Days Off...Finally!!!

Well, not quite so finally, but that's how I felt a couple days ago when I did finally get some days off. Spent three weeks building, moving, and rigging up this new drill rig. That's three weeks solid, twelve to fourteen hours a day. I can't say it sucked, but it wasn't a joyous adventure. Working like that doesn't give you much time for family or any kind of social life, and I've been pretty well dead the past two days.

Friday before last everybody was starting to get a little cranky, but moods lifted when we were told we were getting trucks last Sunday. So, last weekend and Monday were pretty decent days, we were busy as hell, and new that days off were coming up on the horizon, just not sure when they would show themselves. Kinda like when you're camping and you can see the sky getting a little more purple than black in the mornings, but you don't have a watch. You know the sun will be rising before long, you're just not sure exactly how long it will be. Come Monday afternoon, and Tuesday moods started to drift down again. We had damn near run out of things to do, and still didn't know when we were going to break tour. (Pronounced tower) So, Tuesday afternoon we finally learn that we were breaking tour Wednesday. Everybody was pretty damn happy, some still had a week of work to go, but they knew when they were getting day off next. Now, you have to remember that most of us were working on this thing for three or four week solid or nearly solid. That's three to four weeks, of not being home much or at all for some, not seeing our kids, not kissing momma, not petting momma on the short hairs, not patting the dog on the head, not sitting back relaxing and having a Jack and Coke or cold beer. Basically, that time was spent on nothing but that damn rig. But, in the end, with the seven days off, and a pretty damn nice check... It almost evens out.



What I Do...Well Used To

Working in the oil field on drilling rigs I have a lot of people ask me what I do out there, and even when I describe it to them they still don't understand. Roughneckin is like no other job on earth. It's not like most jobs where there are some relateable aspects of it, you're not on an assembly line building car parts, or a car. Or in a restaurant serving tea and coffee. In most jobs, the drinks or parts may be different, but you're still doing basically the same job. Not in the oil field, there is no other job where you're doing anything like tripping pipe, or making a connection, burning a flare, you don't have blowouts in energy plants, you don't mix drilling mud while building a house, and that's the closest to anything outside the rigs. And, the only resemblance in mixin mud and mixin cement is that you're chemicals come in fifty to a hundred pound bags, and you have to keep to the right recipe to make it work right. So I've taken the time to find some videos on youtube to show ya what I did when I worked on the rigs. I've worked every position on the rig it's self. From worms corner to driller, my favorite was working derricks. Which is the first video I've put up.

This is what the derrickhand does while tripping pipe in the hole.


This is a connection, you add another length of drill pipe usually 30 - 32 ft long. The driller is the one on the right in the background.


Now, I'm not in any of these videos, but they do show the main part of what we did out there. You make connections daily, sometimes many a day, sometimes only one, depending on depth and penetration rate. You trip pipe about once a week, sometimes every three or four day depending on the drill bit you have down hole. I've seen a diamond PDC type bit last upwards of two hundred hours. I couldn't find any videos of the other stuff we do out there, but it's mostly cleaning, rig repair and preventative maintenance. I love the work, and wish I could still do it.