Monday, May 18, 2009

Water problems

I took a 1.5L water bottle full about halfway with me to paragliding because I was still recovering from the night before when we left early in the morning to get to the paragliding site. I was trying to hydrate myself like a responsible individual.

So we get to the top of the hill about 3 hours after we first departed from the hostel. Lonneke (Netherlands) happened to have signed up first so she was called up first to fly. Karst (also from Netherlands) and I, after a couple minutes of taking pictures of Lonneke getting tied in and taking off, decided to sit down and hang out while Lonneke was getting her ride. After about 30 minutes, we realized that Lonneke was landing, so we ran up and started taking pictures of her landing for her. The whole process was quick and we needed to meet the timing, so I just decided to leave my water bottle in the spot where we were sitting and I would come back and pick it up later. (I knew that Karst was going to be next)

After taking pics of Lonneke landing and Karst taking off, Lonneke and I walked back to where my water bottle was, except as we were returning I saw a Colombian guy (happened to be one of the paragliders) putting my water bottle down and walking away from it. From his facial posture I could tell he had drank from my water bottle. I immediately thought, "what the hell man?".

There's a restaurant about 50 meters away. It's not like the guy was dying from thirst. He was just stealing water from me because he thought nobody was looking.

This guy just looked like one of those people who haven't bathed in like a week. I wasn't going to drink the water bottle after he touched it, so I got pissed off that he had just drank out of it without permission.

At some point as he was walking away from the bottle, he looked at me because he had some kind of feeling that it was mine. My face was cross and I gave him the "what the hell is your problem?" look to his face. I made him feel bad, so he said sorry in Spanish. Then he thought I might not understand, so he said sorry in English. I flipped him off and said "fuck you dude." He really triggered a reaction out of me that I thought was only reserved for taxi drivers. I felt like I'd been scammed again, and this time out of a water bottle. I was tempted to force him to buy me another water, but decided to keep my patience because I didn't think hurting him was the best choice for me.

I think my reaction shocked him because after that he got all pissed off and he was cussing out loud to himself. Lonneke and I sat down and continued talking about her flight and about how quickly Karst had taken off after they tied him in. After a minute or so the guy was standing about 10 meters behind me and cussing in Spanish, which I finally understood because he kept saying the word "chino" which means Chinese. There were no other asians there so I knew he was talking about me.

I just kept my guard up in case he was going to try something stupid. After a while to the left corner of my eye I saw a guy throw a big water bottle down the hill off the front of the ramp where everyone jumps off. I knew immediately that it was him and he had taken the time to get the water bottle and walk all the way over and throw it down the hill, as if I was planning to drink out of it again and he was hoping that I would be annoyed by the fact that he threw it away.

Lonneke and I started laughing. He was pissed. He was looking at me and saying "fuck you." I flipped my middle finger at him again with a big grin on my face and said "fuck you" again just to piss him off some more. He was furious but he was tying in to take another person up in the air, so there was nothing he was gonna do about it. He took off a couple minutes later with a customer.

Karst returned from his flight. He got out. They tied me in and we took off.

After I landed, we walked up to the restaurant to eat something. We ordered and sat down on the picnic benches and had a good meal. The guy walked by several times but never said anything. He never even looked in my direction. I could tell he didn't want an altercation when I was there ready for him.

We finished our food, paid for it, and walked down from the restaurant to the middle part of the hill where people were signing in and flying. We walked down the hill toward the road from there and after we were about 100m down the hill, the guy walks out over the top of the hill and yells some random Spanish loudly down to us. I didn't even notice until I was looking back at Lonneke because she was coming down more slowly than Karst and me.

I saw some guy at the top of the hill pulling his pants down and mooning us with his ass. I was confused for a bit until I realized that it was that guy. I immediately started laughing and said "hola! chau!" in Spanish and turned around and kept walking. The 3 of us started laughing like crazy because he was such a coward and I had pissed him off so much that he was making a fool out of himself on the hill. The people on the hill were laughing too.

We walked all the way down the hill laughing and then waited for the bus. While we were waiting Lonneke told me that during their wait for me, the guy had retrieved the water bottle and came over and drank it in front of her bragging about it because I wasn't there. That made me laugh so hard. What a freakin' coward, seriously? Karst was there with her but he didn't know what was going on so he didn't do anything.

That thought annoyed me. He was lucky we were already all the way down the hill when Lonneke told me that.

I hope that maybe next time he decides to steal he thinks about it at least one more time first.

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Jim,
Be more generous and sympathic for the poor and pathatic people. It may be a kind of their hanicap or disability.
If at all possible, try to help them.
Helping somebody will make you happy.
Thank for not being such people.
Thank for everything you have.

May 19, 2009 at 4:40 PM  

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