Weblog: Blackwater: Second Shift
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We were supposed to be working 6-on, 1-off, 5-on, 2-off (in PG) due to Slocan closing the camp every second weekend, but now it turns out that we're working three shifts of 4-on, 1-off, followed by one shift of 4-on, 3-off (in PG) because Slocan decided to keep the camp open and close it for the BC day long weekend instead. I'm happy with this change, because as far as I'm concerned, 4-on, 1-off is the best schedule. Not only are the shifts shorter, but the number of days actually worked is greater, which means more money.
It turns out that we're not being payed for the time we spent recutting, which I think is fair. If you don't count the recutting, we were just about exactly on budget for finishing the block, which is a first (Apex lost money at Ospika). Now if we can do that and maintain high quality, hopefully people will move up levels faster (our current block is looking good).
Last break, I picked up some mountain biking gloves to use instead of the leather gloves I have been using. A lot of the English crews are using biking gloves, and my hands are much happier in them. In the leather gloves, my hands would usually either be too hot (when sunny) or get cold fast (when raining hard). I haven't experienced any rain while wearing the bike gloves yet, but when sunny they're perfect. The fingers are also much more sensitive, which makes it easier to do things like change blades. The disadvantages are that devil's club prickles can get through the fingers, and that they absorb herbicide when wet, so my finger-tips are blue. At this point I accept that I'll be covered in herbicide all the time and don't worry about it too much.
While in town I also picked up some headphones that would be more comfortable than the ones that came with the MD walkman. They're Panasonic Shockwaves with a neck-band. I'd heard that these fit into the earmuffs perfectly if you remove the neck-band, and indeed they do. They're also water-resistant (good in rainy conditions) and sound pretty good. I'm not listening to music all the time while brushing, but it is definitely good sometimes, it helps me keep a rhythm up. Many brushers say having music is indispensible, but I'm not one of them.
I took out a pile of CDs from the library and recorded the ones I liked: Gilbert and Sullivan - Mikado (good to brush to; I wish they had more musical soundtracks), Ry Cooder and Manuel Galban - Mambo Sinuendo, and Le Mystere Des Voix Bulgares vol 1 and 2 (my parents have vol 2 and it's some of the most amazing music I've ever heard). Unfortunately, the library is closed on Sundays during the summer, which means my plan to hang out at the library on Sunday until the trucks left for camp was thwarted. I also was unable to upload the web site update because on the day the library was open, there was a problem with accessing it. Instead, Calvin and I hung out at Tim Hortons for a while, then I spent a couple of hours on the phone talking to various people from back home (which is amazing, considering how much I usually dislike talking on the phone).
Today I'm recording a whole bunch of CDs I've borrowed from Vincent and others: Rachid Taha - Diwan, Manu Chao - Esperanza, The Cardigans - Gran Tourismo, Tool - Aenima, Niel Young II, Les Colocs - Suite 2116, Depeche Mode - Violator, Tosca - Delhi9, Manu Chao Live, Bad Religeon - Stranger Than Fiction, some CCR, Mano Solo - Dehors, Punjabi Lounge, and Radiohead - OK Computer.
I just finished reading "One Foot in Laos" by Dervla Murphy. This one concerns her travels on foot and by bicycle (after she injured her ankle) in Laos, and was written in 1999. The other book I read by her was written in the 60s, so it's great to see that she hasn't changed, though her opinions (against western-style development, basically) have gotten much stronger. It's interesting that many of the same things are beginning to happen with development projects in Laos that happened in India as Arundhati Roy wrote about in "For The Greater Common Good". I'm now reading "Mali Blues" by Lieve Joris.
One of the guys, who I think I'm comparable to in terms of brushing ability, was given a warning that if they find any more quality problems with his work he's going to be fired. I haven't been given any warnings about quality aside from once in a while having something I missed pointed out to me, so I hope I'm not near something like that happening. Jamie, the foreman of a crew we're working with a lot, gave me some really good tips for my technique the day before yesterday that I put into practise yesterday, and I think it's improving my speed. Nevertheless, my progress is quite slow and I'm not going to make much money this summer.
There's one guy who ever since the beginning of working here has called me Emelio. I never bothered to correct him, but finally when we were sitting at the same dinner table I did. He still calls me Emelio.
A couple of days ago, Tom and Slocan's checker were on the block looking over our quality. I was brushing away without noticing them, and cut a medium-size crop tree by accident (it happens sometimes), and quickly picked it up and stuck it back in the ground as I usually do. Then I noticed that Tom was looking right in my direction. I was shitting myself at this point. A couple of minutes later he was pulling on every cropper near me, though I brushed on pretending not to notice. Of course, he found the one I had cut, but he didn't even mention it. Hmm. Yesterday I was cutting in an area that was extremely dense with croppers of all kinds of sizes, with low herbacious stuff inbetween. Darren (an ex-foreman who's crew was the first to be disbanded because they all quit, but who is leading us for a few days because Kyle is having a problem with his knee) came up to talk to me, and I was holding my saw in such a way that the blade is raised off the ground in front of me. Once he was done I went to start up my saw again and noticed that a small cropper was stuck right on the blade in plain view. Embarrassing, yes, but in this case not a big deal because in this kind of area it's impossible to not cut down the occasional small cropper (the blade is too big to fit between them sometimes) and they would crowd each other out anyway.
Posted on Fri, 18 Jul 2020 at Munro Camp, BC, CA (altitude 1023m) (map/google earth)
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