The Work-A-Day World, Part V

Okay, to start things off, I am going to change the scheduling (as best as I can) of my entries. As of now, all entries will be put in on Monday of each week. The reason: Mondays are always interesting. Reader be warned...

So the day started off as they usually do, calm and quiet, with me and Tesla deciding what we're going to tackle. Today we went hell-bent on some random cabling for a priority system within the plant that will be used beyond the decommissioning. Unfortunately, the point of this system closest to the ground is still twelve feet above the concrete - totalling to 98% of it comfortably residing at ceiling level, about forty feet from the ground. Eek.

So I spent most of the day with the cross-beams of the ceiling at eye level, following two cables half the length of the main building. I was starting to get used to it, though. That is, until I started feeling something very warm on my back at one point. Instinctively, I turn around - and promptly get blinded by a 1000-watt metal halide bulb. Fun times, aren't they?

Anyway, the rest of the day passed without incident. Rather, I should say that most of the day passed without incident. The plant was getting quiet, everyone was gearing up for the migration out the door. I grab on the controls of the lift I was using since 07:30, and begin to lower myself down to ground level and safety.

Now, these lifts are powered by propane. And, of course, the tank ran empty with me twenty feet from the ground. For the second time in five weeks, I was stranded with my feet off the ground. Thankfully, there was just enough fumes in it to power back up (twice) and get me within jumping distance before it gave up the ghost. So in the end, all's well that ends well.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm grabbing a keg of beer to calm my battered nerves.

Random Entry

So, as I didn't keep to my usual Thursday evening publishing schedule, you can safely assume that nothing has been happening until recently. But first, to catch you up on what actually has happened...

First off, I got into Thunder Bay again to visit Yeti. Mostly the same old thing, exchanging old stories and new theories. Though I did finally meet another person he knew up here. That was interesting, albeit brief. The guy foxholed for most of my visit - apparently, this is the status quo. Yeti ran me through some of the games he has for PS3. Didn't really play them much, but I've always been more comfortable with PC-mounted anyway.

It kind of sucked having to haul out last night to come back to Atikokan - I'll admit to feeling a little isolated up here. Writing would certainly help, but not only my old curse, but work as well, is severely cutting into what creativity I have. Oh well, there's still weekends.

Probably the biggest news came just today. Leaving for work at our usual 06:30, the oil light began flashing at us with a very annoying tone sounding out. The German Workhorse was in trouble. Rather than chance continuing the drive to the factory, we pulled over and abandoned it on a side road, and looked forward to continuing the trip on foot. That is, until one of our co-workers saw me, Tesla, and Lazarus walking along the side of the road. Tesla in the cab, me and Lazarus into the back, we finished the trip in about three minutes. And a good thing too - it was warm in comparison to other days, but that soon changes at 50 kph while exposed to wind chill.

Work was rough. Or I should perhaps say, it was rough on me. My spine, my right knee, and even more ominous, my left thigh, they were all aching in twenty minutes. Advil did nothing. All I could do is grunt through it and hope for the end to come, as I usually do. But there was still work to do: we had to collect our sick Jetta.

And there came Wrench to the rescue. With a length of half-inch rope tied around a tow point, he guided the Workhorse to the best place in Atikokan for the car to be taken care of: back to the factory. Pulling it inside, a quick exam of the oil told us exactly what was wrong.

The car hasn't been used enough. Gas has been leaking into the oil reservoir, watering down the oil itself. Doom averted, we need only a complete oil change and a new filter for good measure. An hour's work, and the Workhorse shall live again.

And to think, I was almost ready to write the damn thing's eulogy.

The Work-A-Day World, Part IV

First off, to Hell and brimstone with having my system on Central Time - I'm the only person in town that's even using it. Yes, Atikokan is 100+ kilometres from the Eastern/Central border, but no one here seems to give a damn. And despite my reputation of not following the crowd, if no one else is going to use it, why should I?

Yes, I'm in a mood. The work week is half over, yes. Thursday morning (probably about 01:30) I'll be getting paid, yes. This will most likely be the largest pay cheque I've ever seen, thank God yes. It was just that crummy a day. No explosions, no fires, no serious injuries requiring hospitalizations, no live power cables scaring the living hell out of me... just work. Though I suppose I should start off where it really began, that being yesterday.

