Since I suspect that this will be my last time this up close and personal with the process of installing a well, I’ve been taking lots of photos. And what the hell; I’ll share them with you all, because I love drilling so and therefore you must too.

Drilling’s in a roundabout way what got me interested in photography. When I first got my job, one of the biggest projects going on involved puncturing the base with lots and lots of holes, and my job was to observe and document it. It was shortly thereafter that I discovered my life-long appreciation for working mens’ asses, but that is another post.

This particular well is going in to one of three houses that were put on base water when their water supplies were found to be contaminated, about fifteen years ago. We’ve cleaned up the contamination, and transferred the base to the new owners, who don’t want to be water suppliers and requested that we put these houses back to wells. The wells are going hundreds of feet below the original contamination zones, which was clean water all along. This is the last of the three; it was held up for reasons beyond our control.

Nobody lives here anyway.

Which is fortunate, as drilling is loud, and it’s messy, and it takes up a lot of space. This is why people usually put the wells in before the houses are built. This is not all of the equipment yet.

I’m definitely not supposed to play favorites, but I’ve worked with this company for a long time; they’ve taught me a lot, and I have a ton of confidence in their competence. A lot of really good people work for them.

Setting up the 20-inch conductor casing that keeps the top of the hole from wallowing out and making a giant mess. This will be pulled out when the well is finished.

To set the 20-foot long conductor casing, they use a technique called Air-Rotary Casing Hammer. The casing is hammered straight down into the ground with a hydraulic hammer, with a smaller drill bit rotating and advancing inside it to make room. Compressed air is blown down in through the central drill string, and comes up out between it and the conductor casing, bringing the drill cuttings up with it. The cuttings, or the soil that’s removed by the drilling, blow through that eight-inch hose and through the cyclone, which slow them down enough to make the soil drop into the hopper for removal.

The shoe at the top of the conductor casing bounces a little with the rebound of the hammer, which is the squarish assembly, and cuttings are blown out a little now and then. See the driller ducking? It’s messy. It’s even messier if they use this technology to install an entire well, pounding it down below the top of the water table. Then what’s blown out isn’t dirt; it’s mud.

It’s a dirty job.

The conductor casing’s almost in. It needs to be down to a foot or so above the ground, so the drilling mud they use later for the main event can flow out and over it, and back into a tub for collection.

The shaker table is finally here, and as clean as we’ll see it until they finish.

They’re using mud-rotary drilling here, which uses a heavy bit on a long hollow drill stem. Drilling mud, which is composed of water and a specific amount of bentonite clay, depending on the soil conditions, is pumped at pressure down through the center of the the drill string, where it shoots out through holes in the drill bit. The mud cools and lubricates the rotating bit while also providing a thick enough medium to carry the bits of soil that are removed, or the cuttings, back up to the ground surface between the wall of the boring and the outside of the drill string.

The mud is collected in a tub right at the top of the well, and pumped up to this shaker table, where the cuttings are removed and shaken down to a hopper. The mud falls through a series of screens and is pumped back to the rig for reuse.

The driller and his helpers are adding a piece of drill rod, or “tripping in.”  I’ll ask them next week how much one of those things weighs. Sorry, I missed a photo of the bit; they zipped that thing into the ground while I was back in the office. I’ll get a picture when they take it back out.

They use the winches and pulleys on the mast to do the heavy lifting; Jose’s guiding the bottom end of the drill rod in so it doesn’t drag or hit someone.

Jose is handing off the dangerous end of the drill rod to Matt the driller, who will guide it over the end of the previous section.

Matt and Victor are tightening the connection between the new piece of drill rod and the one they were already using. The tub on the ground is the mud collection tub.

I love to watch the cuttings pile up in the hopper, especially if they’re drilling through a sand formation like this. It’s not so fascinating when it’s gravel and pieces are flying everywhere. And it’s a little tricky to get a picture of it before Jose or Victor knock it down with their shovels to keep the hopper filling evenly.

Victor’s a little bit of a ham. I love a man who will pose for me. He’s working on making sure the shaker’s running right, as it’s a particular piece of equipment, and also mixing more mud in it. They have to keep making more, as some is lost downhole, especially if they’re drilling through a gravel zone, and some just doesn’t get separated from the cuttings and ends up in the bin.

James the geologist inspecting the cuttings to see what kind of soil they’re drilling through at the moment. We’re not down to the level we want yet, but we have to look for a water-producing type of soil when we get near there. Gravels and sands are porous and let the groundwater flow through them freely; clay, not so much.

The spouts on the shaker, separating the mud from the cuttings. I can easily find myself a little hypnotized by the patterns in the drilling mud, which has the consistency and almost the color of a chocolate milkshake. Doesn’t taste too much like one though.

