June 30th, 2009 by Solomon
I just recently got certified to be a diver, after almost 4 years of living in Playa and thousands of questions from various friends and family about why I don’t dive. I am pretty happy with the outcome, I am not sure if I am going to be a dedicated diver, but I definately think it is something that will be good to pass a little bit of slow-season.
I did my first two dives(confined water) in a pool, like everyone else. I thought this part was pretty easy, but I did have some issues with bouyancy, I am a big guy and I seem to sink pretty well on my own. The major problem I seemed to have was that I kept trying to clear the water out of my mask by lifting the top of the mask and blowing with my nose, which is sort of the reverse of what I needed to be doing. I thought I got it figured out after a few tries, but it comes up later as a problem.
Now for an aside, sort of…the reason I was motivated to do this learning to dive thing is that my mother was learning to dive at home in the States and was coming down for a visit the day after she did her final certification dive. That meant that she would want to do some diving here, preferably with me, so I needed to get certified ASAP. Luckily, I had a good friend who had offered to give me the class, so I finally took her up on the offer.
As it turns out, my mother was not able to equalize the air pressure in her ears on her certification dive, so when she came down she was not yet a certified diver. We decided that we would do the last dives together, I talked to my friend and she said that would not be a problem, since it was pretty much the same thing for one person or two.
Since the first dives are all about testing dive skills and sort of getting oriented in the water, our instructor(who I might add her name later with her permission) suggested that we go to one of the local cenotes instead of the ocean for the dives. This takes care of a few problems, we avoid that pesky current while we are trying to figure out which way is up and all of the other subtleties of diving, and it is cheaper(I like cheaper). So, we picked Ponderosa cenote, at the Jardin del Eden for our dives.
This is what I look like in a wetsuit
The highlights of the first dives were the turtles floating around and seeming to really not know what these strange creatures were that were invading their space, the ducks that dove to the bottom of the cenote looking for little fish, and of course my complete lack of bouyancy control. I was up and down and all over the place, sometimes bouncing from a nice happy place looking at a something cool to floating uncontrolably towards the surface. After quite a bit of practice I managed to be able to stay wet for a reasonable period of time, though not completely in one place. I guess this is a skill that I will have to work on for a while.
On the next dive we went to Tortuga reef, which is in front of Xcaret. It was a good start, pretty interesting in terms of the creatures running around. Particularly I liked the current, which for some reason made it easier for me to stay in one place(at least vertically). I was severely underweighted, which meant that I was neutrally buoyant even with my BCD completely empty, which was fine for me when I was finally at depth, but to initially sink the first 5 meters was a big deal. The dive instructor actually had to pull my fin so I could get down on this dive.
Tortuga seemed to be what I would call drive-by diving, because the current is moving you along and everything that you are looking at is actually below you, so if you want to stop and stare at something for a while you face into the current and kick, therefore staying in one place.
The Tortuga dive was actually the last certification dive, so at this point I was a certified diver. Woo hoo! We still had one more dive left on the boat, so we headed to Baracuda, where I kind of dropped the ball on some of the skills I was now certified to use.
At Baracuda, you aren’t looking down so much as moving alongside the reef looking laterally at the interesting creatures, then you kind of duck into little bays where there is no current and explore. My instructor had added a bit of weight for this dive, so now I sank like a rock when I wasn’t using proper bouyancy control. Which I wasn’t.
I think I was tired on this dive because I just really was not with it, it was going along alright, although I kind of kept bobbing up and down, then I started to get a little water in my mask(The instructor says that this is from smiling). My mom and our faithful leader were looking at a moray eel in the safety of one of the bays of the reef, so I took the time to get the water out of my mask. I pressed on the mask and blew through my nose, problem: more water in mask than before.
I remembered something about get vertical and look up, then blow through the nose while pressing on your mask. So I did this, pointed towards up I started to blow in my mask. Now my mask is completely full of water, I can’t see anything, I am starting to get a little bit nervous and I notice that I am moving vertically up. By the time I realized that I was moving vertically up I had gotten above the reef, therefore above the protection it offered from the current. I can’t see very well, all I can make out is the blurry figures of my mother and our teacher getting smaller and deeper. All kinds of things pass through my head at this point, many of them being thoughts of motorboats overhead that I can’t see.
