Monday

I’ve been wanting to try something a little different for a while now and I think I found a good chance to do that.  After being in Colorado for a while I’ve realized how hard it is to figure out what I actually do day-to-day. I’ve decided the only way to give a picture of that is to actually write about the day-to-day on a day-to-day basis. Of course I’m under no such delusion that I’ll actually be able to do that all the time, so we’re going to try it for a week.  Originally I wanted to start on Monday because I was in the base and figured I’d start a new job and you’d get to see all aspects of my job, at the base and in the field. Of course I was correct and thus it’s already Wednesday and I’m at the rig after being up all night and I have no internet to post. So I’m going to still start with Monday, but you probably won’t be reading this Monday. Or Tuesday. Or even Wednesday depending on when my internet gets here… So think back to Monday. Pretend its Monday.

Monday I woke up to someone slamming their door downstairs. I looked at my phone and realized I didn’t set an alarm and the car to the base was probably arriving in 5 mins.  I got ready super-fast and sure enough the car was there. They didn’t have to wait for me very long and we were on our way to the base. I breathalyzed into the base (I was sober, not a surprise at 9 am) and went into the office. 

We have a million trainees right now, and a lot of them are at the base getting ready for school or getting their training done so they can go to the rig. Because of this the engineer room was full and I went back to sit in the conference room at the back of the office with a few others. I arrived back from a job on Sunday, so in addition to my computer, I was also responsible for the two work computers we had with us on the job.  I locked up all three computers. I also introduced myself to two new trainees we (more Americans! I’m not alone anymore!) and checked in with another trainee about to take his pre-school test.

Week of the Mariachi

Have you ever been to a really tacky Mexican restaurant? Or to a really good Mexican restaurant?  If there was a live band playing (without an accordion) chances are it was a mariachi band.  Guadalajara is famous for them and believe it or not, actual real Mexicans do listen to mariachi music. They even occasionally hire mariachi bands to come play at special events. On rare occasions, somebody drinks a little too much tequila or Corona or Modelo or whatever and decides that a Tuesday night at the staff house is a special enough occasion to warrant a mariachi. Or a half mariachi because a proper mariachi is 10 or more and our mariachi was only 5, or so I’m told.

First, some background:

This is actually from a different party,
But the hat is awesome. 

This last week there must have been some strange alignment of planets because a very rare event occurred. There were about 20 engineers in from the field.  Normally, when I’m in Villahermosa I’m surprised if I see 4 or 5 of my other field engineers. For 20 engineers to be in from the field all at the same time has never happened in the (almost) year I’ve been in Villahermosa. Usually when it does happen, it’s because the rigs have been evacuated or something. This time was much less dramatic. Of our normal 15-20 rigs, only about 4 of them happened to be drilling. Which meant all of us sitting at the base on standby, waiting for a rig to need us.  Now, as you can imagine of people who work 24/7 in a demanding job, we usually blow off a lot of steam during our time in the city. We go to the movies, we play video games, we go out dancing, we drink wine, and we get together in normal clothes and try to have a kind of normal life for a few days.  However we are not normal people and attempting this occasionally creates confusion and strange situations.

My Legacy

On June 16^th, the day before Father’s Day, my grandpa passed away.  He slipped away quietly that afternoon after about three days of, for lack of a better way to say it, dying. It was fast and relatively painless yet not unexpected for those of us left behind.

I was, where I always am these days, on the rig and because I had an entire night of hard and stressful work ahead of me, my parents waited until the next day when I was on my way back to my apartment in Villahermosa to call me. I cried a little (probably confusing the driver who might never have seen someone crying to be leaving the rig) but mostly tried to process through what this meant.

I’ve always been very proud to say that my grandpa is the strongest grandpa in the world. I say this with the weight of his two world records behind me. (Bench press in the 80-84 division and another bench press in the 85-90 division). Fitness was always very important to him and he was always telling my mom that he wanted each of his children to be able to bench press their own age (much to her amusement).  The last Sunday my grandpa spent here with us was passed working out in the gym and then sunbathing afterwards. He was 94 and everything he accomplished in those 94 years leaves a legacy for his children and grandchildren. 

My grandpa made my mom who she is and she in turn made me who I am.  Without my grandpa first getting his civil engineering degree at Notre Dame I can’t say that I’m a third generation engineer. If it weren’t for my grandfather working on the Alaska Pipeline for ARCO, I couldn’t talk about how the oil industry is such a part of my family I feel like it’s in my blood.  And if it weren’t for my grandpa continually pushing me make sure I “graduate with a BS and not just a MRS” who knows what might have happened to my Mines career! 

As time began to rob my grandpa of his memory it became easier to see his priorities. He began to forget conversations events and eventually all sense of time and place. I remember visiting him and talking with him, replaying the same conversation over and over again. How’s Mines? How many women are in your program?  Do you go to the gym? It was in these conversations that I can see where my Grandpa laid his priorities.  School and education. Health. And finally family.

The best legacy left by my grandpa I think was the way he loved his family. I never for a minute doubted his love for us. I remember living in Luanda, Angola and him coming all the way over from Dallas, Texas to visit us.  Now without him around I wonder what will happen to our spread out across the country family. Will we manage to gather without him? What will he think now watching our lives and seeing what we’ve done? What would my grandfather have told me if he had full awareness of my life? Is my grandpa with my grandma watching us, finally seeing what his memory has clouded out for so many years?

In the end it’s what my grandfather left for his family that brings me comfort. That part of us that comes from him hasn’t gone anywhere, it’s still a part of my family even if he’s not here and so we will always have a piece of him.

I’d rather pay the gym than pay the doctor – J.R. Heizelman

Up/Down/Up/Down/Up/Down

Lately I've felt a little like a yo-yo. Or one who operates a yo-yo. A yo-yo-er? Now that I've confused myself I'll attempt to clarify.  Lately I've been doing a lot of BHA lay down/pick ups back to back.  What does that mean? Well...

Okay see the tubes on the right? Drill pipe. Waiting to go
in the hole and make the BHA reach bottom.

The BHA is the bottom hole assembly. It's everything from the drill bit up, from my tools, until basically the start of normal drill pipe. I'll try to keep it simple here. Basically, every time something goes wrong way down at the bottom of the hole with the bit or the motor or one of my tools, in order to look at it or change it out we have to 'trip' out of the well back to surface.  This means removing 30 m (90ft) lengths of drill pipe one at a time until we reach the part we need to change. This 'trip' can take anywhere from 3 hours to as long as 24 hours. So we don't like to do it very often.

Once we get the BHA on surface, we usually change out everything. This is called picking up/laying down BHA depending on what you're doing.  Every time the BHA comes to surface we have to take our tools out, 'dump' the data from the tool memory, then check functionality, make sure the tool will survive another 'run' into the hole and the drilling that goes with that, and then reprogram. Then we 'pick up' the tools again, test them again and trip back in the hole.  All told, this process at it's most efficient takes about 8-10 hours.  And it's completely exhausting. 

Especially with the tools I'm running here.