Update

Wow, I really suck at keeping this thing up to date don't I. It is not the easiest thing to do with the life I am leading. Now that the winter weather is here sometimes the bus takes even longer to get us home. It sucks getting in at 7 or later every night, especially when you have to be up and ready before 5 the next morning.

Now that I see there are still alot of people checking in on this blog maybe I better update a little. This week was quite interesting. The 'Brass Pool' (just a fancy cheque pool which uses tickets as opposed to cheque numbers) was won by a first year apprentice scaffolder. She won in excess of $157,000.00 Yeah, crazy I know. Weekly the pool is around $30,000.00, but for the holiday they made it $40 to get in as opposed to $10. It is quite a setup, it is run by the 'Alberta Building Trades Charitable foundation'. They take 20% of the proceeds each week and it goes to charity. So that means this week $40,000.00 went to charity. Not bad for one jobsite.

I really wish I could get some pictures of this jobsite and the activity that goes on around it. It is absolutely amazing. Just watching the line of buses carrying 4,000 people down the highway in the night is interesting enough, let alone everything else.

Back in action

OK, I know I was supposed to use this  blog to update everyone on what is going on with me out here in Alberta. What can I say, I have been busy, tired, and, well just plain lazy about updating. So here is the scoop. I have moved out of camp and into Edmonton. PCL transferred me to the next big project in Fort Saskatchewan. It is the 'Shell Upgrader Expansion One' project, or for short SUEx1. Fancy words for, ' we are spending $30 billion'. Anyway, I am settling in and starting to take a bit of a shine to Edmonton. Now that I am getting used to it, I seem to like it here. This particular job is not scheduled to finish until April 15th 2010. But the way these projects go it could easily go a year over. I am sure that I will do quite well by it. After that there is another big project in Redwater. But I am sure that there will be more to come before then. In short, there is no shortage of work here. I kind of got in on the ground level here. The project has been going for almost two years already, but the fun is just beginning. I have never seen so many cranes on a job site. And the biggest cranes I have ever seen. Watching the activity around this site is just awe inspiring. And getting paid to be there is like a big bonus. Speaking of bonus, I hear today that Shell is offering incentives to the workforce. Apparently they will pay us to take their busses to keep congestion off the roads and so that they don't have their parking lots over flowing (there will be in excess of 6500 tradesmen on this job). They are also offering an incentive of $1 per hour worked over 1000 hours, which will be paid out lump sum later on.

This weekend is my off weekend, so I am going to venture into the downtown core. I would like to see what Edmonton has to offer besides the most liquor stores per capita in the universe. I will be taking my camera along to snap a few shots. Hopefully I can get some posted.

More pictures coming

So here I am starting my three days off. I hope to make it to town over the course of the weekend as there are a few things that I need to get. Beyond that my plan is to get out and make some more use of that bicycle that I bought. There is alot to see around here. Of course I will be taking my camera with me so that I can get some pictures of everything that I see.

It sure felt good this morning to sleep until my body woke me up. And I think that was only because I needed a bathroom break. But you do have to still get up a little early here to get some breakfast and pack a lunch. If you miss the kitchen in the morning you are not eating until dinner time!

Yes, I know I have not been posting so much lately. I had to move camps and the internet connection here sucks compared to the last camp. On top of that my computer kept crapping out on me, so I invested in a new laptop. That should take care of that issue. Aside from that I have been spending an aweful lot of time on the phone with a young woman named Amy. She is a fantastic person and I enjoy the time with her. So that means I don't spend as much time posting. Get over it! I will get back to the posting I am sure. I did bring my digital slr with me so I will be getting out on my days off which should be this coming weekend and take some pitures. So check back after the weekend and I should have some reasonable posts.

Settling in

So we made the big move on Thursday night from the Athabasca Lodge to Poplar Point. I have posted some pictures of the new camp 'Poplar Point'. It has some major differences from the camp that I was at. The biggest as you can see is that we have to go outside to reach places such as the dining hall. But to me this is kind of an asset. It gives the whole place more of a community feel. All we need is a tornado and it will be just like living in a trailer park in Kansas.

All in all everything went relatively smooth. Of course there were some jerks who made the move more difficult for the rest of us. But I am sure that everything will come out in the wash.

The food is good here. They also have lots of activities such as baseball, pool tournaments, poker tournaments etc.