I kind of try to calm down, I remember my friend Hans talking about problem-solving on his blog and remembered something he said about solving “one problem at a time.” So I decided that this would all be easier if I could see, so that would be my first task. I recalled that one of my friends that happened to be watching my confined water dives had commented that my method for clearing my mask would be correct if I were in a cave and upside down, so I considered turning upside down in the water to clear my mask but then decided that the easier thing to do would be to push on the top of the mask instead of the bottom. This worked, I could see!
Next problem, I was floating up and away from my group. Well, I could see that I had sort of floated above the reef anyway, so I had to get over and back and down…so deflated my vest and swam across the current until I was close to where they were.
As much of a problem as it seemed for me, they actually didn’t even notice I was gone, so it must really have all happened in a short period of time. We carried on with the rest of the dive and we made it back to the boat without incedent.
We will see where it goes, I am not so sure that its the activity for me. At least now when people ask my if I dive I can say yes.
June 8th, 2009 by Solomon
So I had some problems with yahoo. They were providing me with email and webhosting for my business website, pdcmanagement.com. Last week the email address stopped working and the website went down. I tried to change my password online because I had just recently changed the security questions, at Yahoo’s prompting. That didn’t work, they gave me a message that I my password could not be reset online and I would have to talk to Yahoo customer support.
I sent an email to customer support, a day later they sent me a response saying that I should check out the FAQ or reset my password online. I sent them another email explaining that I had done this and it was not working, so after another two days they sent me another email with a support phone number. I called the phone number, I got to talk to “Seth”. Seth was as helpful as he could be, but didn’t know a whole lot.
Seth asked me a whole raft of security questions to verify that I was who I say that I was. I think their are eight questions total, all of which I answered correctly. Seth then informed me that my account had been deactivated due to abuse of the terms of service. When I asked Seth exactly what the abuse of the terms of service were he said that he did not have that information but if I wanted I could check out the terms of service link at the bottom of any Yahoo.com website, read section 6, and if I do not agree that I was violating any of the terms of service I could send an email to the abuse department.
I read the terms of service, I found nothing there that I was violating. The website in question had the most basic and harmless content available, I cannot imagine what they thought I was doing wrong. So I went to “abuse.yahoo.com” as directed by Seth. Guess what? There was no email address or contact form associated with this, no “Contact Yahoo! Abuse”.
I decided to send abuse reports about myself, to see if I could get any response. I sent them to hosting abuse, mail abuse, small business account abuse, etc. The only one that I got a response back from was mail abuse, which told me that I should read the terms of service, section 6, and if I don’t agree that I was in violation of the terms of service I should contact the abuse department.
Meanwhile, I have no email. At least no email that anyone knows. Also I had foolishly relied on Yahoo to maintain my address book for me because they do such a wonderful job of it and I was paying them and for Pete’s sake I never do anything to abuse the terms of service. I started complaining to Hans at CyberXHosting who is a good friend of mine and has been hosting Life In Playa since its inception. Hans suggested that I host with them, I was pretty upset, so I changed the domain name server information on my domain that night and by the next day I had my domain back.
Other people had email accounts with my pdcmanagement.com account, all hosted through yahoo. I went about setting up their emails on the new server, I set them up and then sent out the account information to the alternate email addresses that I had for these people.
I started getting bounce notifications, this yahoo email and that yahoo email and this email that isn’t yahoo but they host it, all of them bouncing. Yahoo notifies me that there is a permanent delivery failure, code 554. Again I was complaining to Hans about this and he went to the yahoo site to look up code 554:
There is something about the message contents that Yahoo! Mail will not accept for policy reasons. For instance, it is against Yahoo! Mail’s policy to send phishing/fraud attempts or viruses. If you feel you have received this error for a message that should be accepted, we encourage you to provide us with detailed information about the rejected message.
**A little aside, at no point on this page does yahoo have any sort of way to provide them with detailed information about the rejected message**
So, today, after wading through all that, I finally got all my email addresses setup. The webpage is up but I am redoing it so it isn’t much to look at yet. I got an email from yahoo! A response to one of my abuse reports. I will leave out most of the stuff because it isn’t important, but the last part of the email really got me:
Please note that due to privacy concerns, Yahoo! does not maintain
backups of customer’s mailboxes. Should you be approved for
reactivation, we should be able to recover your web hosting and database
files, but we will not be able to recover mailboxes lost in this
process.
I guess I don’t need to talk to yahoo any more, since the only part of this whole interaction that interested me was the recovery of my contact and email.
