun on the Atlantic side) run just on the gravity flow of water from the lakes. It takes about 52 million gallons (about 1,200 acre feet) of water for one transit of the canal, be that one ship in the lock or a dozen smaller boats in the lock.


The photo at the right is the first real view we had of any part of the Canal. It is a view from the rooftop deck at the Miraflores Visitor's Center looking north. You can see the Freedom Bridge in the background. The lock doors on the left lock are open, those on the right side lock are closed but the water level is even with Miraflores Lake.

I am going to continue to post to this blog but I have been convinced that I should put albums of photos on Facebook so they are easier to access and more can be seen than the few I'm allowed with each blog post.

Friend me on Facebook so you won't miss any of the excitement.

JCE

PANAMA 2 - THE VIEW FROM CORAL SUITES

Friday morning arrived way too soon. We had begun Thursday morning in Medford, arrived in Panama at 9:30 EST, taken a lightning fast cab ride, looked over the immediate neighborhood around the hotel, and fallen into bed at about 1:00 am on Friday.

The Wifi didn't work in the first room we were assigned, on the first floor. The staff lady decided she would move us to a different room on Friday so we didn't get very attached to the first room, which turned out to be nearly identical to the second room. She arranged for us to move in the afternoon.

I went out and took a street scene which seemed to be capturing the essence of the locality but turned out to be mostly cars and the sign. Up the street, just beyond where the photo ends, is a very large casino and Windham Hotel. It seemed to be the focal point of the nightlife in our neighborhood. I didn't see the inside, partly because we were busy during the day and the night's activities don't seem to start there until late and by that time I wasn't interested enough to go.

The photo at the right shows the side and the front of our hotel. (I think you can click on each photo to enlarge it if you like.)  Our fifth floor room was just above the tree line at the rear of the building. You can see the side opening of our balcony/terrace with its roof. The top floor windows are looking out from the conference/breakfast room and at the front, behind the arched window, is the pool deck.

By American standards, this hotel is of only modest quality. It is clean, except we found out quickly that the tile floors were not clean enough to walk around on barefooted unless you wanted to wash your feet afterwards. It has an exercise room, a laundry, a complimentary breakfast, 24 hour desk, bell, and door service, and a staff genuinely dedicated to customer service. The rooms are much larger than we would expect here; ours had a kitchen, a small dining area and table, a modest size desk and chair, a couch, two very good double beds, and plenty of room to walk around. The bathroom was small and the hot water took two minutes to arrive. We bought a shower head at the local REY Super Market so we could get more than a dribble from the shower. It worked fine after that.  The air conditioner worked well but the maids turned it off each day so when we returned it would be hot in the room.  It took only a little while to get the room back to a comfortable temperature.  The Wifi worked in the fifth floor room but it was weak and I had to abandon my idea of posting photos and a narrative each day. 

The pool is very nice and I used it several times. I don't know if the hotel was full but we mainly

had the pool to ourselves any time we went there. At night, the view from the pool deck railing gave a bird's eye view of the neighborhood goings on.

The remaining photographs here are of the view from the pool deck. This blog platform is only allowing six or seven photographs at a time, so I may have to shorten the blog entries and increase their number. At this rate you may be able to follow the wonderful Panama trip into the summer.

The beautiful spiral building in the photograph beside the pool is an under construction office building. It will appear in several more photos of the City skyline. They were working to install the exterior glass walls when we were there and you could see the sun reflect from a panel being placed, kind of like the flash from a diamond facet. The view is toward the northeast.

The photo with part of the pool included is toward the east. The one on the right is to the northwest. It shows a portion of the large new construction shown in the photo below. Also in this photograph, at the corner of the Coral Suites building and the balcony half wall and behind a nondescript lower white building, is an under construction building that will be part of the subject of another post. I was amazed at the low quality masonry standards for bearing walls. There will be several additional photos and some commentary about that.

The last photo is of another under construction building. There was some painting being done on the exterior and workmen were entering the interior via the exterior elevator you can see about half way up the front. The two identical looking buildings in front are the ones to be used to show building practices. The one on the right is the same one as in the photo above.

Panama appears to be a City growing very rapidly without any real planning to accommodate infrastructure needs. Above ground power lines, and especially phone lines, seem to be going everywhere. Traffic is frantic enough that you could enjoy a day just watching the give and take, vastly more take, of drivers competing for the next foot, or inch of forward motion. There are traffic signals and lane designations and speed limits, but they seem to be only suggestions. And, without a horn you may as well stay on the porch. Honking is mandatory, or at least necessary, for traffic to flow properly. If a light changes and the intersection isn't clear, the traffic with the green light but no way to take advantage of it uses the full blown honk to clear a path. Eventually the offending traffic clears and the honkers have accomplished their goal. Not honking is perhaps considered timid and an unproductive use of time as you wait.

The next planned posting is of a tour of Panama City. If I can't figure out a way to get more photos included, it may take three or four to get through it. I have already selected 30, which is quite a reduction from the 114 available.

