Communication and Digging

June 2, 2005
The first day of training went well. The trainee nodded a lot and Larry went thru the Thesaurus attempting to find words the translator understood. As the morning went on Larry’s attempt to communicate with the translator dwindled down to something like "the F*@kin’ bin". At that point the translator found something else to do and the trainee became Larry’s slave.

The translator never came back so we preformed a day of miscellaneous maintenance with a lot of arm waving and pointing. For those of you that don’t know Larry, he’s never without something to say even when no one is listening. Larry completed the day holding complete conversations with the new guy nodding all day as if he understood everything. It was fun to watch.

June 3, 2005
Again today, the translator was a no-show. I took the new operator through our equipment and drew lines on all the dials with him to show where all the pressure gauges should be set. He seemed to catch on to visual indicators better than arm waving. I believe there was partial success.

After that, we were told to dig up the water pipe we buried several days ago. The pipe was buried wrapped in an electrical cord called heat wire, used to keep water pipes from freezing. We need to bury the pipe with more insulation.

This will give those of you who understand what we are about to do, an appreciation for the severe cold they get. We laid 3" of R 30 Styrofoam under the pipe 24" wide. Then (2) pieces of the same 24" wide insulation on either side of the pipe and another heating wire with it. Then we covered all of this with more insulation out 8 feet wide.

Now all this seems simple until I tell you that 80 percent was dug with the backhoe and the rest was dug by Larry, me and the new operator, Stash. (I remember his name because a lot of old jokes start with Stash and Olaf went to the bar…). We had to hand chip permafrost with a long solid bar for 8 solid hours. (This is the nastiest stuff in which I have had to dig) Tonight I will sleep like a baby.

Not much else is happening in the Upper Northwest Territory. (They don’t call it Siberia and they will correct you if you call it Siberia)

Magadan got 1 meter of snow yesterday. Everyone wished it would fall here.

Nanook of the Upper Northwest Territory