The Pipeline

[HEO Girl]

Season of Layoffs

Well here we are the in the season where lay offs happen ALOT. I was for sure I'd be on the first set of lay offs. After that passed I figured I'd be the next to go. Well it turns out I wasn't, so I'm still here! There are 3 people left on my crew including myself. They laid off a ton of folks and everyone has been short handed and many of them are complaining how "ratty" this job is being run like. Well apparently they have never worked for this spreadman before because that's what he does, happened last job as well. But it always manages to get done. They are just upset because even though they are on, say, the environmental crew, we may be throwing skids, or dopeing pipe, and "that's not what they hired on for". I guess I've never been on a spread where it was strict union wise so I don't know any different. In my eyes I could care less as long as I get that pay check every week, plus who wants to do the same thing over and over? Why not get out and learn something new?


Was up on a hill and decided to take a picture of the clean up going on. You can always tell when this dozer hand cleans up vs when other dozer hands do. He does a great job.


The tractor got duals and the mechanics made us something special to help us on these hills. A trailer with an 8hp mulcher... I mean it was really nice of them but the mulcher can't handle much of anything, if the hay is wet forget it. It clogs ALOT if you are not careful. But we manage and eventually learned it's quirks and now it seems to work pretty alright.


They told us we had to hand mulch this hill. This picture really does it NO justice because this thing was steep! especially for this tractor, it's still extremely tippy even with the duals, and I know for a fact because I've ran this thing. Our original operator told us there was no way in hell he was going to run that thing on that hill so we got Poncho the lowboy driver from the VA job who said he'd do it. It went off without a hitch. We showed the office not to mess with the environmental/clean up crew


The coolest owl ever! This guy watched us for days in one area you could even get up real close and almost touch him. I've never seen an owl this close. This picture is NOT zoomed.


Just a picture of some pipe that needs to go in the ground.

 

[grandpa]

Happy holidays sunshine!!!

 

[mitch504]

Yeah, always good to hear from our pet nutball girlie.

 

[HEO Girl]

Finally Some Action!

We actually got 1 day for Turkey day. I ate with the girl on the other crew and a few people from work.

These pictures are of the golf course hill which is the other side of another steep hill here that we worked on.

Instead of padding the pipe on the bottom with dirt they had to use the foam gun to make a foam padding for the pipe as the dirt wouldn't quite stay up on the hill. That is a water line, a gas line, and an electrical line going across the ditch.


Getting a helping hand from a dozer. Can't quite get good enough grip on that loose dirt.


Last but not least the foam truck arrives to spray the foam breakers so we can backfill.


Foam breakers all in!

 

[HEO Girl]

Jeeping & Pulling Pipe in the Rain?


Pulling some pipe under the ground finally! There is light at the end of the tunnel. Unfortunately it needed to be Jeeped, in the rain! A Jeep is a metal band that goes around the pipe that attaches to a machine that you roll across the pipe that tells you whether or not the coating has rubbed off or chipped. If it has chipped or rubbed you have to fix it by sanding and then dopeing that spot. You can't use a Jeep on water or it throws a false reading that you have a hole in the coating so the pipe needed to be dried. Also if you touch said band with your hand and the machine is on it's like being stuck with a cattle prod. Did I mention I am horrible at explaining things? lol.


This is the tents we used to keep the rain off the pipe so we could wipe it down and dry it with the torches (or berthas, or weed burners, I've heard them called all 3). I think that man in the red shirt is the biggest xxxx head, and no I'm no concerned if he reads this because I've already said it to his face I hated him the day he told me I wasn't gunna make it on the pipeline. Silly boy!


We had finished that one long section and had to get the other pipe beside it on the rollers. We worked a little late.


This picture wasn't of the same one's that those last 3 were. It was like 20* and the wind was awful on that hill that day and for the life of me I could not keep my feet and hands warm. They had a little tent set up with some heaters going in them but I didn't want to be the sissy that was constantly going into the tent when there was down time . I can say I was very miserable that SUNDAY, yes SUNDAY we worked to get the Radnor lake drill pulled. Funny thing was we had so many things break down on us that we only pulled 2 of our 4 sections that had been welded! Ugh. Sunday was a huge bust. Although I have since bought some hand a foot warmers off Amazon.

 

[willie59]

HEO, the guy in the red shirt truly is a "silly boy", you're one helluva grunt worker.

