Two Spears

Been waiting for a day with no photos (haven't left the house) to Blip another oldie; this one was sent to me by my youngest brother after I posted the last one - it's my Dad with me on the right and my sister, bgleyna, on the left, still in Ecuador, by the look of the house in the background.

My Dad was my absolute hero until I was a teenager. I'll tell one story about him. He had heard about a tribe in the Ecuadorian jungle who were unreached by outsiders and killed any outsider they met (to be fair, because of terrible treatment they'd received). When he heard that some traders were going in, he joined the party. At one bend in the river, the Indians suddenly appeared and started throwing spears at them; my Dad jumped in the water and held his breath under the raft until they'd been carried past, after which he retrieved one of the spears stuck in the raft. He was a champion breath holder and loved to scare us by going under and not reappearing for so long that we were sure he'd drowned - and then come up laughing really far from where he'd gone under. Making me furious, hate being scared like that.

Many years later, he went into the tribe again, after they had become more friendly with outsiders from the efforts of the widow and sister of five missionaries who were killed by them (story here; the missionary who told Jim about the tribe was my Dad) - and was given a spear by the men who had tried to kill him years before. He used to love to do a talk about that, showing both the spears; he was a riveting public speaker.

Gratefuls:
- managing to send off all the documents we needed to swap our driving licences, though it took me the entire day, and a lot of stress, and I almost gave up several times - but we can't do it in person, it seems
- a really good lunch/dinner, which we eventually had at 8pm
- Mike assembling nine drawers he's going to use in the shelf system he's building