Thursday, March 23, 2006
Tuesday, March 21, 2006
Skiing again
Went skiing today, seemed like a nice day to ski. We didn't get the foot of snow that was forcast, but it was still a nice day to ski. My confidence got a little shaken after I hit my second tree in the first three runs of the day. The first tree was no big deal, just a little one. Didn't think much of it until I hit the next much bigger tree. I only encountered the branches on those trees, but the second was big and kinda hurt. After those two, I had two near misses where I was lucky to have fallen just before I would've hit them. I stayed on the trails after that, and quickly got frustrated with all the people around. All in all it wasn't bad, I think I'll go again tomorrow and show those trees whose boss.
I found out I'll be heading back to work on Thursday, and not down to the Imperial Valley like I had thought. Back to my home-away-from-home, Cobb. Can't wait. The good news is that I should miss most of the rig-up work, and it's a job that gives me plenty of time to do whatever I want while I'm there like read, finally get on learning to tie flies for fishing and learn some basic Chinese for my trip to Taiwan.
Sunday, March 19, 2006
Bicycle Repair - Victorious!
Today I decided it was time to do something with the road bike I bought like 2 months ago at the thrift store for $5.50. I wasn't optimistic about the bike when I first bought it, it seemed to be held together by a lot of wire. The first thing I wanted to do was figure out if I needed 2 new tubes for the tires or just one. The front one had a really big hole in it and I decided that it was pointless to repair it. The rear one was in good shape. I went to the bike shop to get a new tube and was asked if it was a Schraeder or Presta valve on the tube. I had no clue and the guy ended up selling me a tube with a Presta valve, which is not what I had before. No big deal, I figured that at some point I'd need another new tube and I'd get a Schraeder one then. That time came a lot sooner than expected because I've already broken the Presta valve. It seems to still be holding the pressure OK so I'm not going to replace it just yet. The front brakes lack any cable at all, and the rear brakes didn't even come close to touching the rim, but an easy adjustment fixed that. So all in all, I got the thing at a point where I can ride it around. The gears seem to shift alright, but if the bike were worth anything I'd get different shifters. It's got the old school shifters that aren't indexed and I'm not a big fan of them. But for $5.50 and a new tube (another $4.75 - almost as much as the bike!) I'm not complaining. And, it's a beautiful day out. So I'm going to go out and see how long it takes before something else brakes on it!
Saturday, March 18, 2006
Thursday, March 16, 2006
Skiing
I got back from my unexpected 2 days of work just in time for some great skiing. The storm started a little while after I got back to my place and by the next day there was 2 feet of snow at my house. On Homewood Mountain, where I ski, there was about 3 feet of fresh powder on top of ridiculous base layer of like 15 feet. The first day (while it was still snowing) was exhausting. I didn't last too long, my ski's kept burrying themselves under the 3 feet of snow and I couldn't get going again. The next day was fantastic though, it was some really great skiing and the weather was beautiful - warm and sunny.
Sunday, March 12, 2006
Short break
So I get a phone call at like 2pm yesterday, It's my boss and he needs me to go back to Cobb. I ask when he needs me there and he says well you'd need to be there sometime early in the morning. I was like, that means that I basically need to leave now. And that's what I did, hung up the phone, grabbed a clean shirt, boxers, socks and my sleeping bag and made the 4 hour drive out here.
This is the sort of thing I won't miss when I'm done with this job. A little heads up would be nice, even if I had known 1 day in advance... I'd have been irritated to have such short notice, but it's better than "Hey Jon, get in your car and forget about any plans you had for the rest of the day/weekend because you have to come back to work." So I got here, ate a quick dinner and went to bed because I needed to be out here at like 4am (I think they wanted me to be out here earlier, but I really really don't care, I wanted to be back in Tahoe with my friends... you can't always get what you want.).
So my vacation was (once again) cut short. I won't be here more than 2 days, but it's just annoying.
That's enough complaining I think... I only have two and a half more months of this crap to put up with and I'll be outa here.
Friday, March 10, 2006
Stained Glass Window - Enlarged
Stained Glass Window - Enlarged
Originally uploaded by jono1515.
Canton NY Jan '06
Canton NY Jan '06
Originally uploaded by jono1515.
These are a few pictures I took back in January heading up to Canton.
Thursday, March 09, 2006
January 2006 - Canton, NY
January 2006 - Canton, NY
Originally uploaded by jono1515.
This is a photo I took up in Canton around Christmas. This was originally color but I think it looks better this way.
In other news, I got relief from my last job the other day. I am enjoying these short stretches of work, I know I couldn't do 6 weeks straight again like I did last year.
Wednesday, March 01, 2006
Tuesday, February 28, 2006
P1010002.JPG
P1010002.JPG
Originally uploaded by jono1515.
