No Ceda

No Ceda

Beach time is a saying I often heard prior to coming to Costa Rica.  This chill laid back nature further slows when you can’t quite speak Spanish.  At least that has been my experience with dabbling into construction needs.  

Kylah and her well worn tropical friends all said, we need a dryer, una secadora.  I recall growing up in CA without a dryer for years. The smell and feel of wind and sun dried sheets is like nothing else.  The difference between humidity where I grew up and where we are now though is to say… a bit different.  Things don’t really dry, they get a hint of dry surface with a hiding damp center.  Hello Skin fungus, it’s among us.

Two weeks into my experiment...We needed a dryer.

So off to get una secadora, but we didn’t have an electric option, rather, we needed a “gas” dryer. Enter my satisfying but at times overwhelmed lumbering journey to get this set up.  Shopping for dryers, well, only one in town, so sweet, not too hard.  Loaded up, but we need the gas hookup. To the hardware store, or ferreteria. But at the small ferreteria, you can’t find your part, you have to describe it to the kind gentlemen at the counter, kind of like your going into a Napa in the states.  I needed a 3/8 brass elbow to connect pipe thread to hose bib. I’ve been pretty successful with my spanglish and gesturing thus far, but not at this juncture.  Regardless, I went home with the wrong parts.  

Ok, so another attempt the next day, luckily I found my buddy Brad in town, he guided me to another ferreteria that was more along the lines of a Home Depot kinda vibe.  I still needed to ask for some help, but I was able to also dig and look along w/ some pictures, we found our part… but what about the gas?

Gas dryers in Costa, and any appliance in costa don’t use natural gas, they’re all propane.  Shoot, you can’t even buy natural gas and the lady at the counter was trying to help me out with this understanding.  My dryer said it could be converted to propane but had it?  I wasn’t sure… Speaking with the clerk, and back and forth with another worker, I decided, that more than likely it was good and I bought the propane, but the questioning game earned me the nickname of “Adam No Ceda “… Adam, doesn’t yield.  

Back at the appliance store, I verified that the propane would work before I blew us up or ruined the dryer.
So three days in, we got it turned on!  Hooray, we have dry clothes.

My buddy brad helped validate my reality of running errands, you may have a list, but if you get one thing on that list done, you should feel accomplished.