SAUL TO THE RESCUE, AGAIN !

Since I had recently been to the beach, on Sunday I decided to do laundry and mop the floors.  First I started the laundry.  Half way through mopping, I decided to take a break (it only takes about twenty minutes for the floors to dry here).  I took a beer up to the deck and checked on the washing.  It had stopped at "spin".  I tried to get it going again, but nothing worked.  Then I decided that it must be my fault.

I had  tried to do a large load of two beach towels, two large bath towels, several hand towels and a weeks underwear (all white).  I pulled several large sopping towels out and tried again.  NO!  It would not spin, so I started the whole cycle over again (minus a few large towels).  The same thing happened.  When it got to spin and it's supposed to lock the lid, it stopped.  I gave up and tried to remove the towels and wring them out.  This is not easy to do with beach towels without dropping them on the floor.  The laundry is on the deck which is hosed down, but not mopped and is always dirty.   I was unable to wring out much water.  I threw them in the dryer anyway.  It took five hours to dry it all in several batches.  Of course, I was also afraid of drowning the dryer and thus ruining it too.

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Monday morning I called my trusted Saul.  He said he would be there in one hour.  I told him to make it two hours as I was off to my Spanish class.  An hour after he was due, I called again.  He said he was in his shop and would be there in a "few minutes"  One more hour passed.  You just must accept this as part of the Mexican culture.  Saul has saved me so much money, I cannot get mad at him.  I put the machine on the spin cycle and showed him that it does not spin. He unplugged it and holding on to the wire and touching the copper pipe, plugged it back in.

Well, I thought this was the dumbest thing I had ever seen (well, maybe not The Dumbest, since I live in Mexico).  He then wanted to start the whole cycle over again.  I screamed for it would take at least 30 minutes and the machine would fill with water which we might not be able to get out. So to shorten the time, I switched to Lavado Express.   He said he was going to get a taco and would be back in 20 minutes.  Two hours later he showed up (must have been a very large taco ) and the machine had completed its cycle.  I was sure that Lavado Express, must skip the second rinse and spin, so we started it over on the normal cycle.  We had a beer (or two).  Sure enough it finished the cycle.

I was amazed, but Saul calmly said that he had done this before.  The problem is that none of the plugs are grounded and all appliances have a "tarjeta"  We had to look that up in the dictionary and it turns out to be a computer card.  At that point I told him that "when he had time"  I wanted all my plugs grounded.  He said he could, but all I had to do was to hold on to the plug and a copper pipe.  I told him I would rather pay for the rewiring.

Maybe the overloaded machine shorted out.  But why didn't the circuit breaker go off.  Or do we even have circuit breakers here?  You never get to the bottom of anything in Mexico.  You just accept everything for what it is (or does) here, and be very thankful for a Saul.



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