Update

The past couple of days, we seem to have been hit with an electronics curse. First our camera stopped working, then our computer stopped working and then the DVD player at our house stopped working. It is definitely time to find out about the god of electronics and make some special offerings. I will have a chat soon with Wayan who does all the offerings at our house to make sure we put out a special sweet cake for the correct god. It is amazing though how much we miss our computer. We took it in today to the local apple store and they thought it was probably the hard drive or the motherboard. Both sounded bad. We will see what they have to say. 


We also took a trip down to Denpasar to buy a new camera so that is done. 

Offering on my bike

Me on the ridge above the crater

On a more fun note, last Thursday, I went with a group of parents from the Green School on a mountain bike ride along the rim of Mt. Batur. Before hitting the trail, our bikes were given offerings and we were blessed with holy water and rice. I wonder if this should have been my first clue that I was in over my head, the need for a blessing for a safe ride. I was the least experienced rider of the group, but in the end I impressed both myself and the others. While I did feel a bit out of my league on a couple of occasions, it was a beautiful ride and was exhilarating. We rode along the edge of the crater ridge on a combination of single track and broken up paved paths, at times with grass taller than me making it virtually impossible to see. I had to walk my bike up most of the hills, but towards the end, I started to get the hang of some adjustments I needed to make for mountain biking versus road biking. Then we rode down into the crater, past a bat cave and along the floor of the crater to the other rim where we got picked up. Here, many of us including me, loaded back up into the flatbed of a truck while several rode up and out of the crater. On the ride back, it poured and we got soaked to the bone. It was the coldest I have been in Bali and I was happy to get home to a warm shower and a bowl of soup. When our computer is back up and running, I will post a couple of pictures.


It turns out it was the hard drive which I think was a good thing.  It turned out to be $160 for a new hard drive which has three times the capacity of our old hard drive.  It is nice to be back up in action with a computer.  It is amazing how dependent we are.