Update

The time has come to move out of Athabasca Lodge. The contract for the rooms held by PCL has ended. And the rooms are all booked by another company. So PCL is moving everyone that is here to another camp on site. We will be moving on Thursday to a camp called Poplar Point. It doesn't look as nice on the surface as this camp but I really will not be able to make a fair judgment until I spend a few days there.

Alot of the guys here are kicking up a huge fuss over this move. I find it a little bit ridiculous myself. As long as the company is following the collective agreement then there is nothing to go on about. I find that we are treated extremely well and live quite good out here. I guess the more you get the more you want, or so it would seem with some of the guys around here.

Oh, on another not my general foreman won one of those hospital house lotteries. Between the house and the lexus and whatever else there was it was worth $1.2 million. So he is taking a couple of days off.

I made it

Well I made it back to Alberta and have been hard at work ever since. It was difficult to leave the kids again. But I am accomplishing what I had set out to do. I am managing to shed myself of some fairly large debt. It is not easy working for nothing, but it sure feels good to get out from under some of the debt that I have accumulated. It will be even nicer when I get rid of it all and can start saving some money to rebuild myself a life. Until then I guess I just have to keep playing robot and keep my eyes set on the goal and forget that I am just a money machine.

Alberta Bound

The week has gone by rather quickly. You wonder on your way back how you will fill a week, as it seems like a long time. Then when you are getting ready to go again you realize that it is just the blink of an eye and you wish you could stay longer. I guess if I had a permanent residence it would help. It feels rather unsettling in my current state. But I am trying to make the best and the kids seemed to enjoy my time with them. I figured it would only be right to throw in a couple of
the pictures I took of them this week.

coming home...

Well I got my flight. I leave tonight. I will be landing in Hamilton tomorrow morning at 5:35 I will be home for one week. My flight leaves on the 19th at 6:15 am. I am sure the week will fly by.

j;ieuahbn&^%$%^

Yes, I know. I have not been posting very much lately. I guess I just have not really felt like it. I had to reinstall Windows on my laptop and I have been busy getting things sorted back out. So my huge hour or so of free time a night gets eaten up pretty quick.

Anyway they gave everyone at the job ipod nano's yesterday for breaking the 20,000,000 man hour mark. I would assume it is quite an expense to hand out 11,000 engraved ipods. I was a little shocked as I had no idea that they were doing it because PCL just gave out Sony mp3 players last week. And I hear that there is another safety award that we will be getting next week. Crazy isn't it? I still find this place a little unreal. It is hard to absorb the scope of it all here. And this is only one of many jobs like it going on around here.

I should be back in Ontario soon for a short 1 week visit. So if anyone wants to get together they should get a hold of me soon!

grrr

I am desperately trying to get to town this weekend. I have three days off, and I wanted to get a few things. The opportunity to get into town seems to be few and far between so to speak. As time passes I find myself needing a few more things and I have been patiently waiting on the opportunity to go, but I keep working. Now that I am off I am chomping at the bit to get going. I do not know if PCL has recreation buses scheduled for today or not. So I could sit here all day trying to figure a way to get to town. I do not wish to take a cab as it is over $100. I never thought I would be anxious to go into that shithole of a town, but it is the only civilization around. And there is nowhere else to do any shopping.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

For the life of me I still cannot get over the amount of money in this province. Suncor, one of the big players here is spending $160,000,000 building the camp to house the men in for its next big project 'Voyageur'. On top of that they are spending almost a billion dollars upgrading the highway and building an interchange in front of their plant to cut down on the fatal accidents. They will be handing this over to the province when they are done. Alberta just seems to be oozing at the seems with cash.

I thought that I would be off last weekend, but they asked me to work it. Now I will be off this weekend because I will have worked 18 days straight and that is all PCL will let you work on this job. But I am here to pick up that oozing cash, so I am okay with it all.

I heard today that PCL picked up the second phase of the project, so now they are scrambling trying to get more men. There was talk of layoffs starting in June, but now they are hiring again. Go figure.

To bike or not to bike?

I almost have myself convinced to go to town this weekend and buy a bicycle. Canadian Tire has a cheap one that will do the job for all I need around here. There are so many things that we drive by on the way to work that I would love to go and check out. But walking is a little to far, and buying or renting a car is a little too expensive. I would say that buying a bicycle is just right. The one thing that I would really like to go and get pictures of is the MacKay river. We pass over it daily. It is down in a fairly deep gorge that you can walk down. Hopefully if I go to town on Saturday, then I will ride out to the river on Sunday and take some pictures.