After several days of not doing anything at work and not doing much after work, I got really really bored and decided it was time to go for a hike. Unfortunatly, this was exactly when the beautiful weather we'd been having ended. It had been pouring rain all night while I was at work, but when I started out it wasn't raining very hard. That changed about half way into the hike when it was just a torrential downpour. Jeans get really really heavy when they're soaked through. It was worth it though because I was getting crazy with so little to do.
Sunday, February 26, 2006
February
I've been pretty bad lately about posting any updates on here. So, here we go.
The biggest thing to have happend since the last post is that I've decided to quit my job and go teach English in Taiwan this summer. I've been thinking about it for quite some time now, and I've finally decided it's time. I am really looking forward to being done with the job I've had for the past year, and really looking forward to going to Taiwan. It's going to be an awesome experience. I'm not sure how long I'm going for, I think I'll sign a short 3 or 4 month contract at first and see how it goes, but I'll probably in the end stay for like 8 months. No plans yet for when I get back, I'll be looking for another job, I'm not going back to mud logging. I may look into working in the mining industry. Not sure right now.
Aside from that, I've been working a lot this month. There's a company up in the Geysers looking to get a bunch of their old wells back into production so I've been living up in Cobb and "working" on them. They aren't drilling anything new really, all we're doing is cleaning out the old wells and testing them. All I have to do is test the steam to see how much Hydrogen Sulfide there is and pump chemicals to knock it out of the steam. Pretty much the easiest work you could imagine. One test a shift (only when there is actually steam coming out of the well) and making sure the pumps are set at the right rate. It's hardly work at all. And the well I'm on right now, we haven't had to do any of that yet and we've been here for like 5 or 6 days. We were just about to get through a plug in the well yesterday and they got stuck in the well, and are still stuck today. So it's another slow and boring night.
On the few days off I've had in between these relatively short wells I've been doing as much skiing as I can fit in. One day was by far the best skiing I've gotten in in the longest time. Deep powder, it was snowing like crazy while we were there. I had a great time. I'm starting to think I could use a lesson or two in this deep powder, I'm really not used to it having skied in NY so much. Sometimes I fall skiing out in the woods where no one would see me, and it can take a while to get up sometimes. I fell once and tried to stick my pole in the snow to get back up and it just disappeared into the deep powder. It's so much fun though being in such deep powder. I can't wait to get off of this job and back to some more skiing!
I have a ton of pictures to get up here, but I left my scanner back home in Kings Beach so it could be a while before any of them show up on here.
That's about it for now, not much happens up here in Cobb.
Friday, January 20, 2006
View from Homewood Mtn
View from Homewood Mtn
Originally uploaded by jono1515.
You can see a rainbow in between the two trees on the left.
Saturday, January 14, 2006
January 2006
It's been a while since I've put any updates on here, so here's what's been going on.
I left the Imperial Valley job a week before Christmas. The last 2 days down there we didn't really work, so one day I went offroading with a co-worker in his old Jeep and the next day we went down to Mexico. Mexico was interesting, we walked across from Calexico on the US side to Mexicali on the Mexican side. Mexicali is the capital of the Mexican state Baja California. It's a decent sized city but feels very poor. I learned just how little Spanish I know after 4 years in high school and a year of advanced coversational Spanish in university. I'm definitly going to go back down there and hopefully I'll be able to spend more time and actually communicate with people.
I was in Saratoga for just about 3 full weeks. I had a really good time, it was so good to see my family and friends back in New York. I ended up staying a few days longer than I had planned because there were so many things I wanted to do before coming back to California.
I got back to California last Saturday and as soon as I got to San Diego, I retrieved my car from my friend's place and drove about 6 of the 11 hours back to Tahoe. Coming into Tahoe, going over the mountains, was spectacular. The snow banks at the highest elevations were like 15ft high on the sides of the roads. It was intimidating driving past them considering they were also on like 30degree slopes and there were all sorts of avalanche warnings. I got here though and down at lake level it had rained the week before and there was only about 2 inches of snow on the ground. That's all changing right now because it's snowed about 6 inches this afternoon. I ended up not doing anything today aside from buying some stools for my bar and an old road bike from the thrift shop around the corner from my house. They have tire chain requirement on the roads right now so I'm just waiting it out.
I go back to work sometime this week, up in the Geysers living in my favorite place - Cobb. It will be good to be back to work since it'll have been over a month, but the Geysers are my least favorite place to work.
I'm still planning on heading to Taiwan to teach English this summer. I've been talking with my friend over there and I'm starting to get excited about it. It should be a lot of fun.
Tuesday, December 06, 2005
The three bits
img025
Originally uploaded by jono1515.
This is the picture of the three bits I mentioned a few weeks ago. The bit on the left is the new bit, the one in the middle is a used bit, and the one on the right is the one whose cones are still in the well. After a week of trying to get them out with magnets, they gave up.
