Where’s The Rig
A sample of our
driving directions may read as follows with some personal input from me as we
go through the various stages of the trip. Our dispatcher would always state
the obvious no matter what. I guess assuming we were morons with an overgrown
truck with dynamite and radioactive materials on board and really didn’t know
where to go, and just in case we get lost from the end of the drive. She would always
start with make a left at end of drive, at end of Bishop Street make a right
and proceed to the on ramp at St. Rte. 83 south on right hand side. This was a
given for about 90 percent of the jobs as this was the easiest way to get from
the shop to this point of interstate system. From here it became more important
to listen to directions.
Take St. Rt. 83
south to Rt. 30 west to St. Rte. 250 south.
Now we are getting somewhere, at least I will be able to enjoy a short
trip through some Amish country as long as I don’t top a hill and find a buggy
in my road, all will be good. Take 250 south to Strasburg and make a right on
St. Rt. 21 ,again a very common route as by now I figured I was headed to the
southern part of Ohio ,and I was.
Take St. Rt. 21
south to i-77 south and head to Marietta. Here the dispatcher just saved herself
some ink and sent us on a three hour trip south. From there she says cross over
into West Virginia continuing on till we come to West Virginia State Route 50
at Parkers burg and take St. Rt. 50 east to Clarks burg, West Virginia. Well somewhere
in there we had to stop and take a break, grab a snack, make sure we still had
our dynamite and radioactivity on board as we really hated losing those as they,
being the authority’s like State Highway Patrol and others in law enforcement
tend to get real upset real quick when you have no idea where you left some of
your party sup-plies, and you need them to help you find them.
So now we are in
West by God Virginia and our forward progress is being slowed as it takes
longer to climb hills with our overloaded truck , eventually we get to Clarksburg
which is about mid ways between Parkers burg and Wheeling only down in the
middle of West Virginia. When we started on this job it was daylight and after
5 hours of driving it is now getting dark making finding the jobsite a little
harder but luck was on our side as we grow even closer to where we should be.
We now need to
exit at Clarksburg exit and turn right on Fortune road, easy enough and what a
colorful name for a road. Now if you live here you would have to look long and
hard to find a fortune on Fortune road. In fact the only thing that would
relate Fortune road to a fortune was the fact it not only went somewhere else
which would lead you to a fortune because in the dark one would have to be
fortunate just to find anything.
Out Fortune road we
went according to the directions 6.5 miles to an iron bridge over a creek, turn
right at Crab Creek Rd. and follow to the pink ribbons on side of road. Now we
are getting close as when you hear pink ribbons they mean plastic pink ribbons
the oilfield uses to signify a road to an oil well. Now these don’t always have
to be pink ribbons and in fact they may be yellow or red or whatever the color
of the day, or whatever color they could get their hands on, or it may be an
oily rag just hanging in the tree but once seen by those in the know you knew
what it meant. One never knew exactly what it would be, but you knew you were
closing in on the jobsite. Today they have signs everywhere at the jobsite,
signs on roads telling truck drivers not to go down those roads. Now there is
no excuse for not getting the right road. But back then they didn’t have the
budgets on oil wells they do now.
Leaving Fortune
rd. behind and taking a somewhat narrower gravel rd. we soon went a good 3
miles and still never saw the ribbons and just as we are about to give up and
backtrack we spy the ribbons my engineer and I do, that is. We look at the
directions again and it says enter creek here and follow to next set of ribbons
and sure enough tire tracks head down into a creek bed and soon the crabs are a
scattering as I drive this huge truck and the engineer drives his blue LTD
right up the middle of this creek , with
just a trickle of water in it, and we follow it for about a half a mile till we
see more ribbons and now we could see where a dozer had begun to carve a path
to the right side of creek and tire tracks leading up out of the water. We
looked at our directions again as I found a climbing gear and managed to ease
the truck up over the bank. The directions said follow road to top of hill rig
on left. We could hear in the now dark engines running, but still couldn’t see
the lights on the derrick but the freshly graded dozer path with just dirt as a
base pounded hard by tire tracks, led us to believe that we were still on the
right track. So to the top of the hill we went. The grade became somewhat
harder to climb and at times I hoped like hell that when we arrived at the top
of the hill there would hopefully be a drilling rig there, as I really didn’t
want to go over the other side. But as I climbed the hill, I could see to the
left of me in the darkness that we had some elevation and a large drop-off to
the left side, and I was now looking at tree tops and my anxiety increased
threefold.
