Hey Joanie and Dave! Hope I spelled your name right, Joanie.

Those two are long time family friends who deserve special mention here because they, the Fergs, have actually left notes for me on my blog. Besides Dan, they are the only ones to do it twice. I know how physically demanding it is for all of you people to type something, but these people went through the arduous task, sucked it up and communicated with me. That brings a tear to my eye.

(Tongue is now out of cheek, but it may slip back there in a few sentences)

So, I've been busy! How busy, you ask. Very, I answer. I've been up at 3am and haven't gotten back till 8pm or 10pm. The last couple of days I spent in hotels. That was cool. And, this is the best, I'm now finished with the mentoring and am free to drive by myself....Which I actually won't be doing till I've been trained by an operator of the equipment I'm assigned to, but whatever. It means more money, anyway.

As I said before I had to retrain myself to drive again. I was actually really discouraged when my mentor told me I was scaring him. Something about not being able to get it back into gear going around corners. I've improved a lot since then. I'm now downshifting with ease with the occasional non-life threatening hiccup along the way. I'm doing good is what I'm saying.

Also, I have now taken part in quite a few frac jobs. I'm still not totally sure what everything is or what everything does, but I am learning a tonne of new things every day. I wish I had my digital camera to take a picture of everything for you guys just to show you what happens at these jobs. The amount of equipment is astounding! It's like a whole factory of machinery traveling down the highway and then hooking up via hoses, pipes and cables when we get to the site. I'm not going to explain it to you what it is that goes on because my dad reads this blog, and if I mess something up he'll make fun of me. I can't live with that (there goes that tongue in cheek thing again!).

Thursday I actually went to Saskatchewan for the first time in a very long time (which is actually a shame as I have lots of family there). I went through Consol, Sask, to get to the job site. That place is such a small town that I think I might have take two and a half breaths driving through it at 50 kph. Friday and Saturday I went out to Youngstown which is passed Jenner, AB and performed as part of eight different frac jobs. Everything just goes so smoothly when you get it all together. We were there no more than 10 minutes and we had the manifold, CO2, sand, blender, data van and chem van all connected (I'm probably forgetting something, too). Then within half an hour we were on our way to the next job.

When we were done on Saturday, my mentor and I fueled and loaded the CO2 truck and washed her, and we were about to take off for the day when Tyler calls the truck and asks if we have an over night bag packed. Apparently we were headed for Drayton Valley. It was 4pm and Drayton Valley is 6 to 6 and a half hours away. Cool! Road trip. We were to go there, check into the motel and report to the frac crew that was there. We made it by 10:30pm and found out that our wake up call was for 4:30am. Time to go to bed, I guess.

We left bright and early without the brightness at 5am, and it took three ours of drive the most roller coaster like logging roads I have ever had the pleasure to witness to get to the site. Thankfully I wasn't driving. Unfortunately, I was driving back. The job took about eight hours to get done due to communication's hook up problems as the Calgary office needed to monitor everything via satellite. But we made it eventually, and by the time we were done the sun had come out, beat down on our shining faces and turned the logging road to the most adhesive mud I've ever seen. We had to get a Cat to pull our truck up the exiting hill. So it was my pleasure to drive these roads with my mentor encouraging me from the passenger seat with clever quips like, "For crying out loud, drive faster!" Let's just say that once we reached pavement I became elated.

We stopped for the night in Red Deer because it was so late. My mentor warned me about his snoring the first night in the motel. I was so tired that I told him I'd probably sleep right through it. At 11:40pm I was awakened by someone biting a pig on the snout while delivering haymakers to its stomach. There was nothing rhythmic about his snoring. They were gasps for life, I tell you. There were points where he actually stopped breathing for 30 seconds or so, and I swear he would scream for breath. I seriously considered putting him out of his misery but thought better of it. I remembered I had ear plugs in my jean pockets, so I placed them in my ears, put a pillow either side of my head and fell asleep for a few hours. The next night in Red Deer I put the plugs in right away and got eight hours of beautiful, undisturbed sleep. It was bliss!

So I gotta go do laundry now. It's been awhile and I'd rather take clean stuff back to Victoria on Thursday so it won't cut into my play time. Ciao for now, everyone!