Exodus Afore the Storm

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Midwest and Northeast friends: Heads Up! By noon on Friday, this is what it looked like from the porch and it's probably heading your way. This storm was a little colder and snowier than our last one. I'm burning the wicks low tonight and, just before midnight, it's 13 degrees Fahrenheit outside but a reasonable 63 degrees inside the cozy Rat.
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Today was the big day to finally move the drilling rig out. The trucks started to roll by well before dawn and went without a break until late afternoon. What an amazing and pricey collection of 'stuff'. And I didn't bother to record the scores of pick-up trucks.
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The enlarged versions are 350 to 400K so be advised before you click.

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There were trucks everywhere, including in our front yard and up our new driveway. The furious pace was partially explained when the snow clouds began to loiter threateningly and later unleash their icy spawn.

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And so ends phase one of our entertainment. Of course, I had to finish up the collage with a photo of my favorite big toy, the Cat D8R and then the triumphal exit of the King and Queen thrones. It's quiet out there, beautifully quiet for now..
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Humor (from Ken)

A man wrote a letter to a small hotel in a Midwest town that he planned to visit on his vacation. He wrote: "I would very much like to bring my dog with me. He is well-groomed and very well behaved. Would you be willing to permit me to keep him in my room with me at night?"

An immediate reply came from the hotel owner:

"I've been operating this hotel for many years. In all that time, I've never had a dog steal towels, bedclothes, silverware or pictures off the walls. I've never had to evict a dog in the middle of the night for being drunk and disorderly. And I've never had a dog run out on a hotel bill. Yes, indeed, your dog is welcomed at my hotel. And, if your dog will vouch for you, you're welcomed to stay here, too."
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Paradise Lost

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So the history hunter and I finished our exploration of the canyon inlet and joined the survey team. Their task had not been as fruitful and it became obvious that the proposed site was not practical. In the midst of the proposed new well pad, there was a 20' deep arroyo which became quite violent and unpredictable when the rains come.

A week later, I stepped out to the end of the porch to observe my favorite view across to the far mesa. It was not without great upset that I now saw an expanse of fluttering markers. For me, the impact was as disturbing as the sea of white crosses at Flanders Field, standing so discordantly against nature's backdrop. Their new location was obviously going to be 'in our faces'. Since this is part of the land which we lease for grazing, we would have no input on the matter. All we could do was wait and hope for the least impact possible. I can't say that their activity on our private land is going to be any more magnanimous yet.
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Late last week saw the first activity at their new well site. The big D8R was the first to invade. What amazed me was that it first simply ran rough-shod over the entire area without use of the blade, trampling down anything in its path. It returned later to start leveling out the pad and forming large banks of dirt. It seemed outrageous and offensive that such a large area of history be disturbed but I will show the reasons later.
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In this photo taken from the first mesa bench up, you can see the final area that they claimed. This report is truly a challenge for me in that I love to watch the big toys at work and, at the same time, hate to see it make such a deep and permanent cut into this wilderness. This photo also shows the proximity of our new and uninvited guests for the next month. Given our recent dealings with the big gas player out here, I can only presume that this is their little Christmas present for us.

On the other hand, as I alluded, this is a fascinating process and I will bring you along on the rudimentary aspects of making of a new gas well from our observation deck. LOTS of big toys and guy stuff to follow.
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Rippin' It Up! Part 2

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I'm sure I must have given Quig the dozer operator plenty of safety-related anxiety as I appeared first here and then there and everywhere else with my camera but I was very thoughtful in my personal placement since I have a deep aversion to being run over by anything heavier than an Australian Shepherd (which is a regular occurrence).


But, as usual, the shot I wanted most was the one which was not in the downloads that night. My digital camera chooses its revenge VERY well in that respect. We had discussed "The Rock Behind the Barn" the week before and Quig had shown us a cell phone image which pictured a gargantuan rock which he had previously done battle with and won. I knew that I would witness a battle of Titans early on that day and set myself up to record the conflict. That vile little beast of a camera chose NOT to record it for posterity ... but at least I got to see the show-down.



The D8R sized up the rock and nipped in from one side, the right edge of its blade catching the monster by surprise at a 45 degree angle. The 40 ton Cat snarled and then screamed as the rock hunkered down vehemently in place and stood its ground. What I thought was a plume of steam was, in reality, smoke curling off the enraged rock as the blade cut in and gouged away mercilessly. The rock had been wounded but remained unmoved by the initial assault. The big Cat was now so locked in purpose and determination that the entire Cat beast started to swing around as if to meet the behemoth face-to-face. I became concerned about the corner of the barn which was about to become part of the battle field at the Cat's rear but Quig predicted the Cat's natural posturing quite casually and pulled back on the reins well before any such disaster could occur. In the end, it was a sturdy chunk of nature which bested us but the bout was worth it, recorded for posterity or not. We would simply alter our plans and work around the monolithic victor.



Below shows the rear ripper teeth in action. When the blade finds the cutting too hard, the ripper teeth do a fine job of loosening the material and our materials were apparently no great challenge for those teeth. Quig said that the tooth tips will survive for a year before having to be replaced under our conditions but that they will wear down within a few days in other locales within the region. You know that this can't be a cheap replacement. What I find amazing is that all usual contact points are so work-polished that they look like a high grade stainless, not a speck of rust to be found. Quig described the process of renewing the blade faces and other high-wear parts and it left me convinced that there are many true Vulcan artisans still out there.



