rising

It's been a long day, but now I'm home, all showered up in dry, warm clothes. The dry part is key, especially after traipsing about in wet boots all day.

Here is my car from this morning before I headed to work. As you can see, it snowed last night. We got two to three inches in town and maybe six or more out at higher elevations in the field. At least the roads were clear by the time I went to work around 1000. That beats the frac crew that was trying to leave at 0500 this morning. They had to put chains on trucks before they even left the yard.

We had the good fortune of going north towards Durango, though not actually to Durango. Going to Colorado is basically a guarantee that the non-paved roads will be in good condition which greatly lessens the chance of having to use chains. We also had the rare privilege of arriving on location around 1400 and leaving around 1830. I call it a rare privilege because that is not much more than the minimum amount of time we can rig up, perform a job, and rig down in on this particular style of rig we were on. It was also nice to see the snow give up its fight around 1500, giving the roads a chance to dry off in the sunlight before nightfall would have turned them all to ice. Of course, on location, a rig has a lot to it that gives off a great deal of heat and that melts all the snow. The result is understandably puddles, lots and lots of puddles. And when you have a hole in your boots, your feet get wet. And when the sun goes down, it gets really cold, really fast. That is part of what makes the whole process challenging, but also very satisfying when you know you've done a good job.

It's hard to explain to people who don't work in this industry what exactly it is I do. I suppose that isn't much different than my lack of understanding of what many friends I have who work in software actually do. Suffice to say, rising to the challenge of whatever it is I purport to do is what makes it so satisfying. It is hard, it is tiring, and it makes you very strongly engage the common sense part of your brain or else you're going to do something that costs a lot of money or even worse, gets someone, possibly yourself, hurt. Details matter. You start to pay attention to how equipment feels, what it sounds like, and what that awful smell is that indicates something is about to burn out. Perhaps if I had more experience, then I wouldn't feel the need to watch everything so closely. I would be better equipped to handle problems on the fly, but I'm not so I'm constantly moving around during a job, trying to watch about a half dozen really important things and many more less critical items all at once. And that's why it doesn't matter if it's cold and wet. You are too busy working to notice your toes feel like they're about to fall off until you're finally leaving location. That's when you get a chance to take a breather, but just for a moment, because a long drive in at the end of a day is about the most dangerous thing there is.