Our RV Adventures

Got some interesting news today about our rig. Well, the rig right in front of us. We have another rig right down the road. And two more right up the road, for that matter. But those two are not ours, i.e. not behind our gate.

Anyway our rig is a 3 holer!

No, not like an outhouse. Well, maybe, kinda. In that 3 holes are involved.

No, what this means is that they’re going to drill 3 separate wells on the same pad here. And amazingly, they do it by dragging the drill rig 25 feet until it’s over the new drill hole. And in a couple of weeks they’re gonna do it again.

When the rig was first erected, it was done on big steel plates. And when the time comes to move it, they grease up the plates, hook up two big honkin’ cranes like this one,

and just drag the 100 ton rig to its new location, using the two cranes to both pull it and steer it.

When we were following a Marathon/H&P rig down in the Eagle Ford area in 2012, they did this on our rig. And the nice thing about it was we got a couple of days off while it was going on. But since we have multiple pads here, we won’t have that luxury this time.

A few days ago, I started working with the Gate Guard Logging program that I wrote last year while we were on our frac gate.

Right now I’m just using to set up a database of everyone who comes through our gate, i.e. name, company, and tag number. This is all the info we need, other than how many people are with him, and where he’s going, which can change with every visit. The program is capable of logging people in and out, but I’m not using that function right now. I’ll talk about that in a later blog.

Right now it’s running on my laptop, but it would be easy to convert to an Android tablet like a Samsung Galaxy Tab, and use it instead of paper logs. I know some companies are using iPads for this, so we’ll see how it works out.

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Thought for the Day:

Since 1965 the Federal Government has spent $22 Trillion fighting the “War on Poverty”. Adjusted for inflation, that’s three times what the US has spent on all ‘real’ wars, including the American Revolution. (note: this amount does not include Social Security, Medicare, or Unemployment.)

At that time 7% of children were born outside marriage. Now 42% are.

The Census Bureau says the Poverty Rate is presently at 14%, almost exactly the same as when the ‘War’ started.

So, maybe we would be better off if we just surrendered?

Of course, also according to the Census Bureau, poverty just isn’t what it use to be. Check out this chart.

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Well, we bumped up to 100 vehicles today, but not bad at all. Pretty much slow and steady, sometimes not seeing a vehicle for 30 minutes or so. But it’s still going to be interesting to see how we’re going to handle things when the fracks start. Not the logging, but physically getting all those trucks in and out of our one lane gate.

As it is now, trucks leaving, come around the curve about 100 yards away and head toward our gate. It’s only when they get here that they can now look down the road to see if anyone is coming in. If there is, the truck leaving has to back up into a pull-out just below us. This is because the incoming trucks have nowhere to pull off coming in.

So if there’s a line of trucks coming in and a line of trucks coming out, everyone’s stuck. But, who knows. It may work. And then again, “maybe the horse will sing.”

It made it up to 88 today, really pretty nice, with 90 expected tomorrow. Then it’s 80’s again for a while, with maybe some rain. Of course that could change. It always does.

Our drill rig is back to making a lot of funny noises again, and they don’t seem to be using the hanging drill pipe very fast. But maybe there’s a reason.

A couple of nights ago, I was talking to one of the contractor guys as he was leaving. We’d gotten friendly over the last few days, so I asked him about this rig, about why it was taking so long to set up and start drilling, and why it was making all these noises I hadn’t heard before. I then mentioned that, of course, my only experience was the Marathon/H&P rig we followed for 4 months in 2012.

He laughed and said, “Them H&P rigs are nice. They’re compact, and made to tear down and put up quickly. And they run great. H&P rigs are the Cadillac of rigs.”

“These here rigs, these are Yugo’s”

Ah, well, that explains everything.

About 4:30 this morning I had the feeling that someone was watching me. And he was.

I looked up from my laptop, and about 6 feet away was a big black steer, just standing there, staring at me. He stood there for about 15 seconds and then turned away and starting walking across the road. By then I was finally able to get a photo of him as he moseyed away.

Our new GGS support guy, Scotty, came by today to top us off with diesel and water. We weren’t hurting for either one, with about 80 gallons of diesel left and 200 gallons of water. While he was here, he also did an oil change on our generator, which meant he had to shut it down for about 10 minutes or so. But no problem since it was still pretty cool. And not worth starting up our onboard generator for that time, as we’ve done when it was 100 degrees in past years.

I mentioned yesterday that today, the 15th, was our daughter Brandi’s birthday. What I didn’t know was that she’s in Atlanta for a business conference this week and Landon and Lowell are batching it. But Landon had to wish his Mommy a Happy Birthday anyway.

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Thought for the Day:

“On a hot summer’s night,
Would you offer your throat to the wolf with the red roses?”

“Will he offer me his mouth?”
“Yes.”
“Will he offer me his teeth?”
“Yes.”
“Will he offer me his jaws?”
“Yes.”
“Will he offer me his hunger?”
“Yes.”
“Again, will he offer me his hunger?”
“Yes.”
“And will he starve without me?”
“Yes.”

“And does he love me?”
“Yes!”

“Yes!”

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