Update

I am getting fairly tired this week. It has been quite busy on site as they are scrambling to get things ready for the big commissioning. I can't complain though, the overtime is why I am here. I am sure that I will end up with a weekend off for rest.

I have purchased a new phone for myself out here. I figured that I should get an Alberta number if I plan on working out here for a while. It is hard to make contacts if your number is long distance and you never really know what camp you will be in. So in short I officially have an Alberta number and am settling in to the idea of making this province a temporary home. The phone is through a newer company called Koodo. They actually have a really good plan with decent rates and no bullshit.

Almost forgot

I almost forgot to mention how warm it was here today. So I thought a picture says a thousand words. This is for all you back home who were bragging about there warm weather last week!

Overtime

It seems lately as though the overtime is starting to slow down a bit on this job. But that is not preventing me from working this weekend. I found out today that I would be working. This will generate a cheque that we call a 'ringer'. I will earn 75 hours pay in four days, plus my regular 30 hours for the other three days. So my cheque will be worth 105 hours of pay. Of course this is only because of the holiday Monday, which is doubletime, so I will get three doubletime days in a row. It is a little bit crazy to think about the numbers, but that is what I came out here for is money.

So in short there will probably be no hiking this weekend. Therefore I will be getting a little short on pictures. Maybe next weekend.

More pics

I thought that I would add some more pictures from my outings last weekend. With the amount of ground that I want to cover I am starting to think that buying a bicycle might be a good idea. There are just so many back roads and trails that it would take forever to walk them. And every trail that I go down there seems to be fantastic scenery. I am thinking that a mountain bike might be in order. If I knew for sure that I would be staying at this camp I would buy one for sure. But you just never know from one day to the next.

Bears

Apparently there have been bear sightings outside the camp the last couple of days. Today there was a large cinnamon bear sunning itself a couple hundred feet outside the front doors. Once I have made a trip home I am going to grab my good camera and long lens. Hopefully I can get some good shots of the bears from a distance.

I have also been trying to research whether or not there really are grizzly bears in the area. I have heard people on both sides of the fence. Some say that there are no grizzlies in the area, others say there are. I would love to get a few pictures of some grizzlies, from a much farther distance of course.

Sunday out

I went out and about today. I refuse to sit in the camp moping like the other guys on my weekend off. I ended up going about 7km through the bush. I found quite a few streams and rivers. There sure is a lot of really pretty scenery around here.

I also ran into an guide that works for an outfitter from Grand Prairie. He was out baiting for bear. Apparently they have people coming in from Sweden for the spring bear hunt. Of course he has been baiting all the areas that I go hiking in the woods! I guess if the bears have the bait to tend to they will probably leave me alone.

More hiking!

I cannot seem to get enough of the hiking around here. All told yesterday I went about 10-12 km. When in the bush it reminds me of being at our cabin in Bancroft Ontario. I just cannot believe how nice it is around here. It is so hard to tell going by everything at 110 km/h on a bus. But when you get out there and walk it, there is alot of nice rivers and streams, and the topology of the area is great. If you like the bush and hiking this is a great place. There is all kinds of wildlife around. Of course I have not yet run into a bear, but I am sure that I will. I think Sesame Street retired Big Bird up here. I found his footprints in the mud.

The one picture you see here is of Hwy. 63 looking north from Beaver river, about 2km south of 'the bridge to nowhere.'

Another Hike

I got out for another hike today with a couple of workmates. We went down along the Athabasca river. Along our trek we found a couple of bones that looked like leg bones from a moose. The scenery along the river is absolutely gorgeous. If it wasn't for all these oil sands developments it would be pristine up here. But then we wouldn't be here making all this money.

Giant Beetles

Apparently there are these giant beetles here that the guys call an 'oilsands beetle'. I do not know that this is the correct term for them, but they are huge. We found one on the job today, and I am told that this one is small.

I went for another hike tonight along a road that runs parallel to the Athabasca river. Wow, what a beautiful place. And there is lots of wildlife starting to move about now that spring is here (20 C tomorrow). I took some pictures of the Athabasca with its ice flowing out. I also got some of the tracks of different wildlife.

