9 April 2008

Mmmmm, real food!

Posted by Rotorboy under: Work .

I’ve been staying at a real crap hole camp for the last week while on this line cutting job here in northern Saskatchewan. While the trailer was nice, everything else about the camp has been substandard. Clearly the camp contractor is cheap, providing only the very basic level of service.

We have had no phone, to speak of. Sure, we have a sat phone, but at around $6/minute we only use it for quick calls to the base… and only when absolutely necessary. The vonage phone they had wouldn’t work. You couldn’t make calls out. The person on the other end could be heard but they couldn’t hear you. Calls in weren’t a whole lot better, resulting in multiple repeats of the last thing you said.

The water in our trailer didn’t really work. What I mean is that there is a water pump to pressure up the water lines in the trailer. A missing check valve on the system meant the pump would prime up, then shut off, then turn on, then turn off… If you took a shower, the pump would overheat from repeatedly cycling on/off and would shut off for a few minutes, leaving you stranded in the shower. Very frustrating.

The food has been the worst. The camp cook is really just the owner’s son who can’t cook anything beyond meals like spaghetti (the most basic meat and canned sauce kind) or dried out shoe leather passed off as ’steak’ (surely flank steak).

So the job dynamic has changed and we’ve moved to another camp close by. Clark’s Camp is a mostly year round hunting/fishing camp. The owner (also the line cutter contractor) is a good guy and knows how to run a camp.

How impressed am I?
Well, after a week in the other camp, I was delightfully surprised to find lettuce in my ham sandwich at lunch in the new camp.

Lettuce… I’m happy about lettuce. Does that give you any indication of how dismal the meals were at the old camp?

In other news, the weather here has sure turned fantastic. Today we topped off around 11-12ºC. Beautiful, sunny days. It’s been great.

The downside is all the melting snow, which is starting to make it muddy in places. It won’t be long before we’re trudging around in the muck. The melt also brings about a hidden danger; break-up. Alot of creeks are now fully open and flowing. Lakes won’t be far behind. That means using alot of extra caution when landing on lakes, leaving power on and pulling a little collective to keep the machine light on the skids. You never know how thick (or thin) the ice is below you, especially this time of year.

All-in-all the job itself has been great. I’ve been flying my ass off up until the majority of the crews left yesterday. There are only two guys left now and they are doing some re-work so my days are pretty laid back. I just drop them off in the morning and pick them up late in the afternoon. 4 or 5 more days and I believe we’ll be done (sooner if the melt accelerates).

2 Comments so far...

Ryan

Ahhhh! The glorious life of a pool pilot. Crappy camps and worse food. Makes me jealous for sleeping in my own bed every night and still flying quite a bit. You have fun up there big guy!!

Rotorboy

Ah yes, your own bed… in Lac La Biche.

You can polish a turd but it’s still a turd.