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.

Spain

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So I've been meaning to post something about Spain for a while now. But I've been busy and it seems like I'm only getting busier each day. So with no relief insight, I've decided to post this lovely photobook that I made for my mom for her birthday.  Then eventually, one day, I'll get a shift/job/rig with fewer problems and have a few days to get through everything I need to do.

Dubai

Me at the top of Burj Khalifa

My parents are probably the only people that can confirm this for sure, but I’ve wanted to go to Dubai FOREVER. Or like 8 years. Same thing. One year we even had tickets to go. Then we canceled. And I was ridiculously upset. Anyway, I finally managed to fulfill my lifelong (kind of) dream of seeing Dubai. And it was cool. We were only there for a weekend but we managed to cram in quite a bit of stuff. Here’s some of the highlights, a bit scattered around and a little long but I wanted to get it up before I forgot anything else!

We arrived early evening on Thursday, having left as early as we could after class. We checked in to the three bedroom apartment we rented for the weekend. Looking out from the 10^th floor it reminded me a little bit of Las Vegas with all the lights everywhere, but with much taller buildings.  That night we had an un-remarkable dinner and then went out dancing until late. The next morning, we got up at the reasonable time of 11 am. We then walked to McDonalds for breakfast. Ya I know, but after living in the middle of nowhere for the past two months it was cool to be able to walk anywhere except to more desert.

5 New Experiences from Abu Dhabi

I know I said that I wouldn’t have exciting pictures from popular tourist destinations in the UAE but as it turns out we did manage to do some pretty fun things.  Here I present to you my list of 5 new experiences I had in Abu Dhabi (in no particular order):

     1. Ate Baby Garlic-Cow. What is baby garlic-cow?  It is the imaginary offspring of a cow and a piece of garlic. Impossible you say? Oh I beg to differ… Let me back up a little. One night we ended up at a Brazilian steakhouse.  If you’ve ever been to a Brazilian steakhouse, you know how tasty they are. If you haven’t, then go and find out for yourself. This particular place had all the usual tasty cuts of meat cooked as you like. They also had a magical type of beef. It was beer and garlic marinated beef. And it was amazing. It was tender and wonderfully full of garlic and steak flavor in perfect balance.  We named it baby garlic cow and it lives in infamy among those of us lucky enough to have been witness to its glory. And now, I will move on because I am making myself hungry.

     2. Went on a desert safari.  While a dessert safari might have been even cooler, the sandy dune filled kind of safari was pretty cool too. We left in the afternoon and met our vehicles on the side of some random road. After piling in and buckling up (it was a bunch of SLB people after all) we started out.  At first we went down a gravel road, drifting from side to side a little, no more violently or dramatically than we might at home on our road in AK.  That about as mild as it would get. We started the course as the third car. As we approached a dune, we watched the first car, then the second, drop suddenly and completely out of sight. Then it was our turn. From that point on, all bets were off. I alternately laughed hysterically and screamed for my life as we continued to drop off the front of dunes, slide sideways at angles that no vehicle should ever be at, and race around at high speeds in the giant sandbox.  We also saw a dead camel.

Our Desert Oasis