Daily Archives: July 9, 2012
An End To Eden . . .
Well, our 4 day long idyllic interlude has come to an end.
A knock at the door at about 1pm brought our goofing-off to a screeching halt, and we were back to work.
More later.
It’s A Two-Holer!
Well, we moved pretty much on schedule Thursday morning, leaving our old site and traveling about 55 miles over to our new site located a couple of miles off off FM-99 near Peggy. TX.
The Gate Guard Services support guys were waiting for us with our generator and sewer trailers and quickly got us parked and hooked up.
This is the view from the front of our canopy. Jan likes it a lot better than the scrub brush view at our Charlotte gate.
Off to the left is the other rig on our lease.
Our pad is off to our right, all ready for our rig to follow us over here.
One thing that’s interesting about this drill site is that it’s a two holer. And I’m not talking about outhouses. It also explains why this drill site is supposed to take 7 to 8 weeks, instead of the usual 3 or 4.
They are actually going to drill two separate wells, 25 feet apart. The reason for this is so that they can start drilling horizontally at some point, one well going in one direction and the other one going in the opposite direction.
But the really neat part is how they drill two different wells with one rig.
They actually drag the entire rig the 25 feet to the next hole!
They just grease up those large metal plates on either side of the drill holes and then drag the entire multi-100 ton rig to the next hole.
This I gotta see!
Of course, from what I hear, it moves so slowly you can’t really see it move. But it will be interesting.
Below is what the well site looks like. The center one is for the drill and the one on the right is for instrumentation.
After we got set up Thursday afternoon, we looked like this from the top of the hill.
Later in the afternoon we drove down to the Three Rivers area to have dinner at Pepe Boudreaux’s. We hadn’t eaten here since before we got our first gate April 15th, so it was good to try it again.
I had the Cajun Chicken Breast, stuffed with crawfish, bacon, and cheese. Really good.
Friday we made a day trip into San Antonio for shopping, entertainment, and dinner.
After stopping off at Home Depot and Sam’s Club, we took in a movie. Our choice this time was Snow White and the Huntsman, another retelling of the fairy tale, like the Mirror, Mirror version we saw a while back. This one was a lot darker and less humorous, but very good. We both enjoyed it.
After the movie, we made a stop at Starbuck’s and Half Price Books before ending up at one of our favorite San Antonio spots, Magic Time Machine for a delicious steak dinner, finally getting home about 8:30pm.
On Saturday they finally started bring in some parts of the rig, but still not making a lot of progress. Great for us!
So about 3:30pm we headed to Pleasanton for the afternoon, with our first stop at Tractor Supply Store for a couple of connectors and some other stuff. Then it was on to Chili’s for dinner. After that it was the obligatory Wal-Mart stop to pick up supplies.
Coming home, and under the heading of “a horse in his pajamas” (anybody remember this?), we passed these companions to last week’s camel sighting. No telling what you’ll see on a Texas ranch.
On Sunday they still didn’t have the rig up and running so we headed off to New Braunfels to have lunch at Rudy’s BBQ with our friend Gina. Along the way we stopped off in Live Oak, a suburb of San Antonio to see Men in Black 3, which we both really liked. This is one series that’s held up very well.
After a great meal at Rudy’s (we got a bunch of takeout to bring back with us), and having a really good time seeing Gina again, we said our goodbyes and headed home.
One funny thing happened while we were at Rudy’s. A group of 12-15 people came in for lunch, but some of them had a problem. They were either vegan or vegetarian, and were upset that they couldn’t find anything to eat, except pretty much the potato salad and cole slaw.
Hello! What part of BBQ didn’t you understand, and why would you come there to start with.
Leaving Rudy’s we did make a quick detour a couple of miles north on I-35 to check out the new Buc-ee’s there.
At 68000 square feet, it’s recognized as the largest convenience store in the world. It has 83 toilets (34 in the women’s restroom alone), and 60 gas pumps.
WOW!
Getting back to our area about 5pm we were anxiously looking over the horizon to see if our derrick was up. And luckily for us and our temporary freedom, they still had not raised it. So it looks like our respite will continue for a while longer.
Monday, we plan on just goofing off around the rig, and waiting to be told to go back to logging.
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Thought for the Day:
Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.
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