Merry Christmas and Happy New Year...

The rest of the Everest Base Camp blog will have to wait until I get home so I can add pictures – so stay tuned.

After the EBC trek Chelsea and I flew back to LA, spent the night and picked up Adam to drive down to a close friends wedding – Dave and Rachael. The festivities leading up to the wedding were fun and the food was AMAZING! We went to a place called the Barrel Room, a must visit for anyone travelling to San Diego. The wedding went off without a hitch – or did it – dadashhhh... We got to make some new friends and before we knew it we were on our way home.

I had another 3 weeks off before having to return to work. We focused on relaxing at home, spending time with our dogs, hanging out with family and friends, and eating great food!!!

I returned to Angola December 1^st for a five week hitch and am now “on-schedule” with my back-2-back Johnnaton. A back-2-back is your counterpart that while one is on field break the other fills the position. In the future we will be working 4 weeks on/4 weeks off which will be way better than 5/5 since the 5^th week is always the most extreme.

I also established my route to and from Angola and it turned out to be pretty sweet and not waste much time. Some people take 48-70 hours getting home, in the end it takes me 24 hours to get home and 30 hours to get to Angola. I fly from LAX to Houston at midnight, have a 5 hour layover, then fly the “Houston Express” directly from Houston to Luanda, Angola. (More about the Houston express in the next paragraph) From Luanda, I transfer to the local airport and get on a plane to Cabinda, Angola. From Cabinda, I take a bus to my new home for 28 days called Malongo Camp.

The Houston Express is a company started by the Angola national company called Sonangol. They designed the planes around comfort and only have 5 rows of economy seating and 80% first class seating. The catch is, since they have so many fewer seats they have to charge a horrendous amount for tickets – approx. $5600 r/t. A “normal” carrier like Air France, Delta, or Emerites costs about $2000!!! Since Sonangol is a national company with direct interests in the government they can pretty much tell us how we are going to do business while in their country. Instead of taking the cheaper (and longer) route of getting to Angola, if we wanted permits, visa’s, etc. to keep coming we were going to fly the Houston Express... However, since my company has so many people commuting and so few economy seats, they agreed to put us in first class for the 12 hour trip! Long story short, for the longest leg of the trip I get to sit first class, which is very irregular within my company.

So, I got to Angola December 1^st, unpacked all of my things in my new permanent room on base – which is huge because now I do not need to take the 5am bus to arrive at 5:15, instead I can leave my room at 6am and arrive to work by the morning meeting at 6:15am. Likewise, I am free to go back to my room during our 1.5 hour lunch and can walk home when I am done with work instead of waiting for the 6pm bus. (30 minute commute) – I was told that I would be going offshore the next morning and that I needed to make sure that all the equipment was checked and functional. It was a huge job since the Unit, all tools, doghouse, etc were sitting in the yard... I only had time for the important things and prayed for the rest. =) We had stolen the job from our biggest competitor because they didn’t have access to their tools, and the job went perfectly. Everyone involved was praised and we looked great. On top of that, there were all sorts of additional charges since we had to mobilize another unit, it wasn’t our rig, etc,etc, and it was a good payday. =)

I was assigned a lead operator named Clovicio. He has worked for the company for about 10 years and really knows his stuff. He works very hard for me and he speaks perfect English. On my last hitch I had given him my $10 watch and he thinks it’s the best thing since sliced bread. I think it will be great to work with him on jobs.

I did busy work at the shop for the next three weeks then went offshore for another job December 24^th. I have been on this rig since then and expect to stay out here up until it is time for me to leave Angola. Christmas was weird being offshore. Besides being away from family and friends, it was the most non-christmas I have ever experienced. Everyone was basically in denial that it was Christmas. We had a nice lunch and dinner, but besides that, no Christmas songs, no lights, no church service, etc...

We had a small incident on the rig a few days ago, the top drive (the part that travels up and down the rig holding drill pipe in its “tongs”) caught on fire. It turned out to be an electrical fire in a hydraulic brake system, so there was black billowing smoke coming from the rig floor. We stood by the lifeboats for about 2 hours then went back to our duties. The HUGE difference on this rig compared to other rigs is that my company has a satellite set up so we always have internet connection. Internet definitely makes the time go by faster. I am also working out alot on the Helideck.

This rig is called the Ben Rinnes and it is a jack-up rig. It has 3 huge legs that have gears and teeth. The rig floats like a boat to the drilling locations, then slowly puts down the legs until they are resting on the ocean floor. It is a shallow water drilling rig. This link shows an example of said rig... Jack UP Rig

As I have hinted in this blog, things in Angola have gotten somewhat better with the new move onto the base and being assigned a great lead operator who speaks good English... However, the aversion to work for my snake-like, lying, condescending managers here is another story... We will see how it goes and when it will be the most beneficial time for me to leverage leaving, but I will have to renege on many promises I made that this would be my last hitch. I will return for at least one or two more hitches.