I know there's been a million Star Wars mashups, but I don't think I've ever seen this done before, exactly. There was an AT-AT done up in Caterpillar colours, which was pretty cool, but not sure I've ever seen mining equipment done up in Star Wars colours. I feel like I am the right guy to do it, given my four-plus decades of Star Wars fandom and my not quite three decades of mining experience. I drove big haul trucks and loaders and shovels and drills and dozers . . . and I should stop talking before I commit myself to a years-long Lego project lol. But I am pretty pleased with this quick build! I just searched up a mining truck that Lego put out, to see what they have, and this set 4202 popped up. Kind of the perfect size, not a huge Technic build. All I really needed to get was the tires (Thanks Edmonton Brickyard!) and a couple of technic arms. Easy peasy! Oh yeah the TIE canopy was one of my very first finds at the Brickyard, and I've been trying to think of ways to use it. Mission accomplished! Fun little goober. Here's some more pics:

 

Some stuff I'm working on now. Drew these icons out of my head, didn't even need any reference ;) but here are some photos from my personal archive to show you how photo-real these icons are! All of these photos were taken by me, in my previous life as a coal miner. You can take the bear out of the mine but you can't take the mine out of the bear or something like that.

 

Into Decline

Here come the Berserk Dwarves! Like bowling balls with beards, this ale-swilling, axe-swinging band of marauders are no match for the resident Diplomat Elves who hitherto lived peacefully in a perfectly charming mountain realm. It’s a small world, after all, and there’s no room for dwarves and elves to live together in harmony. Before long the Berserk Dwarves had established themselves as the undisputed and rightful occupants of their new kingdom, and nobody better try to kick them out of it. Because they’re berserk! And Berserk Dwarves don’t stand aside for nothing.
Unlike regular Dwarves, Berserk Dwarves are . . . well, one might argue the difference between Berserk and Regular Dwarves is subtle, a redundancy even, a matter of blood alcohol content rather than any taxonomic differences. Be that as it may, Non-Berserk Dwarves can at least be negotiated with, lived alongside, perhaps even, in all humility, befriended. Berserk Dwarves, not so much. Once they’ve ensconced themselves in a region, well, there goes the neighbourhood.
Unless and until they go into decline…
Years ago when I first played the Days of Wonder board game Small World I was taken by the beautiful artwork and the way you could combine races and factions to get a unique combination of traits and special powers every time. Berserk Dwarves, Diplomat Elves. Bivouacking Amazons and so forth. I might have glommed onto my BersDwars a little too fondly, though, since I really didn't like the rule that said you should let your race go into decline and choose a new one once they’ve overextended themselves. Why would I want to do that? What’s better than Berserk Dwarves? Spoiler alert, pretty much anything is better than Berserk Dwarves, even Wealthy Halflings, if everyone else at the table is playing a strategic rather than a nostalgic game.
Ten years later I am a lot more savvy when it comes to board games and design decisions and the going into decline mechanism makes way more sense. It’s called Small World for a reason- there is limited space and limited tokens. If you want to win you’re going to have to manage your races and choose the right time to cut your losses and try a new strategy. Fair enough. But I still kind of wish they had just included way more Dwarf tokens.
I bring this up now not because I think Small World is the best board game ever- it shows its age for sure though it still has some fun aspects- but because I suddenly find myself in the uncomfortable position of being a real life Berserk Dwarf whose real life job unexpectedly switched from full steam ahead to Mines of Moria-style decline.
I’m a coal miner. Not the dwarvish delving-too-deep-into-the-bowels-of-the-earth-waking-up-ancient-horrors kind, nor indeed even the underground guy-with-a-canary kind, but rather I operate heavy equipment in an open pit mine in Alberta, Canada. Started as a summer student back in the 90s, then hired on permanently in 2001, though I endured a layoff for a couple of years, but now continuously since 2004. My whole adult life. I’m a miner! I’m a Berserk Dwarf!
Soon I will be a very different sort of beast, one I didn’t plan to be and have no desire to be. This sort of beast is called the Laid-off Miner. Their special power is they no longer get bonus coins or coins of any kind but at least they no longer smudge everything with coal dust. Yay!
The berserk thing about this whole situation is none of us saw it coming, really. Sure, coal mining is cyclical in nature and there are always ups and downs and good times and lean. But we were ramping up to our next phase, we were hiring anyone with a pulse seemingly, we had a plan and a future. Until we didn’t. A decision came from the big big bosses, Wealthy Humans known as the Board of Directors of the corporation I work for, that we would no longer be pursuing the next phase of mining, and that, once the current phase is mined out, say another year or so, the site would be shut down. After fifty years, our mine is going into decline.
A slow motion decline that will play out over the next year. Weird, right? It’ll take place in phases. Around Xmas time our biggest shovel, a huge electric excavator that moves massive amounts of rock, will be torn down to components and mailed to another mine owned by our parent corp. When that goes, the first major round of lay-offs occurs. Merry Xmas. I have enough seniority that I will be around to the bitter end but that is cold consolation as I wave goodbye to many of my union brothers and sisters.
In the meantime we still have to do our jobs. But, if we do our jobs too well won’t we be out of work that much sooner?  This realization does strange things to our morale and our work ethic. Going into decline has unforeseen side effects which will only be more pronounced as time marches on.
Because time will march on, like it or not, and operations will just keep downsizing and declining. Eventually, and by eventually I mean inevitably and much sooner than I’d like, the doors will be shut, and any of us still employed will be like the last of the dinosaurs, looking around after the asteroid and wondering where all the T-Rexes went. Or, perhaps more fittingly, like some kind of deep-digging gimling who didn’t notice the demon of the underworld that ate all of her kin.
What does a Berserk Dwarf do for a second career, anyway?


