Somewhere along the way my brilliant plan went awry. Five months ago I made the choice to become the crew pumpman rather than be forced to become a shovel operator, possibly on another crew. I knew pumps could be a really shitty job at times but I also knew that it could be really really easy at other times, especially in the summer. Well here we are in summer and things just keep getting more ridiculous. Like yesterday, I was busy installing a pipeline for a deepwell pump as well as putting in an electric pump in this one pit, for which I had to scour the entire minesite for such things as nuts and bolts (I was short 5 nuts and 2 bolts so I robbed them off this one pipeline) and two 6 inch quick couplers (I robbed one off another line but never did find a second). Anyways, we made do like we always do, but in the meantime I have another pit that has a system of 7 pumps working furiously to keep the water from flooding over completely. Some of these pumps are diesel and have to be fueled by me with jerrycans since the service truck can't get into them. The sumps they are sitting in can dry out and have to be monitored pretty steadily to make sure that doesn't happen.
So, at 12:30 I shut off the interim pump back in that first pit I mentioned giving us about a half hour to move it to the new, bigger and better sump before the water starts flooding us out. Oh look, I am short of hardware! So I go to my pumpyard to grab some pieces (which ultimately I didn't have but wound up making do without) when I get a call from my buddy the hoe operator down in my other pit, he wants me to move one pump for him so he can dig me a deeper sump. Alright, since I have to go down there anyways to check it out and try to find parts. So we do that. At the same time an 8 inch pipe blows, water everywhere. Disaster! Except, that particular electric pump was down already for a blown cable and it can wait for a while. Off I go back to the other pit.
Water truck driver calls me and tells me my pump way at the other end of the minesite, about 25 kms from my current location, is down. I just laugh and say on the radio something like this: "Okay, well, what I can do is, maybe you can, um, let's see, okay I know just hold on, uh" and I just had to stop talking because really there was nothing I could say. On hot dusty days like yesterday the water trucks are pretty important. Luckily the electrician was heading that way already so I was able to get him to reset it for me. He was heading that way to go to another one of my pumps to rob some parts from a genset for this deepwell we put in. He asked me on the radio if that was okay and I said "I been rhyming and stealing all day you might as well too, welcome to the world of pumps."
Anyways I headed up to finish the job up top and it went pretty good, took a little longer than it had to but I am still new and inexperienced (and a little incompetent) so at least it got done. Maybe even time for a break right? Technically I have all these other pumps all over the site that I haven't had a chance to check but I'm union so I'm taking a gawdam coffe break right? Too bad the one pump in the other pit ran out of fuel.
It turns out the company changed their policy on forcing oilers to become operators and putting it back to how it should have been, as a bid process. So I could have stayed as the oiler. But whatever. I think I'm done with all that. We have some brand new rock trucks and I think I wouldn't mind driving one of those for a while. On those when they are missing a nut or a bolt or blow a line, they fix them right now, like magic.