So, I really have to look at all this like a learning experience. Backup everything! You get what you pay for! If you have been trying to get in touch with me at the old email address, now you know why it has been bouncing. Please contact me through the blog, or facebook, or one of the various other ways out there so I can get you the new email address.
March 25th, 2009 by Solomon
So I have been really busy with life…it has just been sneaking up on me. I have been neglecting the blog for quite some time now, which bugs me because I think about it a lot. So here goes, I have a few extra minutes, I am going to just do a little filler.
My company was recently given the administration of another building, Las Margaritas on 25th and 22nd. One of the first complaints we got from the owners was a dead tree in the middle of the parking lot, a “Huaya” it is called. The tree is actually two trees, one large and very dead tree with a smaller live tree growing up from the roots.
In one of my past lives I learned how to cut down trees responsibly and even got a certificate from the forestry department that says I am allowed to do so, so I figured no problem, just knock it down. When I brought the idea up to the Val, who is now maintaining the gardens around Margaritas, he said that I can’t because it is protected.
I know that Val is full of useful knowledge but I was skeptical about his grasp on local botany law, but I figured I should ask around anyway. I asked a few people and they all confirmed to me that I cannot just knock a tree down, I have to ask permission. The rumor even came out that I would have to plant two trees in place of the one that I cut down, which sounded like a fair proposal to me, I like trees.
So I wrote a letter (Mexico is big on letters) to the director of the department of environment here in Playa Del Carmen asking to cut the tree down, explaining that it was a risk to public safety and an eyesore that detracts from the aesthetic beauty of Playa Del Carmen. I attached some pictures of the offending tree to the letter and marched down to Medio-Ambiente (the environmental dept.) in city hall.
Medio-Ambiente is located in the same office as Desarollo Urbano, so I was familiar with the office and the girls behind the counter are always very helpful to me. I showed them my letter and my pictures, somebody went in the back office for a while and returned with the in-house biologist. The biologist looked at my letter and my pictures and we chatted for a few minutes, then she told me that my permit was approved, I would just have to wait for them to draw it up.
I waited about a week and finally received an email telling me that I could pick up my permit, I went down to the office today and got it. I was absolutely amazed at how easy this process was, I was expecting a hassle.
December 3rd, 2008 by Solomon
The last day I spent in Mexico City wasn’t actually in Mexico City. We went to Toluca, a town about an hour west of DF. Its all really the same place, from a foreigner’s point of view. Just different bus stations. The draw to go to Toluca was the Cosmovitral, a stained glass greenhouse that is home to a botanical garden. There is a pretty cool history associated with the Cosmovitral, but you can Wikipedia that. I don’t have a lot to say about Toluca, I was impressed by the Cosmovitral but Toluca was nothing special. I think the pictures speak for themselves:
So, the Cosmovitral was amazing. Really. Spectacular. I would really advise seeing it to anyone who is a Mexico buff. I would also advise making it a day trip.
December 2nd, 2008 by Solomon
The next day of the trip was probably the most fun, I like active challenging attractions, Tepoztlan is definitely that. This is a cute little city just outside of Cuernavaca, about an hour and a half from Mexico City. The main attraction of this pueblo is the pyramid on top of the hill just north of the town itself. After a long walk up the hill, LONG WALK UP THE HILL, we finally reached the entrance to the pyramid.
Not all the steps are this nice...
Keep on stepping...
At the entrance, thousands of steps up a mountain, there was a refreshment stand and a little restaurant. It made me wonder if maybe there is an alternate route up this thing. Or an elevator. All around the refreshment people are enjoying their waters and deepfried bits, being harassed by “Tajones” as they are called in Mexico, though I believe the correct name for them is “Coati”. I have seen them before in Playa Del Carmen but usually they are timid and run away when they see you, not these: The Tepoztlan coatis attack like puppies. I watched as they tried to eat a small child and the snack he was holding, I should have stepped in and saved him but he seemed to be enjoying it.
They sell tickets to the pyramid at the top of the hill. At the bottom of the hill you don’t see any signs thatsay “Pyramid $40 pesos” or anything like that, so my common-sense brain brought up the question of “How many people leave there wallet at the bottom?” Anyway, we got up to the pyramid and had a little rest, it was a beautiful view, but I was starting to get hungry and I had heard that the market place in Tepoztlan has an amazing selection of food.
The view from the pyramid...
