After what felt like ever (was only a week) I am back to work! Woooot!
I spent a week in town and spent a lot of it sleeping and the rest of it spending money. Anyone who has worked a job like this can relate. We don’t spread our spending out a little here a little there. Nope! It’s more like we don’t buy anything for six months and then when we are in town surrounded by all the flashing lights and pretty things we buy it all at once! So let me tell you I am glad to be back on the rig! (Goodies include new running shoes and arts and craft stuff)
This job/lifestyle is a lot like the army, in that we do a fair amount of hurry up and wait. As a result when the call finally does come in to go to work it is always a last minute scramble. The check lists of get out the door consists of things like making sure you have everything you unpacked to make wherever you’ve crashed comfortable, trying to find the rig on the map so you know where to go, and the most important, stoping at the last grocery store before the rig so you can stock up.
When I finally get to rig it’s rig up time! Rig up is just the opposite of rig down. We plug everything in and make sure nothing got stolen or broken. After the computers and lights the most important thing is the gas line and trap. This is what we use to measure the gas in the mud. It doesn’t matter what time of day you show up you almost always wind up running the little plastic tube we call polyflow in the dark and the mud. Nothing says fun like a new role of polyflow, a sharp knife, and a new role of electrical tape.
The trick to running a good line is keeping it out of places it might get cut, punctured, ripped, run over or walked on too many times. To do that successfully requires crawling under trailers and playing in the mud and a touch of creativity. It has to go from our trailer to the crossing where the cables and other wires of the rig are protected from the car and truck traffic. From there it has to get to the possum belly. There is a surprising amount of wires and nooks and crannies on a rig and sometimes the line has to go up and over and get taped in place. Some times it goes low and get tucked under generators and in all kinds of places. As long as there is nothing sharp and it’s not going to get ripped, odds are we have run polyflow thru it. Once this part of the job is done it’s all down hill. The only thing left is to carry the 50 pound gas trap up and plug it in. Then it’s all computer work. And then back to the waiting.
So there we are the mad rush to get it all set up and rigged up on time is done and now we drill on! (They have been drilling for a few days without us already) Raining here tonight in Oklahoma but no thunderstorms.