May 29, 2020
I always find it difficult or intimidating to follow one of B-Rad The former Blog Master’s rants on TWAT mooking. Top ten adventures of years gone past and a post-black metal DOOM laden blogpost… They do not call him the Blog Master for nothing. Thanks for his contribution to this year’s ‘Virtual Blog’ on what should have been… and looking forward to what will be in the near future. Thanks for reminding me and even correcting my aging memory on some of the accounts that I have written over the past couple of weeks. The newly purchased twin towers of Doom, infamous Pila pumping incident, and the mighty Chicken Choker! Am! All good stuff and I cannot wait to be your bung hole plug in October Budday! Viva Captain Butt Beard!
One of my favorite Cusack movies in the mid 80’s is classic “Better off Dead.” A perennial loser Lane Myer (John Cusack) is standing on top of the K2, preparing to ski down the step and perilous slope for the upcoming race against Roy Stalin… the ultimate douche bag ‘Skiing Instructor’. As he fearfully looked over the edge making excuses ‘what am I doing’, his best friend Charles De Mar (Curtis Armstrong) was standing beside of him… encouraging Lane how to ski the mountain. “Go to the right… then turn to the left ready fast.” Lane Myer asked, “are you sure?” Charles De Mar said, “I’ve been going to high school for seven and a half years… I ain’t no dummy!” B-Rad is a highly educated gentleman… thoughtful words always flow from his corporate sellout knockoff rear end… I on the other hand took seven and a half years to complete a five-year course at Duke… Therefore, I am his Charles De Mar concerning the blog… your humble servant my friend!
“Memory strumming at the heart of a moving picture
All this time
I’ve been workin’ them angels overtime
Riding and diving and flying just over the edge
Workin’ them angels
Workin’ them angels
Workin’ them angels overtime
Driving down the razor’s edge & ‘tween the past and the future
Oh, turn up the music and smile
Get carried away on the songs and stories of vanished times
Memory drumming at the heart of an English winter
Memories beating at the heart of an African village
All my life
I’ve been workin’ them angels overtime
Riding and driving and living so close to the edge”
Snakes & Arrows, 2007, Peart
Our virtual blog journey takes our team back to the Teo community once again. An exceptional piece of juicy bush found in the mountains of northern Honduras near the border of Guatemala. This will be our teams’ third mission adventure in the trusted community… (Roofed a school in the second or third adventure, the electrify bandits in year five) now a ‘Bano’ re-boot for the school. As exciting as that all sounds, we are here with a heavy heart as well. Several key figures are missing on this trip… Que Pasa had digressed the year before claiming she would not be returning… she said, “that God had not called her back into the mission field.” She has been one of the team’s cornerstones from the beginning, only missing one adventure because of a knee replacement. Quanda, relativity still a newbie by years of service, but a much-appreciated member… guarded closely by the brain trust as a possible forth member… (Sorry Tumor… AKA Hondo). She took the year off to celebrate the birth of a couple of new grandchildren… Come on Quanda! You know my sacrifice this year… My sixth grand child was born on St. Maters day… that took a lot of begging and understanding from my daughter to get the blessing to come myself this year. Love ya Dee Dee and Lil Bit too! This leads me to Daniela’s sad departure from our group’s inner workings. A longtime Federation employee who has been the construction Jefe on all our mission journeys. He chose to leave the ‘family’ and do his own thing… that left me, Marco Francisco to spearhead the construction of this project. Faced with the responsibility of leading or ‘not’ going… the team may have not been able to go because the lack of construction leadership… Yep I just tooted my own kazoo.
Workin’ them Angels… Lucia and Josalyn… we did a pretty fair amount of that along the way. These two Future Federation standouts and My lord’s office assistants, joined in on the mooking festivities somewhat, but most of the time they kept KC comfortable in the shade while taking care of his paper cuts. When they were able to break away from the grouping session under the shade tree… twin boppers were taking critical photos and a few videos of la maquina at work. Over the years we have to bend the rebar forms by hand on a series of nails driven into a spare board (A tradition that was taught to yours truly by Rigo many years ago). A very prolonged process and certain prospect to blister your hands. Daniela had ‘borrowed’ a crude machine that would speed up the process dramatically… but again in the Honduran way, it was crude with a lot of variation. Once I returned from the “Great Wall of Mook” adventure… I began to build the mother of all wire benders. Built with all ball bearing drive and slicker than a Honduran bush country road after a torrential rain storm. All of the locals watched in amazement as B-rad and others worked effortlessly to make hundreds of the small wires to hold the rebar’s shape for the construction process.
