Day 1: Monday is a travel day from Montreal w/ a 2PM departure, so a nice slow day departing from Montreal; unfortunately my black jacket gets left in the black trunk of the cab and I have my glasses and maybe my watch in my jacket (not my expensive glasses, but my superstore glasses); travel includes an extra 6 hour layover in Washington Dulles (as in DC) waiting for plane to be fixed; get to hotel at 2:30 AM (I guess that actually makes for a Tuesday arrival).
Day 2: There are two drill rigs, the first one gets set up (see photo), but I'm on the other rig which is dragging it's but and the driller isn't scheduled to show up for ??? My first impressions are that things are a bit antiquated? old? slow? These drillers are used to doing things on their own and not used to having supervision. But since the 2nd rig is no where near ready to drill, I get to watch them set up the drill site - i.e., someone dump and spread a truck full of grave. This is highly exciting, even more when the operator manages to slice his finger open while operating the front end loader (i.e., he's in the cab and cuts his finger on one of the levers!). This sucks as I've just ordered the first aid kit and it's being delivered to my hotel tomorrow morning. Fortunately, I've got my camping first aid kit on me to apply some antibiotic ointment and bandaids. I get to spend an hour filling out a H&S Incident Report in the evening (which makes two for the site as another driller on an unrelated project is knocked into a mud pit when a drill rod falls from the rig - something that never happens and could easily kill someone).
Day 3: I'm going to watch someone excavate a mud pit (a 20' x 10' x 8' deep pit which is then lined and filled with water & drilling mud) except that on the very first scoop of the excavator we dig up a ~50 strand telephone bundle. Sweet! Pretty sure it's not fibre optic, which incurs fines of say ~$300,000/day, but still big problem. I scramble and hours later we find out it is dead / abandoned and not a big deal. Lucky.
Day 4: We stretch the liner on the mud pit and fill with water. I hang out mostly on the other well, which is drilling slow because driller is from 1963, has no mud kit, is trying to drill with water instead of mud, the mud pump on the rig isn't working, etc. etc. Let's just say the pace is underwhelming and I'm looking for things to do.
Day 5: The 2nd driller arrives onsite, so I should be able to get working, but the first driller's sister just went into the hospital, so we are still at 1 driller. Doesn't really matter as the mud pit at the 2nd site has collapsed (if had been filled with drilling mud instead of sitting for 2 days, probably would have been fine...). But the new driller has his act together, has a mud test kit (confirms my observation that mud is way to thin), orders a new mud pump for rig #1 and orders an external mud tank & shaker system for the 2nd drill rig (so now mud pit can be abandoned), etc. etc. Things looking up, but won't have a 2nd driller till Monday.
Day 6 & 7: Well, that takes me to this weekend, which should be Day 6 & 7 of a ten day shift, but which I've taken off except for my CPR course. Which means that I don't get paid, but... I could have sat around and billed 8 hours a day, but I don't mind a couple days off as I got almost no time off before this job and I have some chores and fun stuff I've been wanting to do (backing up laptop, programming my GPS unit I got for my birthday in 2006, making a couple CDs, new music on the MP3 player, watching TV, etc.). A 2nd driller will be onsite tomorrow, so I'll be working soon enough.
So how was your week?
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