So, we hiked back down the hill and made our way to the market. We found a nice little place with quesadillas of various things. I like food, I am what you would call a huge fan. I really like food that I have never tried before, so I got a few dishes. I have been meaning to try “Flor de Calabaza” for a long time, sure I have had the canned Cambell’s Crema de Flor de Calabaza soup, but am sure it is not the same thing. So, I tried a quesadilla made with Flor de Calabaza(which is chopped up pumpkin flowers, by the way). Excellent. I also had to try a chile relleno, I have had them before but I was told that the chiles here were excellent. Another wonderful choice! So, the next thing that was more ordered for me than was a “Taco de Chapulines”, if you speak spanish you already know…I do, so I knew right away. Why not though? Its a traditional food and I should be trying these traditional foods, right? What you ask are “Chapulines”? See photos:
That is a grasshopper
...And that is a grasshopper taco.
So, I managed to take a bite of my grasshopper taco. That was it. I chewed it and chewed it and thought hard about how it was food, not bait…I managed to get down one mouthful, actually swallowed it. That was it, I couldn’t put any more in my mouth. I kept thinking about getting little legs in my teeth…eww. Anyway, I can say that I ate grasshoppers. Probably won’t have to do it again either.
After eating we wandered a little more in the village, I was looking for little souvenirs from Tepoztlan, nothing really moved me though. I was moved by the famous Tepoztlan ice cream, I had to try a few different flavors. They had “Mil Flores”, which means “a thousand flowers”, which sounded interesting so I tried it. It contained the Jamaica flowers and roses and some others but I forget, it was very good. I also tried various flavors of chile and fruit icecreams, also good, but I am not so sure about the sweet/hot/sour combination. I also had to try a traditional coconut ice cream, which is my favorite mexican icecream flavor, but I must say the Merida coco sorbet is much better than that of Tepoztlan. Overall, I like icecream, so this was good.
The trip back to Mexico City was again uneventful, I have to praise the merits of a good public transportation system, I love bus travel. It is so comfortable and I think some of the best sleep I get is on the luxury buses.
December 1st, 2008 by Solomon
So, the next day in Mexico City I went to Six Flags Mexico. Honestly, it is not something I would have chosen for myself, but the friend that I was visiting thought that it would be something fun to do. So we made our way to the huge amusement park, after riding the subway and light train and two changes of taxi, we arrived in the park. I thought it was interesting that it took us about 10 minutes to find a place to buy tickets, there were lots of ticket windows, just none that were open.
We eventually found our way in, they were offering a two-for-one deal if you bring in a box of “Bang” brand juice to donate, so we went and found a box of juice, then returned to enter the park.
We started out with a river raft ride, I should have known better when I saw the signs that said that this ride would make us “empapado”. Let me tell you about “empapado”, I have always heard this word used as “damp” or “sweaty”, like after a run. So I am thinking, no problem, a few splashes of water is no big deal. I had my camera, wallet, and cell-phone with me, but I figured I would be ok.
Now, let me explain about river-raft physics: The rafts hold six people, you sit around on a big circular bench, so the weight is technically spread around evenly and the raft sits flat in the water. Technically. I am almost 200 pounds, so when loaded onto this raft with five average sized Mexicans, the raft tended to sort of droop in the water on my side. I also am over six feet tall, so much of my body sticks up past the edge of the raft. So, the raft’s rotation is completely random, usually with the even weight displacement the raft spins normally while the raft travels down the rapids and everyone gets a little splash of water every now and then. It seems that with the lopsided raft, the lower weight always rides on the downriver side, therefore making a nice plow for every rapid and wave that we met.
After the first 100 gallons of water splashed over the edge onto me I decided I had to do something about the phone and camera, so I removed them from my pockets and wrapped them tightly in my shirt, hoping that they would stay dry. I got out of that ride, dripping wet. Everything I was wearing was soaked to the skin. Damp! Ha! Luckily, the wrapping the camera and phone in the shirt seemed to work out. Unfortunately, I got to enjoy the rest of the day “damp”.
Next, we decided to do the “Superman” themed roller coaster, which had quite a large line and was a very impressive loop of big red-yellow-and-blue steel tubes. So, we waited for about half an hour and finally got on the ride. It quickly zoomed high above the Mexico City skyline and even more quickly, dropped like a rock and did a cute little half spin on its rails leaving us upside down. After the first dip and turn I was already thinking terrible little things like “I am gonna die”, “I want off this thing”, “I wonder when the last scheduled maintenance was”, etc.
