A Break from Cancer, Two Weeks in Wyoming ... a Typical Day

Woke at 7am, showered, etc. and went downstairs to the ground floor for breakfast, some eggs, sausage, waffle, orange juice, and three cups of coffee. Got a call at 8:15 that they were ready for me at the site.  Packed my computer, camera bag and a lunch box.

Drove 60 miles to site.  I call my wife, no answer.  A little later I see she has left a message.  She sounds tired.  Saw some wild mustangs, includling a black one with a white back, a few hundred yards off the road.  I wanted to stop and take pictures, but I followed them yesterday for miles to get close enough for a few good pictures.   The dreamer in me wanders behind them for a day's journey through the dessert until a colt comes up and greats me.  The journey is so vivid in my mind that the ending of this imaginary journey makes me sad, I feel tears in my eyes as I rejoin my body going down the road. 

At the site, I spend a lot of time waiting, eat my lunch, then suit up to go in to the AGI buildings.  I get a call from Allison telling me about her apartment,  how much money she needs to get in, and about her job interview. This area compresses H2S and CO2 for reinjection back into the ground after some CO2 and almost all the methane was removed for sale.  You wear an emergency air bottle on your back and are connected up to an air line and face mask before entering the area.  Why, a small leak in the compressors or pipes and one breath and you are dead.  You were an alarm set at 10 ppm of H2S along with a dozen other meters and alarms in the area.  The concentration in the compressors, 650,000 ppm.  The concentration that will kill you with one breath, 5000 ppm.  If there is a leak, don't panic, you have an air line.  Walk to end of the air line, disconnect it, and then turn on your tank on your back.  If your reverse the order, turn on your bottle and then disconnect, all your air will go into the air lines and you die.  Then you look at the wind socks and walk across the path of the leak and then walk upstream until your air runs out, about five minutes if you stay cool, less if you run or if you get too scared.  Keep your pulse rate down, be cool for once in your life and live, panic and die.  Strait forward really.

I go into one of the casing of the  compressors and crawl down the inside of the casing, a long tube, looking for small pits or cracks.  I stop and photograph the few that I find.  The casing seems to be in good shape.  Suddenly my partner at the other end says he has found something.  It looks like a long crack in the casing.  I look closer through the plastic mask and the glasses mounted in the face shield, take a few pictures, say a few curse words.  I've been in for a couple of hours, my chest hurts from drawing air through a tube, its hot outside, hotter in the tube, hotter yet in my coveralls. I crawl out and motion to him that I am going outside to rest and think.  I see my trip to Wyoming being extended.  I go outside of the area and disconnect from the air, sit and drink some water.  I contractor who has done the dye penetrant tells me it is not a crack.  We suit up and go in again, up the stairs, and to the compressors.  He scrubs the end of the crack off with a brillow pad.  I think he has just smeared the crack so I scrub wth some solvent and a paper towel.  After a lot of elbow grease, the crack disappears.  It was only a build up of DBT and oil that had harded around the O-ring.  I realize that another small crack I had photographed could be the same thing.  I go back into the cases and use elbow grease on each suspected crack.  They are all dirt, not cracks.  However, the pits and weld porosity photographed earlier are real. 

I let the bosses know what we have found, and not found.  I set up a meeting for Monday to talk to the Plant Manager.  I get out of my equipment, wash up, pee and hit the road.  I take a side detour coming home down highway 28 to Farson.  It crosse the Green River, I stop and take pictures. I continue on, a sign says "Antelope entering Highway at 55 mph hour."  I am wondering if an antelope can really run that fast as I pass ridge on the right.  My eye catches the movement, its an antelope breaking the speed limit coming at me hard from the right.  In a microsecond my brain computes that he will clear the road before I hit him, I'm only going about 65 and he has position.  I relax for a second. He leaps onto the road, twenty feet in front of me and stops. HE STOPS. My brain yells cuss words, I picture antelope pieces come through the windshield.  I imagine eating antelope steak that I scrape off my hood.  I recall his stop that occured in real time a few tenths of second ago.  There was no skid, no sliding, just a big leap and his speed goes from a million miles an hour to zero. 

