It must be spring because the winds are whipping up again at the mine. The one night we had gusts of 100 mph. Yup, miles. Even the heavy equipment sways in that kind of wind. And guess what? We still gotta be out there, though the boys and I refused to move shovel 6 since it was non-essential. Charlie our drill oiler was acting junior foreman this week, so I took over his duties. One of which is to water up the drills. Sometime around 3 AM I went and grabbed the water truck, the one with no shocks or heat, and drove it to the fillup. All you have to do is hook up a hose and fill up the tank, maybe two tons of water?? I have no idea how big the tank is, but it doesn't take long. While it was filling up I just rested in the cab. When it's full water comes out the overflow valve and off you go. So when I heard the telltale spray I unhooked and went back to the drill. Had to wait for him to finish the hole he was on, and then I pulled up and started to hook up. That's when I noticed the tank was empty! #*&%!!! The water was draining out of the drain valve not the overflow valve so by the time I got there it had all drained out. Not being a drill oiler normally I forget to check these things. So I drive away in disgust. Herman calls over the radio, "Where are you going?" So I had to answer him over the radio, where everyone can hear. "Someone left the drain valve open so I gotta go get more water."
When I get back to the fillup I discover my hose is gone. #*&% some more!! Now I have to call my buddy Robin over the radio and ask him to retrace my steps to see if he can find where I dropped it. Anyways he finds it and it isn't all mangled though he told me it was. So repeat the whole process, all the while trying not to get blown away by the wind. After about a half hour Herman comes out of his drill and says the tank isn't filling up at all! #*%& and &%*#!!! So I check my hookup, there are two valves you have to open, as well as an electrical cord to plug in and a power switch for the pump. It all looked good. Finally I notice a breaker on the drill was turned off. Finally I get it right, and something that should have taken an hour at most has taken four.
When Robin points that out to me, I say, "Well, I have to admit it was partly due to my incompetence."
"No," he says, "it was completely due to your incompetence."
Oh the love.
Anyways, once again I discover I have no good pictures of our newish drill to illustrate, but I did find this gem, and was shocked when I read my own words to describe it- we were using this drill in this century??? Wow.



I guess I shouldn't be too surprised since we are still running shovel 6 fullbore. That one is a year newer than me, and I am no spring chicken. On the last night the wind finally died down so we had to move it. Move it a loooooong way, too. The guys on the other shift refused to do it since it has no brakes. So they told me it got new brakes on the dayshift. I thought that was a little weird because the last time it got new brakes it was down for two months. And the new brakes never really worked any better than the old ones. But I did it. We use bullldozers as backup brakes anyways just to be sure. A D11 walks backwards in front of my track and is ready to stop my track with his blade if I need it. Of course at one point we needed it. The shovel shut off when I was trying to turn (shovel 6 doesn't turn real well since that is where you use the brakes and as we have seen, shovel 6 doesn't really have brakes) and it started rolling forward. I was on a downramp so I had to call Spike the dozer operator on the radio: "Spike I'm rolling I need you to stop me. Spike! The shovel shut off! Right now Spike!" Anyways a crisis was averted.