all's well that begins well. if you start at the ending.

as i type this, i'm sitting in sweats and listening to radiohead (kid a to present). i feel really great.

just before now, i took one of those showers where you can feel every drop of water washing the day right off you. every nerve is reporting some euphoric feeling that is not only good but also better than the moment before it. all my sore muscles slowly, slowly relaxed and the aches just dripped off and flowed down the drain.

the trip back home, though, took about an hour and 45 minutes instead of the 25 minutes it usually takes. this included approximately one hour sitting completely stationary at an intersection in a special version of gridlock that you just can't get in the states.

the hour before leaving, we were re-soldering copper pipe joints that had leaks. i am very sad to say that these joints were mine. it occurred to me that maybe darryl didn't know how to solder at all.

just before we tested the plumbing, the missionary whose house we were working on (dan) told me he didn't know i was so multi-talented, referring to the soldering. i nervously said "we'll see!"

about an hour before i started the soldering, don asked me if i'd be comfortable doing it--it was about to rain and we were running out of time to finish everything. i said i'd feel better about doing it if someone was watching me. he said darryl could watch.

an hour previous to this, i was assisting don (darryl's neighbor) and telling him that when i was about 14 my grandpa (a plumber) and my dad and i did some plumbing on the house we'd just moved into, so i had some knowledge of the doings. we heard thunder and noted we'd better hurry so we could get to the soldering outside.

the hours before this i'd been cutting pipe and prepping joints for soldering, and chipping cement away with hammer and chisel to make a way for the pipes to go from the new water heater and into the house--the kind of activity that always leaves my hands and wrists and fingers and forearms terribly sore.

this morning i woke up at 5:45 like always and thought to myself how glad i was that i didn't have to get up just then.

a couple days ago dan was talking about having to run copper pipe and asked darryl (the owner of the guest house here) if he could come, and i said i'd be happy to come and help.