I hit the brakes hard, my car slides, everything in the car flies forward, my camera, the GPS, my phone, water bottles.  We are about to get close and personal, in a microsecond I consider letting up on the gas and swerving into the ravine.  I imagine flying through the air, landing hard dust flying, my radiator rupturing.  But, before the six microseconds passes, the time to execute the plan, the antelope takes a single leap into the other lane as I slide into where he was 10 microseconds before.  I'm stopped and he's stopped, eye ball to eye ball his face almost as close as mine to the side window.  He says to me, "I told my brother it would be fun, he's over there," he said pointing over his shoulder.  I started to tell him what I thought, but I took his picture as he posed instead.

I say to myself, that was interesting.  I didn't know that antelopes stayed close to their sipplings.

I see a sign that say "Wild Horse Circle", a small excursion I think.  Beautiful mountains and drive, but no wild horses.  Hours later I can see the highway miles below me, but I can find no road to get back down.  Turning around and retracing my steps is not an option. I check my water supply and gas wondering how long I could last.  It has been hours since I saw some cars.  They were empty and broke down from hitting rocks, breaking axles and stuff.  I imagine that the small Nissan I saw is opened by a beautiful woman clad in white shorts, no red shorts, and a halter top.  I nurse her back to health and she catches me looking at her boobs and she slaps me.  The GPS calls me back to reality.  The GPS is worthless.  The GPS keeps telling me to turn where there are no roads, only cliffs. It is suicidal.  I take pictures of a mound in the distance with lightning going off.  I stop and take a picture of a rainbow, some cliffs, some thunderstorms. I take a picture of my foot, well my shoe really.  It doesn't turn out well.

Many moons later, I got to the hotel and answered some emails on my phone sitting on the John.  Sent an email to Peter telling him I will invoice the job in Peru that I got him, for a small finder's fee.  He calls, I tell him what the email said that I just sent.  I give him some advise on types of corporation for his new consulting business.  I call Julie again and talk to the voice mail.

I shower go to a sushi resturant next door.  There are a lot of Chinese people running the resturant although they also serve Japanish dishes, including sushi.  I get a sushi deluxe and a Shapparo, Japanese's oldest beer, or so it says on the bottle.  I study one Chinese woman, very beautiful. I smile at her.  I saw her in the restaurant last week, I imagined ..........  As I am ...........neck in my mind,  she comes over  to me and says "hi".  I look at her neck, she notices.  I tell her, "you are the owner."  She replies, it is family business.  I answer with "and you are part of the family." She smiles at my directness, and says, "yes, a little."  However, the "little" meant, "a lot" in typical Chinese humility.  I eat sushi and read the paper matte and find I was born in the year of the boar. I am therefore a boar.  It says I will have strife in marriage, but I am bold and chivorous.  Cool. 

I get home, well to the hotel, and get a ice cream with dove chocolate on the outside.  I watch a movie on our addiction to oil and a movie about guns on the Military Channel.  I write this blog, read some email and go to bed, per chance to dream, perhaps to wake up and live another typical day in my life.

This is an example of some of the other blogs I write ... just a taste.  Julie is doing fine, we will pick back up the details soon.  Olesia my daughter is struggling a little, well a lot, but I can't go there now.

From Wyoming Thinking of Julie

I'm sitting in a parking lot at an Exxon La Barge plant waiting to take
a drug test after a 90 minute drive from our hotel in Rock Springs.
Nothing much happened on the ride, saw one Antelope.

I had a text conversation with my daughter Allison last night. She
graduated a couple of months ago with a double Masters in Therapy and
counseling and has not been able to find a job. We also talked about
getting Julie some pot since her stomach is upset a lot from the oral
cancer medicine, Tykerb. The doc just said 'try it' knowing that modern
medicine does not have anything that works. in our case, it is good
that the moral majority has lost the war on drugs with their Plan A,
which was formulated in the 50's and never changed despite 50 years of
failure. I digress.

On Julie's last MRI 10 days ago, her brain seems to be still free of
cancer. However, they did see some anomoly on her skull, in the layers
adjacent to the bone. They hope it is just damage from the radiation,
but she is scheduled for a spinal tap the last week of July when I get
back from Wyoming. Both girls pass out when they get shots, or see
shots, so I did not think they should be involved.
Its 46 and windy here this morning, although I heard hot weather is on
the way, in the high 90's. Not being a doubter, im going to buy a wind
breaker at Walmart near our hotel tonight.