Fortunately for me and my readers, I made it off this ride alive, but thinking that I might have to rethink the amusement park thing. I thought about it for a little while, decided I had to change my attitude about the whole thing and made a conscious decision to have a good time. At that time I also happened to walk by a plaque talking about how Six Flags Mexico had been awarded the 2007 world amusement park of the year award. This made me feel a little better, you probably can’t get an award like that by killing tourists.
In front of the Batman roller coaster...
The rest of the rides were rather uneventful, lots of screaming and all that. I was able to have fun for the rest of the park, I finally dried off, everything went well. A day of roller coasters and the like really can be fun, I guess, but I am not sure if I ever have to do it again. The last thing we did was a nice ride on the ferris-wheel to watch the sunsetting over Mexico City, this was much more my speed.
November 18th, 2008 by Solomon
I have been out of town for the last week, I took a little trip to Mexico City to kind of alleviate the Playa Del Carmen blah before high season kicks into full swing. I had a great time, got to see a lot of stuff, and took a ton of pictures. I am pretty backed up with work after being gone for a week, but I will try to put this trip report together in lots of small parts.
I arrived in Mexico City at 2pm and went to the hotel in the “Reforma” district. It was a nice enough hotel and really close to everything. After taking a few minutes to relax and get comfortable after my trip I decided to go to see the Zocolo, the main plaza where all the federal government buildings are located.
I made my way to the Zocolo and when I arrived I found it full of people and television cameras and general chaos. It was possible to walk around in there but quite crowded so I decided to just look around at the federal buildings instead. Apparently, there was some fundraiser going on that involved the stars of some popular Telenovelas, but I didn’t find this out until later that night watching the news.
I made my way around to various historical buildings and saw the pyramid that is right there in the middle of the city, but didn’t go in because it looked a little bit cramped. It was starting to get dark, so I walked back towards my hotel.
After wandering around for a while trying to pinpoint my hotel I started getting hungry, so I stopped for tacos and a juice at a little taco place that was pretty busy. The specialty of the place seemed to be their juices, so I tried the one they recommended, “Lettuce-Cucumber-Lemon”, which was actually really good.
The next day, I went to the “Bosque de Chapultapec”, which is sort of the central park of Mexico City. The park has been part of Mexican history dating back to the Aztecs, but more recently is the location of the presidential residence and the national history museum. Chapultapec is about 3 square miles and has an amusement park, a zoo, miles of trails where vendors set up to sell everything imaginable, and some little waterways where you can rent paddle boats.
Chapultapec means “Grasshopper Hill” in one of the native languages, the hill they are talking about is the 
home to the national art museum. After a 20 minute walk up the hill, you come to the amazing castle that has been used for everything from the Viceroy’s residence to the Military College and then later the home of Emperor Maximilian. The castle is now a museum housing thousands of different articles are Mexican history. Everything from Pancho Villa’s wooden leg to clothing worn by Benito Juarez.
One of the exhibits in the museum is the memorial to the “Niños Heroes” or Child Heroes, military cadets that were killed during the American invasion of Mexico city in the 1830’s. I felt a little uncomfortable as the only American in the room as we watched the video explaining how the American Military surrounded the school and was shooting kids as they tried to jump out a third story window.
The view from the top of the museum is really amazing, it gives you a great perspective of exactly how huge Mexico City really is. I tried to take lots of pictures, but the smog was doing funny things with lighting so not a lot of them turned out how I wanted them to. (After that comment I am going to get comments about how to adjust the settings on my camera to deal with smog.) The city goes on and on as far as you can see, and being in a valley even the horizon is covered with houses.
After the museum I went to the Chapultapec zoo. The zoo had a lot of variety of animals and birds and was pretty busy. The aviary of the zoo is probably the most impressive part, they had huge enclosures with hundreds of different types of raptors. Zoos always have the same feeling about zoos, caged animals are just that, caged animals; once you have seen one elephant you have seen them all. I did, however, get a kick out of the Panda bears, all of which were sleeping or trying to find a comfortable place to sleep.
The last thing I did while in the Bosque de Chapultapec was rent a little pedal boat and ride around in the dayglow green lake for a little while. It was a nice experience, though I was a little concerned about the signs posted up around the place asking that you not get any water on the life jackets.
That is about if for the first part of my trip report, stay tuned for Six Flags Mexico, Tepotzlan, and the Botanical Gardens in Toluca.