Sunday, November 27, 2005
Things go wrong...
I've been in Cloverdale for just about 2 weeks now, and not a single
thing has gone as planned for this well since I got here. When I first
got here, the cones had come off the bit, they spent a week trying to
get them out of the hole before giving up. Then, they needed to cement
the very top of the casing in place in the well, but it was too hot and
the cement expanded too much and kept blowing back out of the well. They
spent a few days messing around with that. And just a few days ago, we
were pretty much done, they just had to go in the hole to the bottom and
come back out to be sure it's all cleaned out. They got everything stuck
about 2 miles down. So for the past 2 days they've been running charges
of dynamite down the hole to try and break the pipe so they can get out.
Hasn't worked yet. And the latest development is that the flow line that
comes out of the well and goes into a big muffler/seperator thing for
the steam has broken. At first I didn't know what had happened but when
I tried to go outside to see, my eyes and nose started to burn and I
couldn't breath very good. Turns out all the chemicals we pump to break
down hydrogen sulfide coming out of the well were also spraying out of
the broken flow line. Yikes, no wonder it burned. The chemicals we use
are extremely strong and dangerous. So right now there is absolutely
nothing for me to do at work. From the way I see it, they've got a big
problem right now, they can't fix the flowline without closing the well,
and they can't close the well with the drill pipe stuck in it. And now
we aren't meeting any of the air emission regulations because we can't
pump and chemicals. I'm so glad I'm not in charge of this.
Whenever we finish here, hopefully in the next few days, I'll be heading
down to the Imperial Valley. I'm actually looking forward to it. The job
won't be very fun, they drill really fast, but I'm looking forward to
some time in the desert and seeing the huge sand dunes down there. And
if we have a day or two off at all, I'll probably head down to Mexico.
I backed my boss into a corner and got him to agree to let me book a
plane ticket to fly home on the 18th. He was reluctant, but Isaak will
just be back from Costa Rica and will come relieve me. My boss said
something like I may need to fly back on Christmas Eve or something for
work possibly, and said, "yeah... ok...". Really, even if he needs me
to, I don't think I'll be able to get a ticket at that point. The way I
see it, once I'm home I'll be good until possibly after New Year's.
I've taken a bunch of pictures lately but they're all film (I forgot my
digital in Tahoe and didn't bring my scanner with me). But I'll be
heading back to Tahoe for a night before going to Imperial Valley and
I'm going to bring my scanner with me. So there'll be some new pictures
up soon, I hope.
That's all for now, back to "work" for me!
Wednesday, November 16, 2005
Back to Work
The vacation is over and I've come back to work again, with a completly unexpected raise! My vacation was extended by a few days because of some more car trouble, this time it was partially my own fault. I lost some fluid out of the clutch slave cylinder and had topped it off and was going to bleed the air out of the line and accidentally snapped off the bleeder valve. It took a few days to get the part and get a shop to fit me in, so I just enjoyed the extended vacation. Tahoe has been fun, it's nice to be hanging out with friends on my time off. We've been playing a lot of guitar, going out to some bars, free bowling on the weekend (our friend works at the bowling alley and has free reign of the place on the weekend and lets us bowl for next to nothing... and makes us drinks...). I almost need a vacation to rest after hanging out in Tahoe for the past 2 weeks.
Now I'm back in the Geysers, but this time I'm staying in Cloverdale at a Best Western and not in Cobb. It's way nicer in Cloverdale, the motel is nice and the weather here is beautiful. It's like summer, yesterday was in the 80's and sunny. I haven't taken any pictures yet but it's pretty nice here, palm trees and what-not. I'll only be here for a week and then it's either straight down to the Imperial Valley near Mexico or a day or two off and then down there. I'd like a day or two off, I forgot a few things in Tahoe that I'd like to have brought with me. I could almost go there on the way down, in fact if we finished here on say next Monday early enough it's only 3 or 4 hours to Tahoe and I could go there for Monday night and be in the Imperial Valley the next day. I don't think I'll need to be down there until Wednesday, I just don't know exactly when we'll be done here. This job is going slow, the bit they had been using fell apart in the hole and the three cones are in the hole somewhere. Right now they are using magnets to try and get them out, it's slow and who knows whether it will work. I'm going to get a picture of the bit without cones next to a few with cones, in fact I'd do it right now, but it's 1am and I've got no flash. Oh-well, I think I'll go take a nap now!
Tuesday, November 08, 2005
My new place in Tahoe
My new place in Tahoe
Originally uploaded by jono1515.
I'm all set here in Tahoe now. My parents were out here to help with the move from Portland. They've left, it was really great to see them again though.
This place is a lot smaller than my place was in Portland, but we somehow managed to fit all my stuff in. I'm planning on going back to work in a week, but I think I may need a vacation after hanging out here in Tahoe! I'm having a good time.
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