She's a tough ol life on the rigs by's

Trust me when I say, this will be the only time I delve deeply and nostalgically in the wonderful world of roughnecking, but it needs to be discussed and dis and cuss it I will (so F'ing lame josh!)

Last October, my dear friend Ethan and I set sail for the wild wild west just like so many goofie newfies before us seeking fame and fortune. We found neither obviously, as none have you have seen us in the paper, television or Forbes magazine...but like my ol' friend Donnie Dunphy would say, we had a time.

We lasted about two weeks in Edmonton, which turned out to be an alright city at the end of the day, and we thoroughly enjoyed the sights and sounds while putting a gratuitous amount of effort into job hunting (karaokeing and getting drunk in a hostel)

 Ethan, the clever and fully qualified salty old sea dog he is, managed to hammer down a job, or career as the big kids call it, at a engineering firm in Calgary. So with heavy hearts and huge sigh of relief to be out of each others' presence, Ethan went southerly and yours truly headed up to the bunked out waste that is northern Alberta for some good down home oil rigging.

Das Da Rig's By's

Two days of those circa 90's training videos and some congenial chit chat about things I didn't understand whatsoever, and I was off to Slave Lake, Alberta. You may have heard about it last year as the little town that mostly burned up by wildfires. It was very strange to drive through this place with the left hand side of the street gone up in flames and the other side untouched. But I digress.

They shack you up in a hotel for the duration of your employment, and my first experience checking in was 'Oh, tell him sorry, I know he didn't want a roommate'. Awesome, good start. So I crash down on the bed, throw a six pack in the bar fridge, and await my first meeting of my rigging-bros. 'You're on my side, get the fuck out!'. I make it sound angry, but it was all in good fun...we talk a bit about what's in store for my first stint in the patch, and then, of course, the party starts! It was some kids nineteenth birthday, so the whiskey was flowing and so too did the karaoke. In the back of my mind, as I'm just crushing a Billy Idol song, I think 'don't you have to work your first day in a job you know nothing about and have heard pretty terrible things about?'. Oh yes Josh, you do.

Que first day, 6:00 am, head pounding, nerves jumping, I climb into the truck and we head out. 

'Got any experience kid?'

'No I don't.'

'Fuck why do they keep sending us these guys?'

'Well he can sing karaoke'

'Ohhh so you were out getting liquored on your first day eh?'

I really wanted to puke at this point, but I held it back to avoid further admonishment.

Breakfast. Lunch. And Dinner.

When you get to the site, which takes anywhere from twenty minutes to hours, the crew piles into the 'doghouse' which isn't actually like Snoopy's little pad or anything, but a big industrial trailer where you get changed, eat, rip on whoever did something stupid that day (usually me) and everything else that isn't freezing your balls off outside. I gave my name and a little background information, after congratulating myself when they told me I 'didn't look as stupid as the rest of them', they all figured out I knew nothing about mechanics, lifting things, hunting, trucks or fishing. Aka fresh blood.

After a couple of hours of running around like a headless chicken, getting yelled at and made fun for just about everything, scrubbing oil and mud from every little crevice possible, I'm shaking my head asking what I've got myself into. Ah grasshopper, it was just the beginning.

I didn't hear my own name for about four months, throughout that time it progressed something like this.

'Where'd you work before this?'

'I was in australia working at the dockyard'

'Ya probably on a fucking gay cruise!'

'Hey gay cruise, make some more coffee!'

'Bruce get me a clevice!'

'What's a clevice!?'

'It's a shackle numbnuts!'

'What's a shackle?'

'Ahhh you fuckin' newfie!'

aka Fuckin' Bruce

I found out that Bruce was pretty much a regional term for a fairly dumb or sub-standard worker, and it pretty much stuck for the duration of my employment, which in a twisted way became kind of endearing!

After Bruce, I became 'maggot'.