JCE

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

Quick Barbed Wire Unspooler

We were in the process of enclosing a small heifer lot adjacent to one of our feeding pens and when the time came to string wire we discovered that the fancy un-spooling device I had made years ago was 80 miles away. The four wheeler we were using has a steel tubing frame to hold a box to haul around irrigation stuff or whatever. I cut a length of 3/4-inch pipe, drilled two 5/16-inch holes 13 inches apart, clamped it down at the off end with two small lengths of 1-inch tubing and a piece of angle iron and two vice grip clamps. We used a short piece of tubing and a single clamp behind the pipe at the spool end. I cut two crude discs with an inch and an eighth hole in the middle and about 4 inches in diameter. A quarter inch bolt through the first hole, with a nut, then the disc, then the roll of wire then another disc, then another quarter inch bolt and nut and we were ready to string wire.



The fabrication took about ten minutes. We used it to unspool about two rolls of wire (1320' each) without any problems. It should have a brake of some sort rather than the heavy glove we used to keep the spool from turning too fast. If the basket rack hadn't been there, I think
we could have extended the pipe to clear the fender and attached it directly to the four wheeler rack.

The apparatus did its job. We didn't have to suspend the roll on a pipe and carry it. We didn't spend any money and only a little time. I'm thinking about a very simple brake system to attach to the spool and to the pipe. If you aren't going to build lots of fence it will probably work as well as anything you could buy. When I figure out the brake, I'll let you know.

Someone asked me about the mud flaps. They are each half of an old door mat tied with snap ties to a piece of 3/8" X 1 1/2" tubing and tied to the rack with smooth wire. Pretty high tech. This four wheeler sometimes pulls a trailer that will hold two, three-string bales. In the wet, the bales get wet and muddy from the tire spray. The flaps are another of our chugly inventions (cheap but ugly).

JCE

Recap of the Oregon Cattlemen's Annual Convention

The Oregon Cattlemen's Association http://orcattle.com held its annual convention at the Riverhouse in Bend on December 2-5.

On Thursday, Pfizer sponsored a Cattlemen's College that got off to an infomercial start with one of Pfizer's veterinarians explaining that nearly every animal health problem can be resolved by using Pfizer products and making certain that the protocol is followed through to the end. Dr. Gordon Brumbaugh, DVM, etc. explained that no pharmaceutical company can guarantee or even predict the amount of time necessary for a sick animal to recover. Furthermore, he claimed, no one advertises any time predictions for recovery. Those statements brought giggles from our section of the audience as someone recalled that about every livestock periodical contains advertising that absolutely does predict recovery time, including most or all of Pfizer's ads.

The infomercial portion finally ended and we were treated to some proprietary Pfizer stuff by Dr. Kent Anderson DVM, but without the blatant advertising included. Check out http://pfizeranimalgenetics.com to learn more about Pfizer's 50k panels and how to get your very own DNA tests done with more than the eight or ten markers that have been available up until now. Pfizer is marketing the 50k panels as a more accurate indicator than EPD's, especially early in an animal's productive life.

Finally, Dr. Darrh Bullock, Univ. of Kentucky, who has no obvious connection to Pfizer, made a case for EPD's and DNA information to be combined in some way to realize the benefits of both. He began by cautioning the audience that EPD's are based on progeny and DNA tests are based on the individual animal's genetics. The formula for determining EPD's is convoluted but as more progeny are added to the database, the accuracy of an animal's EPD's and his (or, rarely her) influence becomes much more accurate. DNA testing, on the other hand, gets you an immediate result for that animal (provided you know where and how to look at the markers) and may give a more accurate picture early in an animal's life. Additionally, up until now, almost all DNA testing has been limited to looking at single or very limited combinations of markers. With the cattle genome now documented and better computer analysis available, the ability to find and assess multiple markers will increase accuracy in predicting traits. The 50k Pfizer panel will almost certainly become 100k or many more within a fairly short time period.

Dr. Bullock seems to be an advocate of using the single number (such as $Beef in the Angus EPD) result of combining various EPD traits. He did caution the audience that it is important to know which traits are included in the composite number so you won't be selecting for something that you aren't interested in. The example he used was that if the EPD for milk were to be a large part of the composite score and your herd cannot support more milk or you don't want more milk, you wouldn't use that single number as a selector. He did think that some future combination of EPD and DNA information may result in a very valuable single number to use in bull selection.

On Friday, the convention turned to business with committee meetings, nominations for new officers, etc. The annual Oregon Beef Council luncheon was held and, once again, the audience was bored to death by a too long program during the event. The highlight of the day was the Wolf Committee, chaired by Rod Childers. Until recently the passion surrounding the wolf issue has caused the Cattlemen to tilt at windmills, fight with each other, threaten closing access to private land for hunters, and generally be shrill and counterproductive. Rod has managed to soften the rhetoric and begin to work on solutions. Dennis Sheehy has written a compensation program draft that uses a baseline of historical loss and provides insurance above that number, without directly tying wolves to the equation. Oregon State Univ., the Oregon Beef Council, several ranches, and several individuals have become involved in documenting wolf activity and cow activity by using GPS aided radio collars. The hope is to document interactions between the two, to learn if cattle are changing their use patterns, and whatever else may be gleaned from the data. The radio collars on the cows transmit location every five minutes. The wolf collars transmit every fifteen minutes. The resulting plots are, in the aggregate, a virtual solid color of cattle movement, which can be looked at one by one to make sense. The wolf plots still show distinct points but every fifteen minutes for 150 days results in many points. An attempt to compile a moving interaction documentary overwhelmed the computer before much was learned.