A head cold. I was all but stopped in my tracks by a head cold. My nose weighed a ton, I was getting cold chills every five milliseconds - I half-wondered if I had the flu, to be honest. Needless to say, I felt like death warmed over. And I still put in a full day of work. Last night, felt just as under the weather - and I couldn't sleep. Hail the return of my immortal companion, Insomnia.

So today, with only three or four hours of sleep (you'd think I'd be used to it by now) it was back to cutting cables and dragging them off to be packed and sent overseas. Not so bad, I've done it before. That is, until they started taking off the metal panelling from the floor to expose the cabling trenches - those were our next job.

I've probably described them before, but let me re-iterate: three feet deep, a foot wide, and 90% of the cables in them are at the bottom, underneath two full feet of sawdust, with just enough of the cables sticking up through the sawdust (most of them for no reason; they come up to the surface at one point, only to trail back down to the bottom) that simply shovelling out the trenches would be tedious at best. And the vacuums we have at the plant are about a decade old, and on their last legs.

Of course, that situation would be a blessing, because it doesn't include frequent flooding of those trenches to transform decades-old sawdust into a consistency somewhere between wet bundles of newspaper and Lake Erie clay. I think you see where this is going.

So, two hours go by, with minimal progress and maximum effort, when we get new orders. Because hauling these cables out is being such a bastardly task (something everyone there predicted months ago) we were to just put the metal panelling back in place and be shot of the whole thing. No major thing, right? We just take every last cable that we've fought tooth and nail to get exposed to open air for the time in my lifetime and bury the whole rat's nest once again.

Suffice it to say, no one was happy. We were looking at digging out sawdust manually to make room for these cables to go back in, which we all knew would take forever. Then, the magic words come across from one of my co-workers: "Hey, isn't there that 200 horsepower vacuum cleaner in the back somewhere? That thing's pretty damn new - it shouldn't have a problem dealing with this!"

Side Note: I restrained myself from killing anyone for overlooking that vacuum previously.

The Road So Far...

So, to update everyone on the events of this week.

First, this is being published real-time, as we finally got our internet and TV hooked up. I had to take an hour and a half off of work to babysit while the guy was here. It wasn't really needed - the guy was a lot nicer than many other cable guys I've run into. He even got a Coke to take with him on the road. There were some problems with the wireless, but he wasn't here to help with that. It was all me.

Second, my job has officially begun to branch out. Next Monday and Tuesday, I'll be able to escape from mountains of sawdust clogging up lungs and eyes, and instead working on installing a variable-frequency drive, a type of motor, at a local pump station. And sometime in the next few months, I'll be spending a few days working at a mine. It should be perfect for me - I've been down in active mines before, doing the whole tourist thing, and absolutely loved it.

It certainly beats being up on scaffolding and ladders.

From Forklifts to Links Reforged

Thankfully, the multiple facets that made Monday interesting (and anyone that knows me knows what is truly meant when I say ‘interesting’) didn’t repeat once during the following days at work. What did follow was two days of training on aerial work platforms and forklifts. It’s kind of strange: I’ve been hesitating and procrastinating on getting a driver’s license since I had a bad day with a substitute instructor and Highway 403 (don’t ask) and yet now I’m fully qualified to use something that could do more damage than the annual Running of the Bulls in Pamplona, Spain. Go figure, eh?

After another half day of training on Friday (paid, thank you very much, Pellet) I was well and looking forward to a daytrip to Thunder Bay to see an old face, Yeti. Of course, Tesla piqued my interest with some robotics programming last night. Pellet has said I’m not even going to be looking at this kind of stuff for at least six months, but why not get ahead? As it is, Tesla was saying this morning how amazed he was at how quickly I picked up not just the programming method, which is completely different than anything I’ve ever touched, but use of the programming software itself. Maybe I should’ve gone into this kind of stuff years ago – it would’ve certainly solved (or caused me to avoid) several of my Big Blunders.

