SANDING BALLS IN URUGUAY

It was a perfect day for sanding and scrubbing. And these balls were feral! Splotched, grubby, rusty … one had a ring of black mold around it, and another had dirt in the nooks and crannies of the end bits. I had my work cut out for sure, and throughout the day, I rubbed and scrubbed so much, I even scoured all the color off of one!

It was Saturday, and the spectacular (and rare)warmth and sunshine – combined with the heat generated by my vigorous scrubbing activity – enabled me one of my ‘California girl’ ensembles of tank top, shorts, tevas and Hawaiian print visor: ill-placed, but like ‘comfort food’ these were my ‘comfort clothes’.

As I continued scrubbing and sanding, splattered with solvents and cleaning fluids and bits of ultra-fine sandpaper, several of the local marina guys wandered by. Although most said they were ‘practicing their English’ (like Grif, a Portuguese, who really is; and brought me a glass of orange juice which I drank even though I don’t drink orange juice, because how could I say no?) I truly think they just wanted to see for themselves a big blonde gringa sitting on a dock in Uruguay with a gigantic round fender rolling between her thighs as she hunches over it, scrubbing …

And while I sat on my squat, uneven, butt-numbing piece of timber, adjacent the greasy water spigot, gazing at the small playa (beach) hemming downtown Piriapololis, where scores of people were gathered for the annual grand prix car races (either that, or judging by the BzzzZZZzzz going round and round: being consumed by a horde of giant killer bees), I pondered my good fortune in being on my much-envied ‘adventure’ to South America. I mean, here I was, scrubbing enormous groadie boat fenders all day (Saturday, no less) in a third-world marina, when I could be doing something boring like flipping through old tattered copies of PEOPLE magazine at Happy Nails, or having lunch with a friend at the Blue Water Grill. Ho. Hum.

No, I was enjoying the excitement of a spring day in Piriapolis: scrubbing balls, and when each one was done, I tied it up on the wooden cradle of the boat, and contemplated how the whole thing – the green hull, the timber posts holding it up, the round and tubular fenders of various colors (and not) dangling from the scaffolding – looked like a giant Christmas tree. –ish.

And I thought about how, if I were ever to turn to a life of crime, it should be now: considering that – after all the sanding and scrubbing, solvents, thinners and pastes of the last few weeks – I have no fingerprints left.

I did take one break: to make lunch, and then that night, I got to shower at the marina baths – amazingly hot water with stinging pressure. And then, get up and do it all over again – although with the fenders done, today’s job was laying. Deck tread. Exotic, n’est ce pas?

What more can I say in this little ‘postcard’ from Piriapolis? Other than …. “Wish you were here”. Cliché, but true: it would have been so helpful to have someone hold my balls for me..

~ Betsy

3 Oct 2009