On Saturday, the day began with a talk by a man from Idaho who manages a ranch with serious wolf problems. He and his wife have spent many hours gathering data from wolf scats, kill sites, wounded calves and heifers, and have participated in the OSU study by having ten cows collared and one wolf collared. He claimed that he lost 60+ calves to wolves last year over his baseline losses, in an area used by about 250 cows and about 100 heifers and second calvers. He showed graphic pictures of animals that were apparently attacked but not killed by wolves. He talked about how his cows have become much more aggressive toward his dogs and to people since the wolf population has returned to his area. He claimed that cows that were workable in the corrals by people on horseback or on the ground are now liable to challenge anyone or anything entering their flight zone. He made some claims that he cannot substantiate but, overall, his talk was well done and his insights compelling.

Temple Grandin, the woman who is famous within the industry for her insights on cattle handling and facilities, and famous to public television viewers for her portrayal as an autistic woman who has become the preeminent authority in her field through a movie released in 2010, was the featured speaker of the convention. She had attended the wolf talk earlier and had taken several pages of notes. When her turn to speak came, she changed her prepared talk to include much interest in what the man from Idaho had said, especially about the changes in cattle behavior. (The Cattlemen's Assn. had sold tickets to the public to attend Grandin's talk and about 200 people, in addition to the convention attendees attended.) She has spent most of the last several years working on low-stress handling of livestock, mainly pigs and cattle. Her work is usually for packing houses but she also works in feedlots and on ranches and she has written handling protocols for McDonald's, Burger King, Wendys, Wal Mart, and others.

She talked at length about how the wolf may cause her to re-think her handling ideas on the ranch. She also talked about her belief that livestock have a place on the land and that the wolf also has a place. She did the livestock industry a service by speaking out without reservation about the humane treatment of cattle in the food chain. The took many questions and, as is apparently typical of autistic people, she showed little interest in softening her remarks to sooth people's feelings. She said "...lawyers should all be locked in the closet."

There was much more to see and do at the convention with a good trade show, lots of people to visit with who you only see once or twice a year, and other meetings in other rooms that will determine the direction and efforts of the Cattlemen for the next year.

JCE

First 2011 Calf

The first calf of the 2011 season was born at about 11:30 am on 12/9/2010. The bull calf's mother (846) is a six year old cow with a mixed calving history. She calved as a two year old but the calf died two days later, apparently the result of being stepped on. She did not calve in 2008 and was placed in the cull cow pen to be sold. When we shipped cull cows we had several more than made even loads and she was cut back. She had a very nice heifer calf in 2009. That calf was retained as a replacement heifer prospect (photo below) and will calve this spring. She missed again in the spring of 2010 and was bred on the hay grounds before we expected her to calve. (We have foregone preg-testing for the last ten years since about 98% of our cows usually calve, so we assumed she was going to calve in the spring of 2010.) We were guilty of not separating several timid bulls from that group of cows, thinking that the cows were all bred and wouldn't bull again until at least mid-April, after they had calved and were moved out of that field. Those bulls weren't doing well in with the other bulls and were put with that group of cows so they wouldn't get beaten up at the feed bunks every day. I'm curious about how she must have been bulling on the hay grounds and no one noticed. Anyway, we have a problem cow that should have been culled twice by now, who is in the prime of her life, in great condition, and who has a good calf.

She will go into a group of cows that will be preg-tested this fall. I think we will start testing again, but just those cows that, for whatever reason, are recognized as possibly open.

JCE

On the Road to Bend

We fed early and got on the road for Bend and the Oregon Cattlemen's (OCA) Annual Convention at the Riverhouse. It was raining steadily at home and on the road until it turned to snow at Prospect and packed snow and snowing hard at Union Creek. We were in four wheel drive from there to nearly LaPine on Hwy 97, about 80 miles, where the snow turned rainy and the roadway cleared.
From there into Bend the snow and rain alternated but the roadway remained clear. We arrived at 11:15, checked in, had some lunch, and then I went to the opening session of the OCA convention. Several good speakers talked about cattle genetics, how genome information is rapidly becoming available, how it is and will be used, and how the new information will integrate, or not, with existing selection aids.
Back at home, the drain tile under the Antelope corrals fell behind during the night. There was about six inches of standing water on the low sides of several pens this morning. Since this is pretty exciting stuff, I should have taken a photograph. If it is still there on Sunday I'll take a picture and put it here. The cattle seemed unaffected and were going about their business as usual. The only interaction they need to have with the water is walking through it to get from the field to the feed bunks. The feed bunks are about two feet higher than the water and more than 40' away at the closest.