Finally we
arrive at a plateau and there are cars parked there. This scares me as the road
clearly dips off to the left, over the side of what I would now call a mountain
after having climbed it for the last half hour. And now we had to head over the
other side as clearly there was no drilling rig here, only a parking lot for
those who didn’t want to tear up their vehicle. Now I convince the engineer
Louie to leave his Ford LTD here as it struggled to make it this far, and since
other folks were leaving cars there, there must be a reason to the madness it
was quickly becoming. So he felt the same
way after explaining it to him and so he grabbed his satchel and climbed aboard
the truck only to jump out minutes later after I started down over the hill.
The road narrowed quite
a bit and from what I could see from my now opened side window to let me view
what was going on better I could see about a twenty foot drop off on my left
side and the road was steep. Things were sliding in the truck as it was so
steep, but the road was firm and I was
having good traction but ahead I could see an obstacle that was going to give
me some problems. As I tried to negotiate a turn in the road there was a tree
that was hanging out to close to the road. They had sawed it off but the stump
was something I had to swing out close to the edge of the road to avoid and
needed the engineer to get out and make sure I didn’t get to close to the edge
in the soft ground and roll the truck over the hill or down the mountain.
Besides I really didn’t want to take any one with me if that was the case, I
couldn’t back up the hill and only way I had to go was down the hill. He
watched as I edged closer and closer to the edge with my front wheel till I was
just barely able to pass the stump, as I saw in my rear view mirror and soon was
back on solid road and Louie, my engineer for the day jumped back into the
truck and said you wouldn’t believe how close that was. I told him I think I
can, I was driving and from where I was sitting I could see only night air and
tree tops. It was scary. Soon I came to the bottom of the hill and a bunch of
taillights of pickups and we soon pulled up beside them and I looked around but
still couldn’t see a rig, but knew we had to be close judging from all the
activity there in the middle of nowhere and also this light had suddenly lit up
our area. Although I knew it was the rig I still couldn’t see where it was
coming from and when I jumped outside the truck I could hear the droning of a
diesel and clanking of pipes hitting steel and knew the rig had to be close.
I asked one of the
guys where the rig was and he pointed up in the air and sure enough as my sights
were set to low as I looked up the side
of this mountain I saw the rig perched on the side of a ledge barely big enough
to set the rig on, let alone have room for all of the equipment that attends a
drilling site like this. It just seemed to be hanging there in midair and about
that time I noticed two dozers coming down off the hill I assumed to help me up,
as I knew it was senseless to try and make it without them and dangerous also
as you really don’t need to get half way up and realize you can’t make it. One
dozer hooked to the front and the second pushed from the rear and I steered
what I could and soon I was at the back of the rig and they were spinning me
around as one dozer pushed sideways on front as the other pushed the same
direction sideways from the rear. Then I was pushed from the front till my rear
of the truck was as close to the derrick and the cat walk as it could be .
We ran our tools
and soon we were loading up and with all this effort they had a dismal forecast
for their well as there was little oil and the gas wasn’t very strong making
all this worth nothing, but we choose to let them know this after we were
safely away from the oil well, as I still had to get out of here. After I had
packed everything up I waved down the hill in the now daylight for them to send
a dozer up and let me back down as I was not about to start down that slope with
the truck, on a now dew covered slick mud surface. Besides I could see a
disaster in the making as once the truck got out of control I would also take
out about 6 pickups at the bottom before finally stopping. It wasn’t worth it ,
finally they saw I wasn’t coming down after we had a waving match that ended in
an upraised finger indicating my displeasure with their idea, and soon a dozer
was on the front of the truck and he backed me down the hill with my front end
nosed into his blade. Up over the hill we went past the stump which was less of
a problem going up to the top of the hill , down that other side which seemed
like a piece of cake now that we had made it all the way in to the drilling
rig. Down crab creek and finally we were heading down Fortune
road .
Unfortunately
for the fortune hunters of oil well tradition, there was very little fortune
was to be found that day. Instead they received a huge bill from our company as
that is one thing, our company really knew how to do and that was bill for
payment of services. They could itemize with the best of them, and if we were
not careful the bill could arrive before we do.
This was a
typical job we would do and some of the directions left us wondering just what
they had in mind when they wrote them or a dispatcher copied them. But all in all it was in a day’s work or maybe
two for us.
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