Workin’ that Angel… Juan Jose was a great joy on this journey. He is the president of the community and a strong leader, worker and father as well. Several times he invited us to his humble abode for lunch, but the crem de la crem was his daughter’s 18th birthday party! The feast of steak with all of the trimming was out of this world! I am sure he thought… ‘Loco Gringos’ as he tried to teach several of us how to ‘sling mook’ on the walls after we build the new structure… I bet he is still sitting around a campfire on the mountain top retelling stories of how Jefe put more mook in his beard than on the blocks.
Workin’ them Hell’s Angels (B-Rad vs. Alien Ants). As the walls of the new bano slowly climbed from the ground, we began to dig the trenches for the new waste lines… somewhere along the process… Brad stirred up a nest of hell raising fire ants… Hell’s micro demons lit him up along his feet and ankles. He had several red welts, but by the next morning the welts had turned into massive blisters. On this particular morning… I walked into the kitchen area of our Comfort Suites Penthouse… to find B-Rad sitting on the countertop with his feet in the sink trying to clean the venomous injection sites on his feet and legs. (Am of the Day) I burst out in laughter at the scene while trying to give him words of encouragement for his pain and suffering AMMMMMM! Those Hell’s Angels did a number on that poor boy but being the trooper that he has always been… he refused to ‘Shade Squat’!
Workin’ them Mid-Summer Night Dreams… Drew us back to the Mayan Ruin complex in Copan once again. Our tour guide spoke Spanish and English very well. But there was something amiss with his English accent… I could hear a tint of the guttural language of ‘Der Fatherland’ in his inflection. I spoke to him in his native tongue, “sprechen sie Deutsch?” I said. His eyebrows raised mightily… as though he was… busted! Or secondly as a friendly voice and native language of days gone by. His back story was that he was originally from Germany and had moved to Honduras many years ago… the alarm bells went off in my head and others as well as we thought ‘Nazi’ defector. Beyond that complication… we toured the site again, gaining more knowledge about the insane traditions of bloodletting, piercing the genitals with bone fragments and how the Mayan calendar and time keeping process works… Intently I listened to him give an exposition on the time keeping process (Being a drummer we get moist when the conversation gets into time keeping) and added all his educational thoughts to my iPhone note pad for future reference. Welcome to the 13th Valktun 7th katun… better known as a no trip to the land of milk and honeydew due to Corona virus!
Workin’ them Glutes… Celebrating St. Maters Day is always a special occasion for the team over the years… always seeking to go one step above the last if you will. 20 de Mayo 2019 was no exception and it may have set the bar to an unobtainable level! Between Jefe and My lord the plan of attack was put into motion weeks prior to the trip. I know Mater realizes that we are going to do something for him on his special day, but I am certain that he was not expecting the erotic ‘Twerk-fest’ that took place in the dinning hall that evening. His eyes affixed upon the tandem dancers as they did a traditional Honduran dance… geez I wonder what a ‘Honduran Dirty Dance’ looks like! Blushing as he was over the dancing, but the happy ending came about with much flair as the cake exploded in a hot shower of sparks… Mater looked worse for the ware… thoroughly spent and exhausted without the hope of refactor for days to come. After that massive jizz exploding moment… (AM of the Day) Certainly… it will be forever entrenched in his memory bank… and our minds as well. A man of his age now… the only thing he had in his future was a nice cold shower and a scrape with his better half Beck.
(Video Evidence and Photos available upon request)
I will complete this ‘Virtual Blog’ tomorrow with an epic postlude blog filled with gratitude and sarcasm I am sure. Until then, “y’all keep em’ straight up there.”
Marco Francisco Valle Valle
Honduras Agape 