And that, my dear friends, concludes this week’s thrilling episode of Holes in the Ground: Why We Like Them. Tune in next week for the shocking conclusion. Will we drop a three-ton drill string three hundred feet below ground? Will we find water where we expect it? How long will it take to ream out a borehole? And what if we strike oil?

All of these burning questions answered and more!

The kids’ father is finally selling the house that I once lived in, and he keeps finding bits and pieces of my stuff. Why he gives me old video tapes and not the still photos that I’ve been requesting for eight years is a little baffling and a lot aggravating, but it’s nice to see sections of my past pop up.

When we were first married, about fifteen years ago, we were both into hand-loading, mostly rifle and pistol cartidges. It was primarily his hobby, as I didn’t enjoy working up the loads, but I liked the small meticulous parts of it. So my grandfather gave me some of his old reloading equipment. OK, maybe some of the bullets would still be useable, as they’re fairly inert, but primers have an expiration date, and these were way past it.

I treasure these bits for the historical value. These are things that my Grampa used in his everyday life, and I adore having things that were close to him. One little measurer has sat on my dresser since he gave it to me (and now that I think about it, they gave me that dresser too.)

Primers are the explosive components of a round, and therefore are a little trickier to have around the house than assembled cartridges or plain bullets. I keep them up high where children or cats can’t jostle them. It’s not quite like having old dynamite laying around, but it’s not particularly healthy either. I don’t happen to have any powder, but the danger there would be that it comes in larger quantities, not that it’s more flammable. Primers explode; powder just burns really fast.

Fiddling around with this stuff makes me feel connected to my family. I’ve been the lucky one; all of my grandparents that died (Gramma B’s still going strong!) have personally selected treasures to hand down to me, things which they knew meant something to me and which symbolized a connection between us, a thread handed down through time. I may not send the same items down to my grandchildren, but I’ll keep the thread intact. Who knows; by then, they may feel the need to collect antique digital cameras, and I’ll be able to fix them up.

Seeing these things makes me want to go dig out and photograph some of the other stuff, and I have a lot of it. Grampa gave me several tool boxes and his tackle box, which brings him close every time I go through it and handle the knives and the hooks that he worked with as his second career. Grandma gave me the antique blue glass that sits on my bathroom window sill, and the dishes that we used to eat breakfast from, and some fantastic linens that were made by her mother and her mother-in-law. My Grampa B and I used to go through the family history documents together, and while I know my mom and my aunt have first crack at them right now, he meant for me to be the one to hang on to them in the long term.

I don’t have a very good memory for the oral histories, but the tangible stuff brings it all back to me. If I can hold it in my hand, I can see the ones who came before me, and if I squint a little more, the ones coming after. Hey, looks like the red hair’s not bred out of us yet! Provided I don’t blow us all up, that is. I’ll try not to.

Seamus and I have been faithfully tending to these eggs for two weeks as of yesterday. It was blind optimism for the first week and a half or so, as I really had no idea if they’d died or what. We’d candle them and not see anything recognizable.

This week though, it’s pretty clear that at least seven of the nine are developing. I wanted to take some pictures showing the neat veins and the shadow of the embyros in the eggs, but that’s just a little tricky by myself.

So he got to stay up a little late last night to help me photograph them. We had the camera relatively stable, but it’s pretty darn difficult to hold an egg and a flashlight out at arm’s length for such a long exposure without moving at all. Most of our photos turned out to be duds; I may make a cardboard box to document their growth next week, when I won’t have three hands around.

As we were farting around with them, we could see the duck inside twitch and move. On one of them, we could fairly clearly see the yolk sac, so I explained what that was.

I haven’t talked to his teacher in person yet, but my intention is to bring the eggs into the third-grade classroom when they’re close to hatching. I’ll have to bring them home at night and on weekends, of course, but the kids will get a huge kick out of watching them. I’ll have to ask her to call me if they hatch on her watch so I can take some pictures.

And hey, if I’m lucky, maybe some kid in the class has a duck pond at home, and wants to take them. It’s worth a shot, after all, that’s how I grew up having chickens and ducks myself. Class projects led me into this, and back to class projects it shall go.

Meanwhile, it looks like it’s time to go shop for brooder equipment. A galvanized trough should do the job nicely and also fit in my laundry room. How I’m going to sequester them from both the cat and the dogs, now, that’ll be a challenge.

Back in October, as you might remember, I screwed up royally and wrecked my hunting trailer on the side of the mountain. I put off turning it in to the insurance, as I had a feeling that they’d total it and I wanted to use it for the rest of the season.

And total it, they did. I bought it back, intending to rebuild it, and it’s been sitting around waiting on me to start.

Well, tonight, I started. Marvin’s the one driving me to do this project. It’s a little too much for me to do on my own, but he insisted on helping me. I’m not going to let him do the work all by himself, but it’s definitely going to be more of a me-helping-him situation than the other way around.

