14 Feb 2014

Happy Valentine's Day!

This is the third year in a row that I've been on field assignment for Valentine's Day. Jes and I have still yet to celebrate one together. The other two years were down at Sevier Lake. It's funny, I really don't do field work that much, maybe 15% of the year, but every year I'm gone in February.

Last night was all right. I got to work and the rig was ready to get me some core to look at. About four hours later I'd determined we didn't need to go any deeper (that's my real only true purpose out there, look at the rocks to determine when we don't need to go any deeper). I called the wireline guys up and they came out and waited for the drillers to trip out (drill slang for pull out the pipes) so they could put their instruments down the hole and measure the gamma (radiation) & neutron (density).

After this I loaded my samples into the truck and headed to the warehouse to drop them off. Never in my wildest dreams did I think that I would spend Valentines Day alone pulling a truck into an empty, dimly lit, warehouse in rural Saskatchewan at 4am. I felt like I was about to perform some sort of major heist. I kind of pretended in my head that I was to make things more exciting. Turns out I was just dropping off core and leaving. After stacking the core on a pallet I decided it looked like crap and was going to fall over if a feather landed on in so I re-stacked it on another pallet. My back hurts. I need my wife for massages!

The snow if very deep here. I snapped a photo. I'm leaning against the snow, so it's probably 1.3 meters high (yes this whole blog will be in metrics). You're possibly thinking "oh, but he's in the mountains" which isn't true, because it's Saskatchewan and there are no mountains. There is just over a meter of snow pretty much everywhere. The piles of snow that the plows make in the town are about 3 meters high. It's crazy.

Also, here's a cool shot of the drillers doing their driller stuff. They're such good workers. I like this crew a lot.

13 Feb 2014

I'm pretty much over being in Canada. It hasn't been above 0 degrees F since I've been here. Even in Calgary I'm pretty sure it was below 0 the whole time and I know for certain that the warmest it has been in Saskatchewan is -19 C which is right about at zero. It's just kind of getting miserable. Not to mention I've not seen the sun in a little over a week now, save for a sunrise and occasional peeks at it as I walk to and from the diner. This kind of work shift can cause serious depression.

I didn't do much last night. I finished my Voyager book and snapped a few photos for my coworkers back home. The drill spent the entire evening cementing an old well and setting up on a new one. I'm hoping the day time crew was able to get some work done.

This motel is going to be the death of me. Not only is it super ghetto, but it smells like cigarettes. The smoking rooms and non-smoking rooms share a hallway so the whole place smalls like smoke. You can't just assume that because the rooms are separated by a few meters the scent understands this and stays on its side.

12 Feb 2014

I was thinking. I really wish I would have done this for the Sevier Lake project. That would have been so much more fun to look at. All these new experiences... While being in Canada and temperatures of -38 are certainly new experiences it's all pretty standard otherwise.

Here's a photo of drilling because that's cool: The steam is just steam. They spray hot water to keep things melted and warm enough to function. It turns instantly to steam/snow because of the inability for cold air to hold as much water vapor as hot air, so it condenses and falls to the ground.

 This is the inside of the core shack:

I saw the sun rise over the great plains today (yes, Saskatchewan is part of the plains). I had never seen that before. I've only seen the sun rise over the mountains. It was like watching the sun set over the ocean, but in reverse.. and trees instead of water. The light shines through miles upon mines (sorry, kilometers upon kilometers) of atmosphere allowing the scattering of the fully spectrum of colors. So at the top you see a very dark blue with purple tendencies in it, then your band of blue and down to a thick band of green, below this yellow orange and a dull red, right at the horizon. Then the sun crests over the horizon and bam! It's all gone replaces by a burning yellow star and a light blue sky.

Oh yeah, I'm out here for a drilling project. Well, the drillers were making good progress last night until their casing was too big to fit down the hole and they had to pull everything back out and widen the hole. That ate up about 6 hours. Then I had two hours at the beginning of my shift to kinda kick back while they prepped everything. Essentially I worked about 4 hours last night and spent 8 hours in the truck listening to music, taking micro-naps and reading. Definitely looking forward to getting home where I can do those things with my wife.

I got to chat with the project manager on my company's side today. He's a nice dude, different but I like him. He was saying he liked my work and wanted to hopefully get my up to Calgary to work on other projects in the future. That makes me happy. I hope there aren't any more 24 day projects... but I think that being able to be put to work by the Canadian office would be great for not only my resume, but also for just making new contacts. The Salt Lake office has a fairly small geology group. Calgary's is three times the size.

