Joys of Big Boys and Their Toys

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I'm just pacing and killing time until Mark returns to the canyon. It was to be one day of driving West and a day of driving back but he got sick last night while traveling, very sick; hasn't kept a thing down in his stomach for the last 24 hours. Was it a matter of catching the stomach flu or running into one of those killer sliced tomatoes ... who knows. But he is not a healthy or happy camper and he's now under strict orders from the Fuhrer of Worry to either stop at another motel for the night or, if he insists, head into the canyon without our usual supply stops. Pace, pace, pace ... no phone update yet.

I am posting this non-journal item in the interim to take my mind off of his well-being and whereabouts.
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Update (10:30PM): Our boy finally made it home and fell immediately into bed. The roughness of the dirt road had compelled him to stop several times to heave from an already barren stomach and he looked disturbingly ashen as he listlessly trudged over from the truck. Before dropping off to sleep, he expressed his great thankfulness to finally be home. Me, too!!! We'll see what tomorrow brings for him.

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I love watching any truly skilled craftsman at work whether it be a stone mason, a jeweler, a glass blower, it doesn't matter. But show me a heavy equipment operator with finesse and I could sit there spellbound for an entire day. Buddy John has sent me links to videos such as one showing how a skid steer operator loaded himself onto a tall flat bed without ramps that left me breathless but his latest series of photos tops even that performance. You will need to click on the image to see the details but it's only 250K and absolutely worth the download.

This is a back hoe operator in action. You're not going to believe what he does with his machine to get a job done. And here I am all thrilled if I manage to walk down the Rat's rickety stairs without falling on my butt. This fellow is a true master of his trade! And with more than just abs of steel.
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I Love a Parade!

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I'm not kidding, this was a parade of the first order and it all took place in one working day. We now have a fair idea of what it would be like to be invaded by an army division when it decides to go visiting, at least as far as tonnage.

Apparently real guys have to have serious 'stuff' around and these fellows knew how to drag it all with them. You will have to click on the photos to see any sort of detail but I have kept each file size under 120K for all you slow downloaders like us.
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First came this Mad Max arrangement in the upper left corner and then a never-ending onslaught of semis with strange cargo. At this point, I was at a loss to figure out what most of it would be used for.
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I did recognize the trailer in the upper left as their command central and the truck in the lower right as the garbage hauler though. Some of these tilted loads were rearranged at the well site immediately to our west and dragged in to the new site at these most curious angles, perhaps due to the cramped nature of the new well pad by that time.

But still no rig. We found ourselves expectantly waiting and ever peeking out the windows as though we might miss the arrival of the Queen if we relaxed our guard. The suspense was killing us but no drilling rig was in sight yet, just more and more STUFF.
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The view of the parade in the upper right hand corner tipped me off that the rig was not far behind. See that flat-bed pick up in the center? It is carrying two portable outhouses. If I have learned anything about the gas field, it is that they are not serious about anything until the two gender-separate johns arrive. I squealed when I saw this one as though it was the advance color guard. "Look, look, the plastic johns are here! The rig can't be far behind!" Sure enough, you will see the rig at the head of the parade in the lower left corner above.

Believe it or not, I have only captured images of maybe 50% of the parade thanks to my ongoing camera and battery wars.

Next up, I will be posting on the rig in place at the end of that long day and report on the most amusing turn of weather out here (hint - ya like mud-sports, do ya?). I will post that installment either late Monday or Tuesday night and then we can get back to our regular off-the-grid tales for the next two weeks.
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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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