Well, more later. Oh yea, Olesia is visiting with her boyfriend at the
beach. She is more or less avoiding spending time with Julie, and to a
lesser extent with me. Her makeup emotionally is a lot like me but with
40 less years of life under her belt. I remember how hard my dad dying
was on me at 19, and it happened quicker without having to face it every
day slowing creeping into the room.

A Routine

Julie and I have settled into a routine, a routine revolving around her health and what she can do and not do.  If we looked at our current life style a couple of years ago, it would have been hard to imagine.


Some things stay the same.  Julie's dad is a constant.  He just called.  It is always the same, he rings Julie's cell phone, lets it ring a few times, never enough time for us to get to her phone which is hidden in her purse which is hidden somewhere in our house.  About the time we pick up the cell phone and before we can hit the recall button, the house phone rings and goes to the answering machine after one ring.  It always does to avoid all of those telemarketers who ignore the don't disturb us list.  If we are lucky, we get to that phone before he hangs up because he doesn't want to talk to an answering machine.  If we are successful, Julie listens to her dad talk about his life, mostly his health.  He thinks Julie's cancer is in remission.  It is something he has decided is true.


We watched quite a bit of Wimbleton today. The Roddick Hewett Match was great.  Roddick will have to continue to serve great and hit much bigger to have a chance against Murrey, the Scottman that all of Great Britian have their hopes on.  We saw a 62 year old lady do a funky dance on America has talent tonight.  Those are the kind of simple things we can enjoy these days.


Julie and Tykerb are getting along pretty well.  She only gets sick a few nights a week.  Julie has gone back to working in the yard a few hours a day much to the delight of our Jack Russel.  He sees her as a digging companion, a co-hunter scaring out rabbits from the bushes, and ruling with him over his kingdom.  He refused to go on his walk with me yesterday because I failed to hook up the leash to his collar.  Without the leash, how is he supposed to control his human companion.


Julie gets an MRI of her brain tomorrow to see if the tumors are starting to regrow after the radiation.  The Tykerb hopefully will keep the cancer from getting started again in her brain.  The herceptan is supposed to keep it out of the rest of her body.  All the other drugs she takes are to help her tolerate these drugs. 


Julie went to her Doll Club today and we hope to go see fireworks with friends on Saturday.  Tennis buddies. My leg blew up six weeks ago when I swiveld and went after a lob.  Right after I passed the speed of sound, a gasket ruptured in my leg causing a loud popping noise and blood running down on the inside of my leg.  Really cool.  I am in recovery.  Kind of like an alcoholic, I shouldn't try to play again because I can't go half speed as dictated by the age of my old tires, but insist on going full speed. 


My company, Dresser-Rand is starting to send development engineers at Painted Post, one of our other plants (I work in Olean when I am there) on furlong for a week without pay.  About three and half years after I join a company it goes down the toilet.  Well, its only happened 14 times in a row, so it may not statistically significant yet.  It has only been three years and two months since I officially started with DR.  I worked a few months as a contract engineer before I became an employee that works out of his house like a consultant.  April 17 was the offical date.  So, if history is any guide, then October 17 I should get laid off if the pattern holds for 15 th time in a row.  I don't think DR will go broke like most of the other companies / divisions I worked for.  My last company the owner, an old friend died at 3.5 years.  With all the medical bills, this one could be the BIG one, but I figured out a few cycles ago this is my Karma.  Someone up there is trying to build enough character in me to make into a philosopher and writer, so far without great success.


I am boycotting our home owner's association since they have turned into a full time bitching organization.  Perhaps I can lead a revolt to start a new organization dedicated to all noble causes.


Gordon Lightfoot's, Sundown, you better care if I find you have been creeping my back stairs. ... sometimes I think it is a shame when I get feeling better when I am feeling no pain.  Sometimes I think it is sin when I feel like I am winning when I am losing again.  Well, I won't go there even though sometimes life tries to pull me there.


Oh yea, an old friend, Tom Tripp from my New Orleans days that I sent a birthday card to last week sent me a note.  He told me he reads this blog and gets worried if I don't write in for awhile.  I have been surprised often by the number of people who tell me that they read this blog.  I write a political and philosophical blog also, plus poems, stories and other stuff.  At some point, when I get through taking care of my wife and kids, I am going to move to Mexico and write full time with the best hours of my day.  I hope I still have some when those days come.  Julie wanted to know if I will take Ashton.  He is looking at me with sleepy eyes wondering why we are still up.  He knows the answer. The dream of writing is what keeps me going these days.