By the time lunch rolled around, I had formulated a million questions from my many perches and Quig kindly had a million answers and then some. He confirmed that this drive configuration was not traditional. And he liked it. He said that the 'grousers' (what we would call the tracks) definitely suffered less wear. It also made the process of disconnecting the transmission from the tracks much easier. Actually, this part of the conversation came up after we asked about the misery suffered by another operator in the area recently. It led to an informative dissertation about the many ways in which a truly pathetic creature could inflict serious damage upon such a venerable beast. I will not post those lessons here for obvious reasons but, for a gearhead, it was truly a fascinating tour. But there are engineers somewhere out there at Cat Peoria HQ that I truly respect for this indirect drive feature. Simon was right, this is one magnificent feature!

Here was the game plan: Since we were settled in along the base of a mesa near the spring where the original homestead had been, we were subject to the ranting torrents of run-off water which had been de rigueur for epochs already. My idea was to level off the effluvial mounds beneath the heaviest drain areas while creating a large circular drive behind the entire barn and trailers area. This would also ameliorate forward drive access to our propane tank and our vehicle/generator fuel tanks. The big Cat would have to cut into the hill behind the barn to the tune of about 6 to 8 feet and also bring some areas up at least 3 feet to form an even drive capable of intercepting the run-off waters and diverting them to either side of the compound.



The last photo below will show you that Quig managed to do just that in a few hours time. Again, I think about an entire lifetime that I would have devoted to this task if armed with nothing but a shovel. Awesome, truly awesome by comparison.



Mark had been unusually absent during this entire process. He emerged at lunch time when the Cat shut down and caught up on the project and subsequent discourse. I cringed when he said "Well, maybe what we need now is one of my infamous 'turd washers' to test your theories." Sigh ... why, why, oh why does he say these things?

To be continued , partly from the prospective of Dilly the Second, the tiniest of dragons.
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Rippin' It Up!

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At this point, I'm not even going to try for a background set-up. Let's just say that we had some dozer time coming to us from a previous agreement with the gas field. A couple of wise souls suggested trying to work from the field level up rather than the corporate office level down. That made perfect sense since the guys who get things done in the real world know their schedule and exactly where they will be on a given day. They can call their bosses who go up the chain until someone flying a desk will hopefully say "That makes sense, do it."

And so it was on our way up top when we found Quig out dozing around in the boonies. Gads, have these operations ever become obnoxiously safety anal; we had to stop at the little cordon and warning sign, Quig had to stop his dozer at an annoyingly safe distance from us, jump down and make us fill out a visitor sign-in sheet before he and Mark could talk mano a mano. Had Mark ventured beyond the cordon, I'm sure Quig would have been policy-obliged to wrestle him to the ground to place a hard hat on him. I guess the days of rough and tough real guys are long gone, like everything else in this society. The old school boys are retiring at first opportunity in droves and I can't say I blame them.

Our idea of working off the remaining time over here at the Rat did fall on receptive ears uphill (most likely since this loose end matter was holding up our next deal). We're just funny like that, I guess, we like to finish up old business before bending over to a new handful of promises.

It was a week later than planned, what with the heavy rains turning the canyonlands into a big mud pie, but eventually Quig 'walked' the big D8R up the road to our place. 'Walking' is the term they use when they just head on down the road by themselves rather than take the time and aggravation to load it onto a trailer. Quig and I had already done a walk around and we both had a pretty good idea of what I had in mind so he pulled off the road and got at it. This beast is HUGE close up!!! It startled the every-loving begeez out of our little Deere when it passed by. I almost expected the skid steer to crawl up the wall of the Rat to yipe itself out of harm's way. See photo below. LOOK at that thing, it's carrying TWO HUGE ripper teeth off the back end like a doubly-armed scorpion! Woo-hoo, I was getting all sorts of weak-kneed already - this was SERIOUS horsepower about to inflict some really serious change without too many objections. That drive train is something that really got my attention. Notice the large drive ... uhm ... sprocket well above the usual track configuration. Quig calls these models 'high tracks'. It puts this beast miles above your garden variety Abrams M1 in my books. I'll get all mushy over that feature later.




Why am I a horsepower junkie?
That question probably needs to be addressed sooner or later. I suppose it's my continual comparison of myself (incapable of lifting X times my weight like the average ant) and those mechanical things that can exceed my capabilities (or the ant's) without even noticing. I constantly compare the work being accomplished against my own ability equipped with, say, a shovel and a strange desire to blister my fingers and ruin my back for the weekend. That's where my awe factor comes in. It's pretty much the same reason why I adore a machine which will propel me along at 120 mph when I couldn't achieve a tenth of that with my own two feet. See below



Mr. Smiley-face has just now returned after several hours of playing with the Deere and I find myself suddenly lost of any desire to write further so I may continue on in a day or so from now. Cooking well or writing at all - I find that I have to be in the right mood, something that my mother had pointed out as a truism many, many years ago.
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