Monthly Archives: October 2014
Never Bite a Bee . . .
He might bite back.
After a fairly quiet weekend, things picked up today, with a little over 200 vehicles coming in. They’re bringing in the equipment to start fracking at the next pad about 200 yards down the road, which should bump up the vehicle even more. But hopefully, less than the 325+ we had during our double-frack period last month at the other gate.
About noon I headed into North Zulch to drop a letter in the mail and also to pick up some chicken from the gas station there for lunch. Strange as it may seem, gas stations in oil rig country have some of the best food.
And they do a booming business. The one here is open from 5am to 10pm, seven days a week, and have a menu bigger than most restaurants.
Unfortunately the one thing they don’t have that we enjoyed last year, was the seasoned potato wedges. So along with our chicken strips, I got Jan an order of tater tots, and I got a red beans and rice. All good. And I got enough chicken so we have leftovers.
After being at this new gate for a couple of days, it seems the prevailing wind is mostly from the south, or behind us, so last night/this morning I reconfigured the canopy so we have a windbreak behind us, and it also cuts down on the afternoon sun.
I got some idea of how much it helped when later I went back in the rig to get something to drink, and found out how cold it really was out in the wind. Makes a big difference.
We have a light tower here for our use, and it really helps.
In fact, Jan is now a fully certified light tower operator, i.e. she started it up and shut it down twice while I watched.
If you forget to turn the lights off before you shut the generator off, you can burn it out. Who knew. Now she starts it up at night and shuts it down in the morning after she relieves me at 7am.
Forgot to mention yesterday that Scotty, our GGS support tech, brought us a couple of pieces of Pecan Cheesecake for Jan’s birthday. Really nice of him.
As far as biting into the bee, it was the bee’s fault. He shouldn’t have been in my bottle of Lipton Diet Citrus Green Tea. I got busy after lunch, and when I finally got to sit down again, I took a big swig and bit down on something crunchy that suddenly burned like HELL, and I quickly spit out.
I don’t think he stung me. I think I just bit into his poison sac. I ended up with a big lump on the inside of my bottom lip that hurt for a few minutes before fading away. But 12 hours later the bump is still there.
That’ll teach him.
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Thought for the Day:
The Pleasure You Get From Life Is Equal To The Attitude You Put Into It.
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We Miss Our Tree . . .
Well, we’re still settling in at our new gate, trying to get things configured like we like. Unfortunately some things we’re just going to have to not like, but put up with.
Right across the entrance way from us is a set of production tanks to store the crude coming out of the wells until a tanker comes to pick it up. Don’t know if they plan on putting a pipeline in yet. There are almost 15 wells back in here, with more on the way, so it would seem to make sense.
We’re parked parallel to the entrance to the pad so our rig faces south, and with no trees for shade, our rig AC’s are once again having to earn their keep. Not sure yet if I’ll put up the Reflectix radiant barrier in the rig windshield. Today didn’t seem too bad so I’ll give it a few days and see.
The other problem is that due to the way we’re parked here, our canopy and seating area is about 30 feet back from the road, so it’s a short hike out to the road to log people in. But the extra exercise is not the real problem. The real problem is going to be when it’s pouring down rain.
The entrance road coming from the highway is just to the left of the generator trailer.
At our old gate, the canopy was close enough to the road so that if it was raining we could stay under the edge and still check people in without getting things wet. And by ‘things’, I’m not talking about us, but the log sheets. We’ve found no workable way to keep the log sheets dry while logging in people in the rain, Jan often uses a pocket voice recorder, but this won’t work if we’re busy. It takes too long to transcribe login info when you’ve got six more trucks coming in. But we’ll work something out. We always do.
The FRC clothing has turned out to be pretty comfortable. We got the FRC T-Shirts, which although they’re long sleeve, are not too hot.
And finally, on the Landon front, here’s this.
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Thought for the Day:
“When small men cast long shadows, then it is very late in the day.”
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