'Climb up there you little maggot, you shouldn't even be allowed to do sweet jobs like this' (the sweet job was propping two wrenches against your sides in -30 degrees with no gloves on trying to pry these little fluorescent tags into a giant piece of cable...complicated I know, which is why it was such an honour)

'Maggot'

After maggot came Puddy, which was a misspell and as close as I would ever come to hearing Purdy, so naturally I was stoked!

We met a few rig pigs in Edmonton while staying at the hostel, and the general consensus was, even if you're hating it, give it three weeks and it will get better. In my case, exclusive or no, it lasted about three months. The tricks, insults and curses seemed limitless, even impressive at times but in all honestly it was probably the lowest point of happiness and self confidence in my life (not to be melodramatic or anything). There were a few days when I was a breath away from sprinting out of there as fast as I could and never looking back, but those pay checks that had started to fill my empty bank account kept my sorry ass there.

One of my favourite jobs came in November before we got the luxury of a heated bathroom. Of course on a crew of five guys in the middle of the woods, the outhouse piles up pretty quickly. At -15 it all turns into quite a little shit-berg too.

'Bruce, we need you to grab the steam wand and melt this shit pile down while this guys sucks it out'

Finally, I've found my higher calling.

It was actually kind of fun until the toilet paper plugged this guy's suction hose and the outhouse filled with a thick steam-shit cloud, sending us both reeling and gagging backwards. That was one of those days where I said..'Wasn't I in australia or something a few months ago?'

Top of the world

So, long story short, October to December was an absolute hell, as the temperatures dipped lower and lower, I seemed to be making no headway with these guys, hadn't had a day off in 70 days and lived in a one horse town in a two man room. Les Miserable to be sure. 

But a funny thing happened after Christmas holidays. I knew what things we're called. We had new workers, and although I was still the greenest and dumbest roughneck there, I had seniority. I went out with the guys, drinks, parties, friendships. What's happening I thought? And as more people quit, as they're wont to do in this awesome industry, I became somewhat of an asset instead of this east coast, dumb ass kid who didn't know what a pipe wrench was. In a twisted way, after all the grief and sweat and all around rough times, I started to appreciate these guys and at times even enjoy the work a little bit. It was weird.

Another fun story was breaking my finger. We we're finishing up for the day, always at the end instead of the beginning so you already worked, and these big ass things called tongs come swinging at me. Thinking the steel is more precious than my bones I put my hand out to try and slow them down, only to be rebuffed straight into a piece of piece pipe behind me, hand still trying to slow this 1 ton piece of crap down. It turns into a little ring finger sandwich, followed by a few choice curse words. It hurt quite a bit, obviously, but I thought it was just a bad little pinch...until it turned every shade of black and purple you can name (not many?). The best part about the whole ordeal was the dire concern I got for 2 months after!  Not from my coworkers, who eat broken bones for breakfast I guess, but from the office in edmonton, the nurse in calgary and everyone in-between. The worry, I suppose, is the whole liability factor on their part, although it healed up nicely, who's to say I won't come back and demand recompense when I can't find a wedding ring that will fit...come to think of it that's not a bad idea. They we're prepared to do plastic surgery and have me on compensation for four weeks, which would have been the remainder of my employment...and I turned it down. Why? We do silly things sometimes I guess. The last week there I got two black fingers to match...there goes my career as a hand model.

Should have amputated

But this is what I've taken away from oil rigging, other than a fat finger and a few bucks...no matter how big of a pile of crap a situation is, given time, most things turn around on themselves. Living up there with no friends, girls or much of a life F'ING SUCKED!!...true...but there are at least a dozen more hairs on my chest, I can probably do an oil change for you, can lift TWO full pales of diesel (more when I had my moustache) and have the confidence to approach almost anything full on, content in knowing it can only be so bad. The bar of shittiness has been set, and I hope to live under it for as long as possible, but like so many before me, would not turn my nose at a few more months on the rigs, if for nothing else than to come to Mexico for a new surfing blog picture.

