Workers in the oil industry are very superstitious people. I will probably get in trouble just telling you about our superstitions, but the truth is I can’t talk about this well without talking about the superstitions. The most common and powerful superstitions involve food as you very well may imagine. If anyone roughneck or company man or visitor comes on location with cherry pie they are almost always instantly escorted off. Cherry pie is the biggest no-no out there. The second best is fried chicken.
I first learned about the power of fried chicken from a company man named Spiderman. (To this day I don’t remember his real name) Spiderman had a very personal grudge against fried chicken. I never really learned why but the legend goes that anytime fried chicken is brought to the rig bad things happen. Whatever can brake will brake. The hole will wash out, pipe will get stuck, the pumps will go down, or something worst. I have seen it happen on other rigs where someone will want a few more days on the pay check and bring fried chicken and something will go wrong. Usually it is just one thing that fails. And then things go on just fine. Sometimes it backfires and makes their equipment brake.
THIS well, everything has broken! We have had a broken top drive, electrical failure, a fried pump, a ground fault fail and a broken top drive chain! Not all of it broke at once luckily. In the last week we had a few hours here and there where we drilled and nothing broke. It has taken a week to do what we did on the last hole in 2 days. I know someone has fried chicken out here! Fried chicken did all this. Just imagine what cheery pie can do…
The worst of it appears to have past. We have made almost good hole for the last two days and look to be back on track(very slowly). Of course we will see if that holds true. (Knock on wood) the best part is that after the first day all of my equipment has been working. Maybe its good luck to have the same name as the well.
The last superstition is that a clean hard hat brings bad luck. This one is very logical seeing as clean hard hats are normally warn by new guys who don’t know what to do…
Because I have no pictures of fried chicken or of the things that broke (I stay out of the way when it’s not my stuff that’s broken) here are some of this week’s sunset pictures!
