Still Alive!!!
Yes, in fact I am. Haven't posted in a couple months, so here's a quick rundown of my life thus far:
April 24th: Return from job in Riverton, WY. Boss says we don't have any work coming up, so I should have some time off. Little did I know...
May 7th: No work yet, so I go visit some old friends in Cody, WY for a couple days.
May 9th: After returning from Cody, I head south to Fort Collins, CO to spend the weekend with a friend down there.
May 13th: Finally, something like a job: One of the other hands is working on a job in southern Colorado and needs some spare parts. I start heading that way, only to be called back by my boss after 100 miles to load the tools onto another truck heading there anyway.
June 1st: Once more, I leave on a hotshot trip to Colorado. This time, I complete the trip to Buena Vista, returning the next day.
June 8th: On Friday the 6th, my boss had said that a job might come up this weekend, and to be ready for a call. Sunday morning I get the call - I need to go to Garden City, Kansas as soon as possible. I end up waiting for my tools to leave ahead of me, and I drive the 600 miles in just under 10 hours.
June 17th: We finish the job midday, and I pack up my tools and hit the road at about 5 pm. Drive all evening, and I make it back to Casper at around 2 am on the 18th.
June 19th: In the morning, I head to the shop to see if my tools have returned from Kansas (they hadn't), and my boss tells me I need to be in Ouray, Utah by 8 am the next day. In order to take care of some plans that evening, I decide to leave in the middle of the night, after napping in the afternoon. Around 7 pm, my boss calls me to say that the job start time has been pushed back, and I don't need to get there before noon. I get everything taken care of, and leave for Utah at 3 am.
June 20th: I arrive in Ouray at about 9:30 am. Now, Ouray isn't exactly a town - it's more of just an area. About 30 miles southwest of Vernal, it sits on an Indian reservation, and there are maybe 10 houses alongside the road in what is generally considered "town." After passing the houses, the road crosses two rivers and then enters a desert area with nothing much besides sagebrush, lizards, bugs, and TONS of oilfield infrastructure. Gas plants, active wellheads, pipelines, and drilling rigs pepper the landscape. It's kinda bizarre - out in the middle of this desert, and there are all these trucks passing back and forth down dirt roads, and rig signs every which way. More on my time in Ouray in a later post.
June 23rd: With another hand out there to run the tools, my boss recalls me to Casper on Monday morning to be on call for another possible job coming up. I arrive at about 5 pm, after everyone has left the shop.
June 24th: Again, I head into the shop in the morning to check on things. This time, the boss tells me I need to head to North Dakota right away. I pack up my gear and hit the road for a rig just outside Halliday, ND. I pack for a long trip and hit the road around noon. It takes all afternoon, but I arrive at the rig right around 8 pm.
And that takes me up to now. This is supposed to be a long gamma job - it'll probably take me halfway into July, and if so, this job will net me over $7000. With that paycheck, if I've got some time off after this job, I'll be heading out to Cali, so maybe I'll see most of you soon!