The wind, the heat, and other things

the wind has been blowing for several days now.....very strong, 15-25mph with gusts higher. It does not even let up at night, but the temps do get a little cooler. Saving grace for us is that the wind is coming across a field with grass and trees and not down a dusty road. So Linda does not have to dust 2-3 times a day like she had on some sites. We like to have the awning out during the day to sit under and help keep the heat off of the trailer, but with the wind we can not do that. In fact we do not even sit out. As I am writing this the wind just picked up speed and is blowing even harder in the gusts.

Daytime temps have been as high as 98 degrees, averaging about 88-90, while the nights are about 62-65 degrees. Our poor air conditioner is working very hard, and is barely keeping things livable. We are using two small fans to help.

So far no snake sightings for the last couple of days. One of the truckers told me that he has had reports of  5 foot rattlers, and one report of an 8 footer......thank goodness we have only seen small ones. Don,t know what either of us would do if we saw one of those big ones.....probably call the company safety man and tell him to do something...lol....

We are under three weeks now, but we are not counting.....right.....

We are using the wifi from the rig. Verizon service is not good in south Texas. Plus on this rig site we are down in a hole, and while we can get on the Internet with Verizon it is extremely slow. The wifi is not blazing, but livable.

Traffic is more than we thought it would be on a drill rig. We are averaging about 120 visitors a day that have to be signed in and out. One day we had 145, a new record for us. I think the least we have had here is about 60.

We are both fascinated by the amount of specialized equipment that is used to drill a well. When we first heard about gate guarding I was visualizing the old fashioned rigs that you saw in the movies....a tapered wood structure with some equipment to drill the hole.....today is is all specialized and automated. The rigs are very portable and break down so they fit onto specialized semi trailers, some with as many as 5 axles on them. It takes about 2-3 days to take down a rig, and the same amount of time to put it back up.

A few days ago they reached 6000 foot and took the casing (pipe) out and put down larger pipe. A crew came in about 10pm in several semi trailers, assorted other trucks and left at 3 pm the following day after cementing in the new larger casing, working thru the night and next day.
Special tankers bring in "mud" that is used in the drilling, and special dump trucks take the used mud out to a dumping facility. Typically about 3 trucks, making several trips each bring in the mud. This happens every 2-4 days.

After cementing in the larger casing, they will now start to turn the hole sideways and drill another 10-12000 feet. They will drill another well on this pad, and there is another pad about 1/4 mile from us. They came in yesterday with a huge brush hog mounted on a front end loader and cut a 12 foot wide path thru the scrub trees and underbrush to the next well site. They will now come in and put about 12 inch diameter pipe above ground to connect the two wells, and build some sort of facility to store the oil for pickup by tanker trucks. They will not be hooking these three wells to the pipeline.

We will be gone before all of this is done.


We have not been posting pictures as we are not supposed to take them.....but we have been taking pictures and would love to show them to you. But....you have to come see us.

O.K. y'all have a great day, and know that we love ya, and miss ya.

Jim and Linda