Tonight I brought it by his place, and he took the awning off. His in-laws wanted it, and I was quite happy to give it to them. Then we checked out the inside, took off some fittings that will be in the way, and did some planning and measuring. This week will be all about looking for parts suppliers on the internet.

I thought I’d be able to get by with keeping the door, since I was able to hammer it back into good enough shape to close and latch, at least. But a closer looks tells me that there’s no way, and I remembered a dry-rotted piece of wood falling out from the bottom of it the day I got it back into camp. So the door’s going to have to go, and will probably be the most expensive part.

The nose piece wasn’t designed very well to begin with. Having the propane under a plastic enclosure right next to my bed is not only inconvenient, it’s unsafe. It’s a major pain in the ass to crawl up under there to change tanks or replace hoses, as that cover doesn’t open fully, and a leak doesn’t bear thinking about. So we’re going to pull off the battery bracket, pull the tanks out and weld their bracket to the nose of the trailer like normal people, spin the batteries 90 degrees, and put them behind the tanks. Then that cover will get thrown out and we’ll frame off the front of the trailer and side it like the rest. Since I don’t want to do a major remodeling of the bed on the other side of that wall, we’ll just end up with another compartment there, a long skinny one.

The next step, though, is to wait for some scheduled good weather and a long weekend, and tear the front and the side down to the bones. Then we’ll be able to see that we’re looking at. I was very lucky that both of those windows survived unscathed, so we’ll just take them out and reinstall them. I predict an awful lot of learning in my future.

When we’re done, it won’t be pretty, but it’ll work, and that’s all I’m asking of it. Besides, the uglier a trailer is, the less you worry about it if you leave it up in camp all season, only coming up to hunt on the weekends. Very convenient, that.

The kids have been asking to go for a bike ride with me lately, which isn’t exactly possible, as I don’t own a bike.

But I figured that I could take them down the where I walk the dogs, and they could ride until they exhausted themselves.

So that’s exactly what we did. Too bad the dogs didn’t fit in the truck with the bikes too, but I got my walk in anyway.

Seamus bought a really cool dragon kite about a month ago at Costco. We tried to fly it that day, but with no wind, it wasn’t happening. He’s been very patient, but there hasn’t been any wind to speak of, so there’s been no point.

Today, however, had a nice light breeze, so we took the kite too.

It flies just fine!

So they had their fun and I had my usual Sunday of cooking and cleaning. Lamb stew, for probably the last stew of the season, as it’s crazy warm already, and brown bread to go with it. I’m a day late for St. Patrick’s Day, but who cares? I am having an Irish Whiskey to go with it at least, so all is right with the world.

Me, that is.

Since things are going rather well, I don’t have much to write about, but I did scare the piss out of some guy this morning, and that was funny enough to relate.

I was driving in to work in the morning dark, along the seldom-used back entrance, following a nice little sports car. Nothing notable there, until he turned off the road into a dirt driveway. Which happens to run only to one of my construction yards.

I noticed that, and knew he couldn’t possibly have any business there, so I stopped on the paved road to watch him. This obviously made him a little nervous, as he pulled up tighter to the gate, in by the big messy eucalyptus tree. Fortunately, my gate was locked, but we have a big problem with people dumping trash right there, so I pulled in behind him, flipped on my flasher, left the truck running and the headlights on him, and got out and walked up to his car.

Might have been a little stupid, but I was thinking it was a young kid, fairly easily intimidated.

He rolled down his window, and I could see that it was an older, nicely-dressed guy. I asked him if I could help him, and he stammered some excuse at just being there to look at the tree.

Yeah, right. It was still fully dark, and that’s just a trashy tree. I wasn’t buying it.

I told him that we had a big problem with people dumping there, and although I could see that he didn’t have a used mattress in the back of his car, I’d appreciate it if he moved on, as that was my yard.

I got back in the truck and waited for him to do so, and he did. Poor guy was probably just looking for somewhere to take a piss, but there’s no need for him to do that where I work. He can go piss at his own office!

What with the emotionally whirly winter and all this year, I decided to go walkabout again this weekend. I’d kind of hoped to bring my friend JJ, since I figured he could use some peace too, but he was busy. Off I went on my own this morning, despite a fairly fierce headache.

First stop was Big Jeff’s, where I spent an hour or so spraying Round-Up to keep the weeds down. Weeds in a driveway would be a sure giveaway that someone’s not home, so I did it up and took care of everywhere that livestock won’t be able to reach. Now, to find some livestock.

Then on up the road I went.

My intention was to walk in to the wintering area, which is closed off to vehicles this time of year, and I had my day-pack all set up for that. The ridge and the slopes are nice and open, and the snow melts there first, so the deer like to hang out there. I wanted to look around some off the beaten path to find some shed antlers, so I walked off a deer/cow trail over to the other side of the ridge.