DO YOU WANT TO WORK ON THE RIGS?! (why the hell?)

Here's a quick rundown of how it all works out there, for anyone who is interested...bare in mind I was on a service rig the whole time which is quite different from a drilling rig, I'll explain.

Geologists, using science or magic or both, determine where these underground pools or channels of oil should be. Seismic testers go out on ATV's setting off chunks of C4 to determine if they we're right and if it all looks good they level out a large chunk of land called the 'lease'. The drilling rig then comes in and drills constantly day and night, anywhere from a couple hundred meters to a few kilometres. Once they're done drilling they put in a 'casing' which is the steel tubing lining the hole so it won't cave in on itself, and then put the 'wellhead' on, which is just the like the cap on a pop bottle.

Pumpjack

The drilling rig peaces out, and that's when a service rig comes in. Service rigs do all the work that isn't drilling the hole. When the service rig get's to the wellhead, they're just dealing with a really deep cemented hole. Kinda useless eh? It's up to them to get the well producing oil and get it ready for a pumpjack (one of those up and down thingies you see in texan movies) or another means of extraction. They also abandon the well when it's out of oil (because you can't just bail on it...ya know, greenpeace and all that), repair wells that still have oil and aren't working and tons of other stuff! Excited? No...k whatever.

Service Rig Derrick (a la rainbow)

Service rigs don't use the casing left behind by the drilling rigs to work on the well, they have their own pipe. This is smaller pipe that they put down the hole...I say 'small', the ones we usually worked with we're 9ish meters long and weighed about 200lbs each. They are delivered on a big rack in bundles, so it's up to the lowman roughneck to hoist them onto his shoulder and slide them up a ramp to a place where the rig can latch onto it. Try it 150 times in a row....it's a hoot.

Single rigs can put one pipe down the hole at a time, doubles two pipes at a time (doubles are just higher than singles, thus allowing more clearance for more length). The pipe is connected to each other by 'tongs'  , but very unlike salad tongs, so don't even go there. The pipe is held in place while it goes down the hole by 'elevators', which is a just a big heavy ass latch that needs to be able to hold hundreds of tons, no biggie.

Tongs

Once all this pipe is in the hole, you have to clean out all the mud and water left by the drilling rig,  and you do this by swabbing. I was picturing a Q-tip when they first told me about it, but it's more like a cleverly shaped cup that goes down the pipe on the end of a cable, submerses itself in the excess fluid, and then keeps the fluid above it as it's pulled back up to ground level. It's actually kind of neat the whole process...until you change these cups out thirty or forty times a day.

How's this army arranged anyways?

Consultant - This dude, usually fatter than high hell and richer than god, calls all the shots on the lease, taking his orders from big wigs in calgary. He works for the oil company, not the rig.

Toolpush - This is the boss of the service rig, who makes what the consultant wants, happen. He tells the driller what needs to happen and figures out the best way to go about it.

Driller - This is the ground level boss, who listens to the tool push, tells the low guys what's to do, and works the controls of the rigs

Derrickman - This guy climbs all the way to the top of the derrick (which is VERY high) and puts the standing pipe into the elevators...you stand pipe vertically so you don't have to do that shitty picking up and down thing every time. The derrickman also works another piece of equipment called the 'pump truck' which is used to pump fluid up and down the well

Roughneck - My bread and butter. Basically everyone higher's up bitch, runs the tongs, listens to commands and makes coffee...this is where all the other guys started.

That's the gist of it, wether drilling or service rigs, I can personally say you don't need to know much to get out there and do it...it's all learn as you go, but fair warning, it's absolutely trial by fire...no one holds your hand along the way, and it can be really tough, mentally and physically. That being said there are loads of days when nothing is going on and you pretend to sweep, shoot the shit and eat sandwiches (my favourite). 

I'll miss you frigid temperatures, long hours, lacking social life, tough work and early mornings. Oh, and you pay checks, I'll miss you the most. Ciao.