So, what's been happening?

Last week was just that, our last week. At least for the time being.

Monday went well enough but the rain we got over Monday night royally screwed us up. The three open units we had turned into swimming pools overnight. Even though they had been covered up as best we could manage, water ran in from the edges and filled them to overflowing. A handful of us spent Tuesday morning pumping them out in the hopes that they might be salvageable.

They were not.

To compound the issue. The weather forcast called for more rain to fall every day the following (this) week. That would make for an entire week lost. So, since the plan was to call a halt by the 19th regardless of our state of completedness, the decision was made to call it quits early.

So, with just a couple of days to work with we opened up only 3 new units thinking we could manage to get at least that much done.

We tried ...

... but we did not.

Everyone had to stay most of the day on Saturday to get those units close to done. By the end of that day, 2 of them were finished but the third had a freshly uncovered feature that had to be dealt with. Myself and 2 others stayed over and worked on Sunday as well to get that taken care of. Then I packed it up and headed straight home from the site.

In spite of the work issues, we still managed to make the most of the week. We arranged another 'Mojito Monday' since the first one went over so well.


On friday night the whole crew gathered for an 'end-of-project' dinner party.

Our final night, Saturday, was spent back at the bowling alley (no pics this time around), followed by some after-hours card playing.

And, of course, the saying of our 'good-byes'. :(

So where does that put me now?

Back in Fort Wayne for the time being. I'm working with the IPFW-AS crew again until the work there runs out, or until other field projects open up, whichever comes first. And there are other projects coming down the pipeline. I just don't know when they will be scheduled to commence. The "sometime after the first of the year" is rather vague.

Anywho, the lineup has some good variety to it. Potential projects include: a hydroelectric plant survey near Cincinnati, a couple of small surveys in south-central Indiana near where I just came from, a cemetery relocation (near Evansville I think), a 20km powerline survey in Kentucky and several larger excavation projects in the vicinity of Knoxville, Tennessee. There is also the return to finish what is left of the Santa Claus project. Those are just the ones I'm aware of. There could well be more crop up in the near future. Which projects I can actually be a part of will be determined by how they are scheduled. Obviously I can't work at 2 projects if they are both running at the same time, in different parts of the country.

As soon as I have something more concrete to pass along I will.

Until then, and especially for those I won't be seeing over the holidays ... MERRY CHRISTMAS!

A Rather Rough Week

The weather has not been especially kind to us lately.

Monday was pretty much a lose because of the storm we got on Sunday. Left things far too muddy to work in. After a 4 hour delay a few of us went out for a quick inspection of the site. Fortunately everything was still relatively intact. We might have been able to go out and get a couple hours in during the late afternoon but opted, instead, to get caught up on paperwork and such back at the hotel.

Tuesday and Wednesday were much better. We tried to make up as much of the lost time as we could. Actually had a productive couple of days.

Didn't have such a great start on Thursday thanks to more rain. We cover things up as best we can directly over the units but the sloping ends of the trenches we are working in naturally collect runoff from the exposed portions outside the tents which then pools right where we're digging (the lowest part of the trench). Digging and screening went rather slowly until we were able to work below the first few waterlogged centimeters.

Working Friday just plain sucked!

Temperatures only got above freezing briefly in the mid-afternoon. Digging was not too bad but screening was a pain because the dirt was freezing in the screens faster than we could get through it! We did what we could but the day just seemed to drag on and on. By the end of the day everyone was miserable and we were feeling rather frozen ourselves. Had to keep moving to keep the circulation moving in fingers and toes. We were all more than ready for the weekend by the time the day was over.

Friday night made up for it a bit. There really aren't a lot of things to do here in Tell City but there is a bowling alley practically right across the street from the hotel so we hung out there for a while. Scores rarely broke 100 but we had a blast nonetheless. It was just a fun night out!

Afterwards we headed off to Braunies, a local pub just around the corner, to close out the evening. After a couple of games of darts we finally called it a night. It was a long night, topping off a long week.

We'd made plans to go into Louisville on Saturday but had to cancel them. Weather was fairly decent here but they were getting snow and freezing rain there. Not something we wanted to deal with so stayed in for most of the day. It was just as well. Those of us who had gone out the night before kinda needed the time to recover a bit (lol). Did go back to Braunies again later in the evening just to get out of the hotel but it was a very laid back night. Another round of darts, 3 games of euchre, and we were done.

Now its Sunday. Not much going on today. Gonna sneak in a couple loads of laundry when I can and wrap up some paperwork left over from Friday but nothing else on the schedule.

So where do we stand at this point?

Well, we are actually on schedule to have this project wrapped up on the 19th. As long as we don't have too much more trouble with the weather, that is. We have 15 more units to complete yet. If we don't expose a lot of featues along the way, its do-able in 2 weeks. If anything should should set us back, we'll still be shutting down on the 19th, to return and finish it up sometime soon after the New Year.

Almost everything along the westen half of the project site is completed. You can get an idea, though, of how much ground we have to cover yet in the photo below. Off in the distance is a small group of trees that the road is headed toward. We'll be done when we reach those trees.