Job Description: Swamper

This has been a busy week.  On Tuesday, I was up at 4:30 am, making breakfast for Eric and helping him get ready for a long workday driving flatbed.  I spent the day inside reading, surfing and napping.  Eventually I began to feel slothful which made me want to take a run. So at sunset, the least windy part of the day, I did a quick turn around the block (1.8 miles) and finished with some pushups and some ab work.  Much better!

Eric called from somewhere near the Canadian border to say he’d be really late.  Cook’s night off.  I had a salad and some canned soup—bleh.  Later Eric called to tell me he had another job up by Williston the next day at 6:30 am, so it didn’t make sense to drive all the way home just to turn around and drive back .  That’s the way work goes around here (not that I’m complaining!)

 The next day I was scheduled to work at 4pm but I wanted to have dinner ready.  I had a large batch of split pea soup in the crock pot and cornbread just about done at around1:00 when Eric called to see if I could drive the pickup   about two hours north so he could use it to pick up a loader to unload his trailer at a rig site. (The company he was driving for had a breakdown and would pay me to do it)  At more than double my barista wages, I said of course!  (The coffee house has been quiet anyway, and my boss rescheduled me.)  

It was a beautiful, sunny day to drive across the prairie.  Miles and miles of wheat stubble, frozen creeks and ponds, grain silos and farmhouses.  Scoria pits, pump jacks and drill rigs.  Old abandoned farmsteads, slowly succumbing to the ravages of wind and sun, rain and snow.  Herds of black cows were soaking up the sun and grazing happily.  I listened to classical music on NPR and snacked on popcorn and almond Snickers.  Happy, happy.

Due to bad signage and my horrible sense of direction, I missed a turn and added a few (OK, thirty some) miles to the trip.  Finally, I arrived in the tiny town of Ross, ND.  Eric led me to the drill rig, which is the first I’ve ever been right next to.  They are BIG.   He got a call that the breakdown was fixed, but they would pay for my time anyway.  With that we began to unstrap the load, and I gained a new job description: Swamper.  You got yer roughnecks, roustabouts and yer swampers.  The first two are drill rig laborers, the last is a trucker’s laborer.  I’ve helped Eric loading and unloading trucks for years in the nursery biz, so it’s the same work, just different stuff, with much better pay and a colorful name.  It was all fun and good on an unseasonably warm day.  We’ll see how I feel when the weather goes back to its awful self. 

We finally got home at around 10pm and there was the soup, thick but fixable. What a nice thing to come home to.  Eric worked 40 hours in two days with 3 ½ hours sleep.  I think he was asleep before his head hit the pillow.  Awww.