This is the view that greeted me.

I walked down into that meadow, fiddling with my camera, and when I looked up, there was a herd of deer in the distance. Of course, when I noticed them, they also noticed me, and bounced off up the ridge in the thick brush.

I’d come over the ridge through the deer trails in the brush, so I didn’t think that going back would be that bad. Famous last words.

Lots of it looked like this manzanita tree. More of it, however, was even tighter manzanita tangled up with buck brush. And, of course, I was following nebulous deer trails, pushing through sometimes, and on my hands and knees some other times, cradling my camera and hoping my day-pack and my pistol came through it all right.

At one point, I was so stuck that I couldn’t stand up, couldn’t crawl under, and really had no idea how or why I was in there. My arms were all shredded, I’d lost my lens cap (found it!) and it was seriously time to grab a clue. This was no longer fun, and who would find me if I croaked in there? So I backed out of that one, spent ten minutes battling my way to a more open area that I could see not twenty feet from me, and popped out right on the road that I wanted. Seems that my common sense may be lacking, but my sense of direction is still OK.

And I never did find any antlers, bummer.

So once I got out of there and back down to the truck, I was feeling pretty good again. Good enough to consider going over to the trestle to take some pictures, so when I got to the end of the road, I turned left instead of right. I’d gone that way the last time I was up there, after all, and there was even less snow on the ground this time.

Except that one corner, apparently, where the snow and ice and mud had all conspired against me. I started slipping, and knocked it down from four-high to four-low. Still spinning, and creeping sideways towards the ledge now. Backwards; same story.

Well, crap. And I never did get that winch.

So, one more thing to do about it before I panic.

I hopped out, still in short sleeves from my hike, climbed into the bed to get the chains, and put them on. The chain laying over the front of the tire gave me just enough grip to roll the truck up onto them.

At this point, I realized that the universe had made its damn point already. You don’t have to hit me over the head with a sledgehammer more than five or six times for me to get the message. And besides, if that hole was nasty, the hole down by the trestle would be worse. So I backed out to firmer ground, de-chained, turned around, and went home the way I’d come in.

How boring.

But, at least I didn’t have to spend the night out there. And I think I found some more peace; at least, I’m happy with the choice that I’ve made. Good enough; now I need some decongestants and a nice nap.

Y’all know about me and Ralph and our connection over small creepy crawly things, right? So I shouldn’t have been surprised when he came knocking on my office door. I expected a lizard or a snake or something. He’s the one I brought my surprise mockingbird guest on Monday, so that we could both be soundly cussed out before the bird squirmed free and zipped back out the door.

But no, Ralph had a story about sampling a well down by the canal, and spotting a crazy looking woman with frizzy black sticky-out hair stomping around down in there. He’s a nosy sort, so he went to see. She had a nest full of duck eggs in a bag, and was collecting some other junk to go with them (who knows why?) She said the momma duck was dead over there in the reeds, that some dogs had killed her.

Ralph offered to put the eggs in his truck while she went and got something to put them in. He waited around for over half an hour, but really had to go. He stopped by our local analytical lab, thinking they’d have an incubator at least. They said if he can’t find someone else, they’d take them.

Of course, you know where he went with them, your friendly neighborhood pseudo-biologist. And it turns out that I have done eggs before. We did that a lot as a kid; one duck, lots of chickens, and assorted small wild birds. But I don’t have an incubator handy. We always used my mom’s yogurt maker–that thing saw more use with baby animals than it did for making gross, sour yogurt.

I figured it’s about chick season (it is) so I went on down to the feed store, and sure enough, found a small incubator. I didn’t buy the auto-turner; how hard can ten eggs be to manage? In ideal conditions, I’d have had the incubator warmed up already, but we don’t know how long the eggs sat without the momma, so I put them right in there. If they’d started and then she was gone overnight, they might all be dead already, but I figure I’ll think positively for a couple of days and then candle them. I’m going to have to make a major guess when to stop turning them for the last few days if they are viable too. And then raise the darn things! Don’t know if I’ll be able to re-release them, but there are some people with duck ponds in the area if I have to. First, we see if I can hatch them.

I hope they’re viable; this will be a fun project.

The cat is intrigued, and the house smells like canal.

I’ll post pictures when I get home, but Seamus turned nine today. We did his presents over the breakfast table; I really hadn’t a clue what to get him this year. I got him a present that he loves for Christmas, but he hadn’t asked for anything really specific for his birthday, so I went with a skateboard.

Turns out, he had a much cooler one at his dad’s. I can’t always win, but he seemed enthusiastic enough. He was more pleased with the little tripod John got him, and took a picture of the two of us before he even got dressed. I, fortunately, was already dressed!

Anyway, Happy Birthday, squirt.