I ordered a pizza for "dinner" tonight. It's like... 2 parts crust, 1 part sauce, 400 parts cheese. Kind of disgusting really. I think I may just about be done. I also picked up my lunch and the girl working there asked if I wanted a "bayeg" for it (pronounced bay-egg)

I had to ask "a what?"
She says, "a bayeg"
"I'm sorry I don't know what you're asking."
"Do you want me to put your lunch in a bayeg"
"OH! A bag, uh, yes, please."

I'm so bad at accents.

Last night chatting with the Canadian drillers they were complimenting me on being a cool American. I was asking what that meant and they were like "Well, you want to get to know about Canada and you never tell us about America. Americans think we don't know anything about it, but we know everything we want to know. But they go on and on about their country telling us things we already know" and then they asked how many guns I owned and if I knew Mitt Romney (because I'm Mormon) Clearly they don't know as much about Americans as they think, but it was a nice compliment anyway. Canadian drillers are cool though. Much more awesome than their American counterparts. They're nice, polite, answer your questions without cursing at you, don't tell you made up stories about all the women they're (not actually) sleeping with... They're just like good blue-collar hard work kinda dudes. If it were only about 40 degrees C warmer and I had cell service, this wouldn't be such a bad job.

11 Feb 2014

Definitely at the point in the field assignment where I hate this place. It usually happens about one week in. It's because I'm here long enough to be over the excitement of it being new, but not close enough to it being over for me to be looking forward to it.

My last shift should be the evening/morning of the 25th/26th (I'm working from 7am to 7pm) after which I'll ride with the day geologist back to Saskatoon. Ideally we'll get to Saskatoon around noon and fly out around 3 or 4, but I may end up staying the night in Saskatoon and flying home on the 27th.

Last night we finished drilling a hole. The drillers kept saying we were deep enough, but we weren't. I kept having them go and then finally we reached the fish scale unit, which is an interbedded silty shale unit with calcareous sands. We contacted it around 91 m. I was happy when we finally did and told them to go a little deeper to confirm, but then we were done.

The night before I kinda just sat around in my truck for much of the night. It was the coldest night since I've been here, getting down to -38 C. Hopefully I never experience anything that cold again. Last night wasn't too bad. It was more like -26 C.

How cold is -38? Well, your nose hairs freeze instantly if you inhale through your nose. Your pee steams very heavily. Exposed parts of your body go numb in about 45 seconds. Luckily I spend most of my time in a heated core shed that stays about 10 C. But when I do have to go out in the -38, how do I dress? Like this! Pro tip: wearing glasses all the time makes your eyeballs not hurt.

I miss my life in Salt Lake.

09 Feb 2014

Last night was not terribly exciting. My drill rig finally began making some progress and this was happy. As much as I do enjoy sitting around it was nice to actually be useful. The low was -32 C, I really wish it would warm up 10 or 15 degrees because this is kind of miserable. The roads are just solid sheets of ice and my truck has all season tires which sucks. If roads were even half as bad as the ones we drive on our here I would use winter tires without question.

The driller's helper that brings me core is a funny dude. He belongs on a drill crew about as much as I belonged when I sold used cars for a month. He's from Toronto (most drillers are from places with like 1,000 people living in them), weighs maybe 130 lbs, seems fairly well educated, is always imitating foreign accents and doesn't curse at me. I'm pretty sure those are all things that exclude you from a career in drilling. He doesn't seem too terribly convinced that this adventure will go beyond this project though. I tried telling him the benefits of going back to school and pursuing a white collar career.

The drill boss dude is really funny because he's one of those types that can't go 5 words without saying "fuck" but he's also very heavily Canadian so he can't go 5 words without saying "eh" so he's like "Oh fuck it's fuckin cold eh, I think eh that we fucking gotta eh go inside and fucking warm the fuck up eh?" Yep, one of those types. I actually have to really try hard no to laugh whenever he talks.

Anyway, my roommate just got a bit early back from the day shift and I need to eat dinner so this entry is short.

