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.
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