So then, on to Thunder Bay, and the meeting with Yeti. (Allow me to reiterate, for Yeti’s sake, that I never use actual names, just pseudonyms. And this is one you’re now stuck with – it could’ve been worse, and you know it.) It was pretty easy to spot him – he’s barely changed since I last saw him ten years ago. So, good times were had by all. Old memories, new stories, it all found its way into our five-hour talk, amidst bumping through various stores. (And at the same time, I managed to re-acquire a book that Athabasca had taken with her.)

But the biggest news of the day was one name, one I was almost certain I would never hear again. Carinae had been at the same high school as myself and Yeti, but moved out east about a decade ago. I will not get into what little was told to me today about how she fared out there. Suffice it to say, I’m sure the one fact I did hear today is the top snowflake of the iceberg. Even more surprising (and I don’t mean this as insult to Yeti) is that they are once again dating. It’s a fact I’m very glad to hear.

Work-A-Day World, Part III

(Originally written 25 January 2010, 17:28 Central Time)

I had originally intended to do one entry a week, but there comes those days where the day is interesting enough to warrant an entry for that day alone. (Yes, I’m sure you can imagine that today was interesting.)

It started right off the bat with a building just down the street getting gutted by a fire. No word on exactly what happened. But the building was abandoned, with no security. I blame teenagers. Me and Tesla decided to take a closer look on our drive to work – and promptly got lost. This was a particular trouble, as Atikokan doesn’t seem to have much in the way of local snow removal, and what was on the ground was heavy and unwilling to move. As resilient as our German Workhorse is, it very nearly met its match today.

It finally did get stuck, though – right in the parking lot of the factory. So, at least we got there. Our third roommate, Lazarus, wasn’t so lucky. He had been in Thunder Bay overnight, and couldn’t find a safe way (or any way) back. He wasn’t the only one, too; even the big boss, Pellet, was stuck in Thunder Bay as well.

And what a day for it to happen, too. Just before lunch, someone from the Ministry of Labour walked up and down the backs of everyone in the plant – except me, thankfully. I was stuck on the roof of a control shed nearly fifteen feet off the ground, and out of his reach. (Yes, me the acrophobic.) Finally rescued after twenty minutes, we had a quick lunch, and got back at it.

Then the real fun began. Back to the control shed, Tesla told me to get to work on chopping out the cabling under the shed. The first cable I hit: 240 volts, 20 amps – and very much alive. One second, things are just starting to settle down, the next I’m getting a face full of sparks and arc-welding a groove out of the huge cable cutters we were using. Yes, I’m alright, or I wouldn’t be writing this. Needless to say, I forced Tesla to test every cable before I cut it, or simply have him do it himself. So it was him that cut the next live cable.

Now, here’s the problem: every time you chop through a live power cable, you get a shower of sparks as the power flowing through the wire gets grounded on the metal sheathing. Slightly less often, but fairly frequent as I understand, the plastic covering on the cable can catch fire. So, there’s me and Tesla, staring at the end of this cable, screaming for a fire extinguisher while a back corner of my mind was absently thinking of marshmallows.

Thankfully, the fire was isolated to a chunk of cable coming down into the crawl space below the shed, and no flaming blobs of plastic dropped into the piles of sawdust below. It didn’t burn long enough to catch the wooden shed on fire. We hit it with a couple blasts of carbon dioxide, and it was out in seconds. So, no megalithic explosions today – I get to see another sunrise.

And if this is a foretelling of what this week will be like, Heaven help me. One day down, three still to go.

Work-A-Day World, Part II

(Originally written 21 January 2010, 21:30 Central Time)

And thus ends my first full week with Atikokan Renewable Fuels. And I am just about as sore as I’ve ever been. The plant’s not even in production yet – we’re still trying to clear out all the junk that came with the place. The majority of the machinery, in one case an eighty-something foot long press for making particle board, is being disassembled and sold to a company in Malaysia.

After that, the largest thing in there will be the cloud of sawdust being ejected from the complex via air compressor, which will probably gather condensation in the atmosphere and dump a foot of snow on the area. As stated, the factory was once the site of a particle board plant, and a major employer in the area – until it went bankrupt several years ago. And it would seem that in their sunset hours, they didn’t see fit to do anything but produce more and more of their product, in hopes they could sell enough to stay afloat. It makes sense, doesn’t it? Except when you take into account that one of the several things they didn’t do is clean up the place. And this is one place with a nasty reputation.