08 Feb 2014

Last night I saw the Aurora Borealis for the first time in my life. It was really quite exciting. At first I thought it was just clouds reflecting the lights from the drillers and paid no attention to it, but after about 15 minutes I realized they were sure moving around quickly.. then I looked up and watched and realized what it was. It wasn't what I expected. The lights were a very pale white and shimmered and danced all over the night sky. It made me very happy. I actually did a happy dance to celebrate. Nobody could see me luckily. They lasted from about 2:30 am until maybe 4 am. I couldn't find them afterward.

Last night was also incredibly cold. The coldest temperature I've ever experienced in my life. It was -34 C (this is maybe -25 F). It was so cold that if I inhaled quickly my nose hairs would turn into little icicles almost instantaneously. It's strange that it doesn't really feel any more uncomfortable than -15 C, but you can tell it's colder by how much more quickly exposed parts of your body start to feel pain or go numb. It's really a matter of seconds rather than 10 or so minutes like it would be around -10 or -15. Tonight is supposed to be just as cold. I'll be dressing warm again!

Drilling is still making little progress. My drill rig was not operational again last night, but could maybe have started today? Not sure. I did manage to stick my truck on the side of the road though trying to pull over to park. The snow banks are an immediate drop off and I got maybe 5 cm into is and the tires just quit going forward. My driver side tires were still firmly on the road, but because the roads are pure ice they just sat there and spun while the passenger tires were lodged in the snow. Luckily the vehicle was able to pull me right out and I continued on my way.

I purchased gas last night. Saskatchewan does that thing like Oregon and New Jersey where you have to have someone else pump your gas. I wonder if this happens elsewhere in the country. Here's a photo of the truck I'm driving around

Jes showed me our bathroom with no linoleum flooring in it. Her and her uncle are tearing it up today to put in the new tile we bought. It's really quite exciting. I wish I could be there to help and maybe take her uncle and cousin to dinner afterward. I feel bad having them help out while I'm 2000 km away.

I should probably get dressed. Actually I have to get undressed and then dressed because I think the heater in my room is having issues, so I'm wearing a huge coat inside right now. Naturally I'd have a broken heater in Canada...

07 Feb 2014

Another day closer to being done with the project.

Almost right after I finished writing yesterday Jes was able to get hold of me on her lunch break on Skype. It was happy to chat with her there. The Olympic opening ceremonies are today. They are being held in Sochi, Russia. There is a lot of somewhat funny photos circulating the internet from western reporters who have been arriving in Sochi and seeing that Southern Russia is not quite the western world. Everything from wires dangling in the showers, hotel lobbies being under construction or just not existing, toilets being across a room from another toilet with no stall walls, lighting fixtures falling from the ceiling and people getting into their hotel rooms only to find that stray dogs have already claimed it as their own. Funny stuff. There are also worries of terrorism surrounding the games this year because of its location near a politically unstable region of the world. Hopefully nothing happens and we can just enjoy some world games.

Last night I drove out to the field site with the project manager which was nice because he let me drive his truck. This was nice because I didn't have to drive with Mr. I'm The Worst Driver Ever on the way there. Driving in Canada is no different than driving in the States other than the KPH signs and signs saying how many kilometers to the next city rather than miles. Speed limits are typically lower too. I've not seen anything with a speed higher than 100kph (62mph).Though considering everything is covered in snow this is probably safe. In Calgary it wasn't quite as bad, but I guess Canadians consider Calgary to be warm. "Oh those Chinooks eh? Yeah they keep the south quite nice, ya." I guess that can't be expressed very well in text, but I love Canadian accents.

Last night started slowly. The rig was all frozen up and they just blew steam on everything for about 6 hours, but once they finally got going we were able to drill about 30 meters from 2am until 6am when we quit to drive back to town. I got to see my first oil shale. It smells like... oil... it's hard to mistake it.

After the shift I had to drive back with the worlds worst driver again. I think I have acceleration whiplash. He also does this thing where he's constantly making nose blowing sounds. It's kind of disturbing... Strange guy, really nice though, so I can't dislike him. He's just... different... We stopped to get gas in the truck. I picked up a few snacks for the night. My coworker told me about these Canadian Cheetos called Cheesies. I picked up a bag of them and they're rather awful. They taste like someone took Cheetos and ran them through a salt bath. I'm not highly impressed. I'll probably just give them to my drillers tonight. I also bought a couple Pepsis. They add an extra tax to them. It was like 17 cents per Pepsi. I wonder if this is a fat tax or something else? Also I wonder if it's national or only in the Saskatchewan province.

I'm Skyping with Jes now and really don't have much else to write so I'm off!