 

[mitch504]

I hate ever working on Sunday, it seems like more stuff goes wrong on Sunday than the other 6 days combined.

What are foam breakers?

A note on Mr Redshirt, we knew you'd make it as a pipeliner because you wanted to, but once he said that, you'd have done it with 4 broken limbs!

I knew all that homework help would pay off.
Keep making us proud,
Mitch

 

[HATCHEQUIP]

Would that be a pet name for a future boy friend:stirthepot

 

[HEO Girl]

I Killed Bambi!

Yup that's right, I killed Bambi . The funny thing was I was excited when I hit it! Free meat! I was driving the company truck (this may have been why I was excited, wasn't my truck lol) back to the yard to grab some stuff when I saw a deer out of the corner of my eye, I hit the brakes but it was just to late. I hit him dead center of his belly, he stumbled but managed to get up and run. I turned around to see if he had laid up anywhere and sure enough he was about 500 feet off the road in someone's yard. Unfortunately he suffered a short time before dieing. I called my foreman to let him know what happened and jokingly said "wouldn't it be great if we could gut it now and cut it up." It was a rain day for everyone else, the enviro crew was just there to check things over. He gathered what was left of the crew and we hauled it off someone's lawn and threw it in the back of the truck and took it to our right of way. Now I'd never gutted or skinned a deer, I've seen it done, the others in the crew hadn't a clue either. We called our inspector whose a big hunter and he came out to help. We strung it up with the excavator and skinned it. We got the shoulders, the hams, and the back straps. But I wanted it gutted so I could give the rest to the dog (yeah I feed the dog a raw diet, free meat is free meat!). No one wanted to gut it because of how I had hit it, they were for sure stuff had exploded in there. So I did it and yes there was poop everywhere inside the cavity and it STUNK. But the stinkier it is the more the dog likes it anyways. I saved everything but the stomach, intestines, and skin. I even saved the head! I can't wait till the neighbors see the dog chewing on that! We bagged the stuff up and headed for home. I got the skull cap for it to, sitting in Borax at the moment to get whatever I left after I had boiled it and scraped it.

 

[willie59]

LoL, I love the little Komatsu on the trailer.

 

[HEO Girl]

I hate ever working on Sunday, it seems like more stuff goes wrong on Sunday than the other 6 days combined.

What are foam breakers?

A note on Mr Redshirt, we knew you'd make it as a pipeliner because you wanted to, but once he said that, you'd have done it with 4 broken limbs!

I knew all that homework help would pay off.
Keep making us proud,
Mitch

Now I've never done the foam breakers before but when I asked what they were for they told me to keep the water from running down the pipe under ground :beatsme

Would that be a pet name for a future boy friend:stirthepot

And yes that would be a future nickname for a future boyfriend. Although there might be several (names that is, hopefully not several ex's, I hate to waste my time)

LoL, I love the little Komatsu on the trailer.

It's a CAT! and actually the new mini ho for the enviro crew. They got a cab one this time. It's nice. Only a couple hundred hours on it.

 

[HATCHEQUIP]

Sound like my daughter

 

[willie59]

I do apologize, my bad, from my end with the color of the pic it looked like Komatsu ebony gray. But it's all good.

 

[stock]

Was told this years ago HEO girl..
(with reference to the redshirt guy)"don't ever carry a bollox with you when going anywhwere as you surely meet one when you get there"............and never was a truer word spoken.............

Keep up the good work..........still trying to get some venison here but don't seem to be any deer about at the moment........

 

[HATCHEQUIP]

Is that foam like the expandable kind that is used for insulation purposes in houses

 

[stock]

Is that foam like the expandable kind that is used for insulation purposes in houses

I have seen that foam used here but it far more dense than the insulation type...

 

[Buckethead]

View attachment 110585

This pic of the Cat mini-ex picking the deer, there has to be a Cat vs. Deere joke here somewhere! LOL

 

[HEO Girl]

I have seen that foam used here but it far more dense than the insulation type...

You are correct Stock. When I asked that's basically what I got for an answer. Much more dense.

This pic of the Cat mini-ex picking the deer, there has to be a Cat vs. Deere joke here somewhere! LOL

I was waiting for one to pop up!

 

[stock]

How about

• Deere dies in claws of a Cat........
• Cat hanging out a Deere,
• nothing runs like a Deere when carried by a Cat,
• Cat got Deere dead on it feet,

 

[mitch504]

When a Deere stops running, a Cat carries it?