Let me put it succinctly: sawdust, in large quantities, is one of the worst fire hazards imaginable. It will burn very quickly, to the point where one could classify it as a flashover or other form of minor explosion. All the primary wiring, supplying power to the machines, is in underground trenches under at least three feet of fireproof insulation. I’ve heard jokes (though I’m not sure if there’s a complete lack of truth in it) that the area’s fire department had a pumper on stand-by at all times for this place alone. And this is the place I’m working. (For the first time I can recall, Indigo, I share your concerns for my safety.)

Of course, we have three or four people on the only running shift in the factory dedicated solely to watching out for fires in the making. And so far, the only thing that I’ve seen which could set off a fire was some of the guys throwing off sparks from cutting up the machinery – with a half dozen fire extinguishers nearby. But there’s still a lot of sawdust lying around. And when I say a lot, I’m not just meaning a couple of large piles. There are no large piles – it’s just everywhere you look, and then some. (For those curious, we’ve already considered calling Mike Rowe from ‘Dirty Jobs’ – I’m going to talk to the big boss Monday about it.)

So far, I’ve been working with Tesla, in lieu of the paperwork arriving for my apprenticeship, in shutting down all power flow to the multi-hundred tonne presses from the building’s former regime, as well as clearing out all the old wiring, most of which was probably old before I was born. Though, instead of calling it wiring, I should just say power cables, each of which capable of running up to 200 amps in some cases. (For those like I was a week ago, the more amps a cable has to transport, the thicker it has to be.) And some of these cables are as long, or longer, than the machines themselves. So, there’s my job: cutting the cables, some of which would easily outweigh me, keeping them as intact as possible, and dragging them out of the machines.

Now, here’s the next problem. Very few of these cables are at ground level. If I’m really lucky, and God is being kind, the one I’m chopping out at any given time will force me to stoop a little, putting my back in a very uncomfortable position for several seconds. 98% of them require stand on the very top of a step ladder, with the only thing to grab is an elevated cable tray Tesla himself has described as being ‘fragile on a good day.’

So to summarize, I’m working in a place that could be put under a mushroom cloud from one lucky spark and put me in a hospital’s burn unit. I could have my spine (or that damned third lumbar ligament) seize up on me from repeated bending and hauling heavy loads. I could also have my knees decide they don’t like me anymore for the same reason, with the same result. I could be cutting through a cable and loose my footing at the top of an eight foot ladder. I could find that one lucky cable that everyone forgot still had a couple dozen amps going through it.

At least they gave me a hard hat.

I Can See A Moose From My Bathroom

(Originally written on 15 January, 02:32 Central Time.)

I suppose since I’ve arrived safely in Atikokan, it’s now time to give mention to our mode of transportation. I request everyone reading this raise a glass to Tesla’s VW Jetta, which saw us safely here without incident. Despite the fact it was forced to push itself harder than ever before, and is four years from being declared an antique.

It has no proper radio antenna, merely a piece of steel rod. The fenders have been rusting out for God knows how long, the sunroof can be opened, but not closed, and the heating system control is two wires that have to be connected manually. I’ll never say this to Tesla, but I was expecting we’d wake up this morning at the hotel in Kapuskasing and find it had coughed up its own engine.

So, we set out an hour before dawn, stopped within a kilometre to clean off the headlights, and continued on. This is moose country, after all. As reliable as that Jetta’s proven itself to be, running headlong into Bullwinkle would’ve really ruined the day of that little red workhorse.

But the trip was uneventful, save for the return of Theatre Ass after ten minutes, as well as my left leg once again deciding it wanted a vacation from the abuse it was taking from hour after hour in the car. (Yes, it’s fine now. No cane required.) We cleared through little places like Longlac, Beardmore, and probably a dozen other places that made Indigo’s old stomping grounds of Vittoria seem like a bustling city.

