The World According to Wayne: May's Travelogue
Travels from New Mexico to Florida were met with a range of climate conditions and were not without their adventures.
May was pretty much of a road month for me; I was only home about a week for the whole month. I started the month with delivery and start-up of a new mud system to Dave Mauldin of Truth or Consequences (yeah, there is such a place!), N.M., in the desert near the White Sands missile base. There was about 30 miles of desert road from the end of the pavement to the rig, so I was going to rent a truck at the airport to make the trip. Turns out, all they had left was a wimpy Ford Taurus. Funny thing - sometimes rentals make the best off-road vehicles! I didn't bend it or anything, but it sure pulled to the right after I ran over that cactus. We got the job done in good time, everything ran well and made a good well in questionable territory; everybody was happy.
I headed from there up to Tijeras, N.M., to see my friend John Williamson. It was so dry up there that it was scary. I could grab a handful of needles from the juniper trees, and they'd crumble in my hand. Looked like one spark and the whole state would go up.
When I got ready to leave, I misread my travel itinerary and realized at the last minute that I only had one hour to drive 20 miles to the airport, turn in my rental car and get on the plane. Needless to say, I bent a few rules getting to the airport. I pulled the rental up in front of the terminal, jumped out, got my suitcase and headed for the door. A guy told me I couldn't leave that car there, blah, blah, blah …. I told him the keys were in it! I can hardly wait to see that credit card bill!
When I got back, I had a couple days to catch up, so I drilled a house well down the road from the shop, ordered parts and steel for my fabricators, then went to Orlando for the Florida Ground Water Association convention. That's always a good show, plenty of good drillers and exhibitors. A good time was had by all. I did a solids-control seminar there that went pretty well, except nobody could get the PowerPoint projector to work, so I had to “wing it” without visuals. Kinda disappointing, but I think I got the idea across.
While I was in Orlando, I picked up one of my rental units from a customer that had had it for about three months. Normally, I bring my rentals to the yard, clean them up and drill a well or two with them to make sure they are field-ready - you know how rental equipment gets treated (see the car rental incident). Harrell Champion of Champion Well Drilling, West Palm Beach, Fla., needed a unit for a hurry-up job we'd been putting off for a while, so I decided to take the system straight down to his job. It looked pretty clean and the original customer told me that it was running fine - I should have known better.
Turns out, his driller either didn't have a grease gun or couldn't operate one, because the first thing that we had to do was locate and put a seal in the desander pump. Did I mention that we were so far in the Everglades that it made Jurassic Park look like a roadside attraction?
Talk about 180 degrees out of phase from the desert where I had spent the first half of the month! The heat was the same, but the humidity was so high, I almost had a heatstroke just getting rigged up. Not only that, but the little town I was staying in was the first town in several years without ANY Internet connection. I couldn't believe it - hey, even Hooterville has Wi-Fi now.
We eventually made a good well and the unit was released. I headed the 500 or so miles home, only to have to make a couple detours from I-95 because of wildfires. It's still early, but if things keep going like this, it might be a bad fire year. Guess we need to drill more wells!
I got home in time to celebrate my 20th anniversary with my personal terrorist, bin-Lottie. How she's put up with me and my shenanigans for 20 years is beyond me. We loaded up and headed out and as I write this, we are sitting on the 10th floor, overlooking the Gulf of Mexico at an “investment center” (read: casino), checking on our retirement funds! Sure hope the market is up, or I'll have to go back to work!
ND
It was so arid in New Mexico that vegetation would crumble at the touch.
May was pretty much of a road month for me; I was only home about a week for the whole month. I started the month with delivery and start-up of a new mud system to Dave Mauldin of Truth or Consequences (yeah, there is such a place!), N.M., in the desert near the White Sands missile base. There was about 30 miles of desert road from the end of the pavement to the rig, so I was going to rent a truck at the airport to make the trip. Turns out, all they had left was a wimpy Ford Taurus. Funny thing - sometimes rentals make the best off-road vehicles! I didn't bend it or anything, but it sure pulled to the right after I ran over that cactus. We got the job done in good time, everything ran well and made a good well in questionable territory; everybody was happy.
A project deep in the Everglades made Jurassic Park look like a roadside attraction. Photo courtesy of the USGS.
When I got ready to leave, I misread my travel itinerary and realized at the last minute that I only had one hour to drive 20 miles to the airport, turn in my rental car and get on the plane. Needless to say, I bent a few rules getting to the airport. I pulled the rental up in front of the terminal, jumped out, got my suitcase and headed for the door. A guy told me I couldn't leave that car there, blah, blah, blah …. I told him the keys were in it! I can hardly wait to see that credit card bill!
When I got back, I had a couple days to catch up, so I drilled a house well down the road from the shop, ordered parts and steel for my fabricators, then went to Orlando for the Florida Ground Water Association convention. That's always a good show, plenty of good drillers and exhibitors. A good time was had by all. I did a solids-control seminar there that went pretty well, except nobody could get the PowerPoint projector to work, so I had to “wing it” without visuals. Kinda disappointing, but I think I got the idea across.
While I was in Orlando, I picked up one of my rental units from a customer that had had it for about three months. Normally, I bring my rentals to the yard, clean them up and drill a well or two with them to make sure they are field-ready - you know how rental equipment gets treated (see the car rental incident). Harrell Champion of Champion Well Drilling, West Palm Beach, Fla., needed a unit for a hurry-up job we'd been putting off for a while, so I decided to take the system straight down to his job. It looked pretty clean and the original customer told me that it was running fine - I should have known better.
Wildfires caused a couple detours.
Talk about 180 degrees out of phase from the desert where I had spent the first half of the month! The heat was the same, but the humidity was so high, I almost had a heatstroke just getting rigged up. Not only that, but the little town I was staying in was the first town in several years without ANY Internet connection. I couldn't believe it - hey, even Hooterville has Wi-Fi now.
We eventually made a good well and the unit was released. I headed the 500 or so miles home, only to have to make a couple detours from I-95 because of wildfires. It's still early, but if things keep going like this, it might be a bad fire year. Guess we need to drill more wells!
I got home in time to celebrate my 20th anniversary with my personal terrorist, bin-Lottie. How she's put up with me and my shenanigans for 20 years is beyond me. We loaded up and headed out and as I write this, we are sitting on the 10th floor, overlooking the Gulf of Mexico at an “investment center” (read: casino), checking on our retirement funds! Sure hope the market is up, or I'll have to go back to work!
ND
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