There and back again

I am back. Actually I got back yesterday afternoon, but haven't had time to use the internet freely. I packed well. In fact the only things I didn't use were the swimsuit (no time for the sauna or maybe it wasn't there at all--I'm not really sure) and the toothbrush/toothpaste (gross I know, but I had no clean water with which to brush).

Here's what I did while I was away:

First I found the guys and we drove to the wellsite, but not without some problems:

We got to the wellsite and changed into our Personal Protective Equipment (PPE):

Then we parked our truck:

in front of the rig (which was built in 1905 originally, but had moved form borehole to borehole):

We assembled long cylindrical tools and put them into the borehole using a crane. By we, I mean that the more experienced folk and the permanent wellsite workers did this: (from the interwebs)

While this was going on, I drank something that tasted just like liquified watermellon Jolly Ranchers:

The tools take a long while to get to the bottom of the hole and we had been up since 4:and 30 so we went to sleep at about 5 PM in the caravan next to the rig:

Around midnight we woke up and began using computers to record the data we were measuring with our tools which were dangling in the hole from a cable attached to our truck--we took measurements until about 3 that afternoon:

I went to the bathroom twice in the caravan and on my first try I managed to lose the watch I was carrying in my breast pocket down the inclined chute that carried the waste away:

I took a picture of the pretty clouds:

And a picture of the bore hole:

After we took the measurements we had to get the instruments out of the hole. The operators of the rig took their sweet time and we didn't get the tools out until about 1 AM the next morning. During this waiting time I watched 1 full length movie which I had seen before (though not in Russian) and two Russian miniseries (one about the late 90s and Russian soldiers and the other about a group of fugitives) of which I understood some but not all.

We slept another night at the caravan and went home the next day. I had eaten a total of 4 meals in those 72 hours so when we got back I had a big lunch. Then we went back to work at the base.

All in all, it wasn't a horrible experience and it was cool to get to know my coworkers and get a glimps of the kind of work I will be doing for the next while.