Weather improvements

The weather seems to be breaking here. It was quite warm this afternoon and as you can see this evening it is 17C. Crazy hot for this area. Actually word on the street is that in the summer it gets quite hot and humid here. Hopefully I will find out.

Bla

Well I made it out again today for a short hike. I went up a private road that belongs to Syncrude (one of the oilsands corporations). It was kind of peaceful, but kind of sad. When I looked back on my tracks in the snow I realized that it was kind of symbolic. One set of tracks, where there used to be six. The more time that passes the more I realize that sometimes you live life according to the choices of others, not of your own.

I was talking to my general foreman and apparently when this job starts to wind down there will be the option to transfer to another job closer to Edmonton. It is part of two projects being done by Shell that combined have a value of somewhere between $25-$30 billion. Yes billion. Anyway that project is still good for years to come. So I can imagine that my life in Alberta has just started. Although it is really not much of a life. I am starting to think that the best thing I could do is buy a house out here and call it a day. This may be difficult to deal with for me and the children, but unfortunately I have to worry about myself at some point. No one else is going to do it for me.

I did end up going for a hike yesterday. It wasn't much of a hike it was more like a walk as I had to walk on the side of the road. There was too much snow to go out on trails. Either way I went about 10km. The picture is where I turned around and went back. It was a pretty good day. I think I may head out again today. Maybe I can see something interesting. Or just fill the giant void a bit.

Off weekend

This weekend is my off weekend. I guess I could use some rest. I don't think I will go into town this time. I don't have any money to spend, and there is nothing that I realistically need to spend money on. Plus Fort McMurray sucks. So I think I will get out and about for a hike, it is supposed to warm up to a scorching 10 C today. Hopefully I can get out and get some pictures. Otherwise I will just hang out and drink coffee until my brain starts to vibrate!

They sent us back to camp today after we took the death defying bus trip in to the job. They decided it would be safer for us to take two death defying trips in one morning. Actually most of the upper management could not make it in from Fort McMurray. The highway was really bad. It has been snowing for about three days now. Hopefully it will have stopped by tomorrow. While we were waiting for our bus to show up we saw one of the big dump trucks go by our job with its box up. After it went through the intersection it hit the highline (a pipeline above the roadway). I think the driver was hurt, as you could see him get thrown out of his seat like a ragdoll. Either way the truck is broken, there is damage to the highline and I am pretty sure the driver will get fired.

So the weather has taken a bit of a turn for the worse here in the great white north. We recorded temperatures on the jobsite today of -30 C. They have canceled all flights because of the whiteout conditions. Environment Canada has issued a winter storm warning for the area. I am pasting in two pictures of the contrast between last Sunday and this Sunday. There is a noticeable difference. Locals are saying that we are going to get 3 feet of snow over the next couple days. Yay!

-20 Spring is officially here!

As everyone back home enjoys a warm spring with temperatures of 24C, spring here in northern Alberta seems to mean snow and temperatures of -20. It was quite a shock after last weekend was 15C to see snow again and have the thermometer dip that much. I guess this is the life of an Albertan!

mmmm...........chicken!

Someone recently asked me what the food was like here. Luckily for the time being I am in one of the better camps. So today for lunch I had a chicken stir fry, breaded chicken breast stuffed with broccoli and cheese, plus breaded pork chunks with rice and green beans. Of course I also had a pastry and oreo cookies. For dinner we had a choice of quarter chicken, fettuccine Alfredo, meatloaf, a variety of potatoes and vegetables, rice, and a fresh cream vegetable and cheese soup. Of course there are fresh rolls, and ice cream, plus the dessert fridge. Every Tuesday is New York Steak and shrimp night. So I guess in the end you could say that I am eating just fine. I definitely will not starve to death here.

Camp

I just thought that I would put up a few pictures of the camp that I am staying in. I cannot remember how many people this camp holds but someone once told me that it was 4000. I don't think it is quite that, but it sure would be 2000 or more.

Athabasca River

I had the weekend off and since I went into Fort McDirty on Saturday, I decided to go for a walk yesterday. I figured since the camp is right beside the Athabasca river (hence the name Athabasca Lodge) I would go for a short hike down by the river. I am posting a few pics. I cannot wait for the river to shed itself of all the ice. It looks like a great spot for canoing. And yes the picture with the giant pipe going up under the bridge is an oil pipeline. It goes from the mine to the refinery (Syncrude). Some things around here are a little strange.