9th december

Dave Jr. has some business in San Jose so I go with him and get him to take me to the United Airlines office where I get my ticket refunded. He stops off at a couple of agricultural places to get stuff for the vanilla transportation and to sort out his mailbox.
In the pm, we try to rig up a hydroponics system to allow the whole vanilla shipment to be transported without the need for external interference or watering etc during the journey. Hydroponics is the science (or art) of growing plants in sand, gravel or liquid without using soil. The Gardellas are looking at ways of transporting their vanilla to wherever without having to have anyone water the plantlets along the way. The system would basically water itself at set intervals suing a timer, pump and captive reservoir of water, or liquid fertiliser. Searching the grounds and the darker recesses of the laboratory furnishes us with raw materials such as buckets and containers, a timer and some piping. After one or two false alarms such as finding out the buckets were the wrong size, piping too short and timer didn’t work, we eventually concoct a machine.
It doesn’t go back in time. Dave says to me that it isn’t supposed to. I am puzzled.
Maybe he’s part cave man too. The vanilla plantlets would sit in the container and every few hours or so the timer would tell the pump to pump water into the container, flooding the plants and hence watering them. Then the pump would pump out the remaining water back into the container for next time, the timer having told the seal to reseal itself. Self–contained, see. Except it leaked. And the pump wouldn’t pump the water uphill. Small things but I’m sure Dave will work it out – he’s a bright kid. While he was busy, I nipped back inside and stole an hour on his FIFA world soccer 2005 edition.
The laptop has packed up again and I’m quite bored here already. Can’t chill in somebody else’s house, can’t smoke whenever I want or walk around naked. I’ve exchanged the rainforest with all its greens, textures and shadows for the asphalt jungle with all its angles, corners and hard surfaces. One is simple and works, the other complicated, false and suspect. I’m not a celebrity, Get me outta here!
Dave Jr. was messing around on his emails so I asked him to send an email to Jim trying to get a reply from him of any description.