So, after 1,578 kilometres, we arrived. After unpacking the German Workhorse and meeting a couple of the guys that we’ll be working with – they had been waiting for us – we found one of the two restaurants in town (which shares a building with the town’s conference hall, pub, and bowling alley) and met (all in one person) the restaurant’s owner, co-inhabitant of our apartment building, and local Gossip Queen. She confessed to knowing before we got to the restaurant where we were living, and why we had moved up here in the first place. She’s also on a first-name basis with the mayor, who refuses to change the sign saying there’s 3300 people in town, because he doesn’t want to admit any number that would be less. Welcome to Small Town, Ontario.

Tesla had suggested I find a photo of an ice fishing hut and claim that’s the new residence. But to be honest, the new place is actually quite nice. There’s two bedrooms, full kitchen and bathroom, and a decent size living room. I had suggested two weeks ago we have our future boss put our names in on the place in advance, so we wouldn’t have to camp in the Jetta. Good move on my part, better move on Tesla’s part for listening to me. You see what happens when you listen to me, people? You avoid freezing to death overnight in a Jetta.

But thinking about it now, I have to say this is absolutely one of the craziest things I’ve ever done. Here’s why: I’m now one hour behind just about everyone I know (Central Time Zone); all the rivers flow toward the Arctic Ocean; we’ve come across signs for the Dawson Trail; we could have a traffic jam in town because of a jay-walking moose; and walking the three kilometres to work is inadvisable due to the risk (however slight) of meeting the local wolf pack.

I’m beginning to wonder if this is the town where they shot that old CBC show, ‘North of 60.’

Not But Another Foot on the Road

As you can imagine from the title, there's little to say regarding the trip thus far. But I should say, the final destination is not Thunder Bay as I had originally stated. Tesla and me are actually going further, to a small town called Atikokan, two hours west of Thunder Bay, and a grand total of 1,538 kilometres from Barrie.

About the only thing of any interest for this trip so far has been one sight I caught about fifteen minutes north of North Bay. Tesla didn't catch it in time, but I saw it, large as life, and just as dangerous: a bull moose, sporting a very impressive rack. I thought I also saw a cougar in the middle of a small clearing along the side of the road about a half an hour later, but with us driving at 100 kph, it was there and gone before I really registered I had seen something. It was probably just a rock.

We had intended to push on to Hearst before bunking down for the night, but night fell just short of the half-way point, stopping us in Kapuskasing. It'll take us about an hour to reach Hearst tomorrow, then another 2 1/2 hours to reach the next spot of civilization, Longlac.

So, there it is. Probably by this time tomorrow night, we'll be at the new place, or close enough that we'll decide to push on. Unless the weather goes bad on us, of course; with such a small population base in the area, we're not risking anything. So, all of you who were messaging me, wishing me luck, saying you were worried about something happening, you needn't worry. As always, I'm alive and doing well.

Well, except for one thing. I don't know how the Brothers Winchester do it on 'Supernatural' but after nine hours in that damned Jetta, I've got the world's ever worst case of theatre ass.

Wanted: Dead or Alive

This one's going to be kind of bittersweet. It's good news for me, because it's something I've been waiting for a while to see happen. It's bad news, because I know for guaranteed fact that there will be people out for blood.

I just got word that the move to Thunder Bay is an absolute certainty, and that I will be getting the electrical apprenticeship. The problem is, it's been scheduled for tomorrow. And there's no time to fit in a promised visit to Toronto to see such people as Andariel, Chrysalis, Gothika, or even anyone else.

I'm not even sure what Tesla's going to say to his boss, but it's almost certainly going to be a conversation that will not end well. As I'm only doing temp work at the moment, telling them I'm off to new parts won't be very difficult. Ridding myself of Barbatos is going to be just as hazardous, though something tells me I haven't heard the last of her. No, the only difficulty for me is going to be not being able to visit Toronto one more time before I go.

And yes, I've already asked Tesla about postponing it. And the answer, while sympathetic to the situation, could not be altered. So, there it is. This will still be more cash than I'm earning at the moment, which will give a better opportunity to fly down when I can. Yes, I said 'fly.' As in, board an airplane, and put myself several thousand feet off the ground. Those who know me will know I get nervous on a step ladder.

So no, this isn't going to be the end of the time any of us run into each other - just that next time is going to require a little more planning.