October 31st, 2008 by Solomon
If you haven’t been out that way in a while, the new 115th Avenue has in Playa has been expanded to go all the way from Centro Maya to Santa Fe/Mission del Carmen II. I am now able to go from my home in the Colosio to PlayaResale in the Ejido to my bank in Centro Maya without waiting in any traffic. Big time saver.
Also, the neighborhood that is growing up around Plaza Las Americas and Mission del Carmen is pretty amazing. There is shopping, a gym, even some nice green area. The other side of the highway is looking very promising for a nice place to live in the next couple of years.
October 21st, 2008 by Solomon
I have been really losing interest in writing lately, maybe its the weather or something. I just can’t seem to take the time to sit down and write, I don’t know why.
I am going to start a frequently asked questions series. People come to Playa Del Carmen from parts unknown and often think that things are going to be mostly the same as they were in their country of origin. Not so.
I get questions from friends all the time about living here and how I deal with the little dilemmas that are presented to me in my life here in the Caribbean, so I figured I would share them with my blog-audience.
1. Utilities Bills - Where do I pay them and what is the easiest way?
The easiest way I have found to pay my utilities bills is at OXXO. When the bill shows up on your front-door/gate/mailbox/under-the-rock-out-front, put on your chanclas(flip-flops) and get enough money in your pocket to pay it. Walk to OXXO. Do it now. Pay it that day, at OXXO, because otherwise it will probably be late and then you will have to go to the respective utilities commission and stand in line.
You don’t want to do that. The line is twenty-five people and they all have three bills to pay. Paying at OXXO costs $5 pesos more, its is well worth my time. Oh, on time at OXXO means the day before the cutoff date on the bill. Really, trust me.
Late electric bills and cable bills are a big deal. They will shut off your utilities. Probably the day it becomes late. I don’t know how they manage to do this, they must have an army of shutoff technicians because they are very prompt with cutting service.
Pay your utility bill in a timely fashion to ensure that you have continuous service.
2. What is my address? Can I get something sent to me from home?
You don’t have a real address. Not one that you will recognize at least. If you need something shipped, it should be sent to the DHL or FedEx office, at least if you think its important. You can be fairly assured that it will arrive there.
Your address looks something like this:
CALLE 4 ENTRE 10 Y 15 (4th Street between 10th and 15th)
COLONIA CENTRO (Neighborhood: Downtown)
SOLIDARIDAD, PLAYA DEL CARMEN, (Municipality, City)
QUINTANA ROO, MEXICO
CODIGO POSTAL 77710
There are no known street numbers, like 123 Duff Lane. Sometimes you can find out your block and lot number, that can be helpful, but often people that live in a place don’t know that stuff either. I lived in an apartment downtown for a year before I found out the block/lot.
Even if your mail gets to your place, you might have a hard time getting to it. My electric bill gets stuck between the gate and the frame, if a hard wind comes it blows away. I know people that have received their bills under rocks. Mailboxes work sometimes, the mail got into it about half the time. It rusted and fell off its hinges, I never bothered to put it back up.
If I want to receive something important, I get it sent to FedEx or DHL. With the internet being such an important part of everyday life, nothing that I want to recieve gets sent to me via terrestrial mail unless it is REALLY important, I don’t risk the mail service.
More to come…
September 30th, 2008 by Solomon
I was had to go to Cancun the other day and on the way there I noticed that there were a string of streetlamps on the way that were lit up. Probably about 25 of them, with a few intermittent lamps not working. I wasn’t sure what was going on, but I noticed a boom-truck at the end of the line of the line of lamps, preparing to do something.
I was returning to Playa a couple of hours later and noticed the lit up lamps and the boom-truckagain, this time with the boom somewhat extended and a with a lamp pulled off of its base(pole and all) and laying down on the ground. There were guys doing work on the heads of the lamp, apparently changing the light-bulbs.
Now I am not sure, but it appeared to me that they were changing the lightbulbs on the lamps. Is it possible that they pull the lamps down and change the burnt out lightbulbs while they are on the ground? The logic really wouldn’t surprise me.
I didn’t manage to get pictures of the guys changing the bulbs, because I was going 70 down the highway and the thought didn’t register until I was past the men at work, but I did manage to get pictures of the streetlamps, so everyone knows what I am talking about.
Be on the lookout for this type of thing, I want to know if anyone else has observed the changing of the lightbulbs.