A Forest Of Our Own

So, it's taken me two weeks of mind-bending searches both online and through various archives sent to me, but it's finally making some progress. Since 01 January, I've been putting together a family tree of everyone I can find that has some familial connection, either by marriage or blood, and the list is now at 194 names across 66 nuclear families. Yikes.

Call this my New Year's Resolution, I suppose. This is certainly a project I could spend years on, but the way I figure it is, someone has to put in the hours. Otherwise, I would have never learned such interesting facts like one of my third cousins is a three-time Olympic medallist. Isn't that something worth finding out?

Adventure of the Year

So, the New Year approaches. And with it may come a drastic change in scenery. For those who haven't heard the full story (and since there's only two people following this blog at the moment, it may seem somewhat redundant to say anything) there's a company in Atikokan, two hours west of Thunder Bay, called RDF Canada (information on the company can be found here) that's got an open and available spot for an electrical apprenticeship. And it's available to one person: me. Mark it on your calendar. This is the first time in my long and...storied history that there's been a fully secure position in a multi-million dollar company being offered to me, and me alone.

And if any of you know me as well as I certainly believe you do, then you will know there is nothing in my life that is that cut, dry, and utterly simplistic. It just doesn't happen. So, here it is: it may not even happen. Now, here's the reason why: the person running the company will only take me as a package deal. He's creating the opening of aforementioned apprentice if and only if he gets the the one person he's wanted on the project from the very start: Tesla. (No, not Nikola Tesla - once again, my rule regarding names and pseudonyms online is absolute.) Now, Tesla's about as gung-ho on this as I've ever seen him on anything, which is to say he's excited as a rock in Death Valley.

So, the company's owner wants Tesla to send exact wage expectations for both him and myself to the company's accountant. And for some damn reason, it's the accountant that has to clear it. I suppose it makes sense; the accountant's the one that knows exactly how much the company has to spare. So, until the accountant gives the word, nothing can happen. (And to think, I've spent the last couple of days packing up my room in case we get an order to move out.)

Of course, the next issue to deal with housing. Atikokan has a population of around 1,200. It's far too small for a start-up bunk at the local Salvation Army hostel, as it's too small to have a Salvation Army. That wouldn't even be an option as Tesla hasn't done hostels since he backpacked through Australia, ten years before I was even born. So, with the wage expectations, an allowance for housing must also be included, for both of us. The company's owner is going to get us shortlisted as best as possible for a two bedroom apartment in the area (at a total cost of $400 per month - beats Toronto's costs for rent hands down, I'd say) to give us a safe harbour. Atikokan's about to get a massive influx of population for this one company alone. So, the sooner we can get up there and get keys in or hand, the better chance we have to have a place at all. There's contingencies in place, but they're not as permanent as I'd like. Yeah, story of my life: stopgaps galore.

But there's one more cloud blotting out the horizon. It's not just costs of living that will have to be covered by our combined wages. If we get the green light to jump, Tesla and me are going to be driving up, a distance of just under 1,500 kilometres. He wants his trusty, well-used VW Jetta up there with him, rust spots and all. So there's maintenance, insurance, and gas for the car. That I have no issue with. What I have a problem with is Barbatos, who has made it apparent that she expects $800 a week from Tesla, with no intentions on her part to have her son chip in from his wages, something he hasn't done anyway, in the nearly three years he's lived here.

I would almost argue once again that Tesla should simply have a lawyer draw up papers for divorce, but I understand the reasons he won't. Such an action could end up much worse for him. Barbatos refuses to work. Tesla would be forced to pay alimony, to keep her 'standard of living' intact. It's a policy governing divorce I've never agreed with. I once labelled her as a gold-digger, from descriptions given to me by Tesla, long before I met her. I'm sure you all now understand why I still find that to be fitting.

(Remember in a previous entry I said these journals would most likely end being bitch sessions?)

But through all the obstacles and turbulence that loom on the horizon, there is one advantage that nearly ensures all other situations will be overcome. Those reading this should remember one thing above all others: I always manage to find my feet, regardless what the situation is. Anyone reading this may feel worry and concern for what could begin to happen in the next few weeks (or less, perhaps) but, for those who know the story, I need only mention one town: Elliot Lake.