Note- Small World is readily available anyplace you would expect to find games, whether online or at your friendly local game store or even some big box stores. Other more modern games with similar feels but perhaps being just a little bit more fun include Ethnos and, if you really want to go all in, Heroes of Land, Air and Sea. I’ve never played Heroes of Land, Air and Sea so if you do I will be jealous but will want to hear all about it. Find me on Twitter @NathanWaddell1 and on Instagram @nwaddell1974

Our big digger is down for a month getting some renovations done. New hairdo. Air up the tires, that sorta thing. I don't know if I ever mentioned here, but our more littler digger is no more. Retired unexpectedly. I was the second last guy to operate it. They asked me if I noticed a strange vibration, and I was like, you mean, stranger than all the other vibrations?

Our even more smaller digger is also slated to get two new engines (it's a diesel/hydraulic shovel, unlike the electric shovel pictured here which has no engines) right away.

Now might be a good time to invest in a company that makes handheld shovels, because pretty soon they're just gonna hand each one of us one and tell us to start digging.

Here's a video from the cab of my loader I took at work today, I just taped the camera to the dash while I loaded. So not all that riveting, but you get an idea what my day is like. Except it's more so. Oh yreah, nothing much happens for the first 1:30, and then nothing too much happens after that but at least it's different nothing than the first minute of nothing.

I haven't posted about work much lately, mostly because work is the last thing I really want to think about. Here's some photos though:





Lately I've been spending most of my time actually doing my own job, driving Kress truck. So not too much exciting stories, just listening to a lot of music and podcasts. Which suits me fine. I had one night on pumps a couple of weeks ago which was a good reminder (not that I need one) that I made the right move to bid off of that job.

So I been working a bit of overtime lately. Sundays are doubley good because you get doubley pay. Your always a little apprehensive about going for OT. For one thing you'd way rather have the day off. Especially when it's Spring Forward night and you have to get up at what feels like 4AM. Then there's a whole nother crew that you don't really know, that's kind of weird. I just pretend it's a based-on-real-life movie where none of the actors quite look like the people they're playing. And you generally get put on the oldest, decrepitest piece of equipment out there.
But yesterday was pretty much the best shift ever. Yeah, I was on 17 truck, which isn't quite as old as me but it's older by a few years than, hmmm, the fall of the Soviet Union. But I didn't haul a single load before first coffee, through no fault of my own. Shovel 8 was down. Actu8ally I did haul 1 load off of shovel 9 but I got stuck and had to dump it right there and was sent out of that pit. Goal disallowed! After coffee 8 came back up but 10 went down so all the trucks were diverted to 8. I got 4 loads from then until second coffee. Four goals in the second period of a hockey game is not so bad but in mining, not so good. After coffee I got stuck again and so I hauled only two more loads, off of 22 loader which was also having issues. And that was my day thanks for the big bag o' cash!
I got to read quite a few comic books this week, not only yesterday but also when i was on 22 loader on my own crew. You just load three trucks and send them on their way and then sit there for an hour and a half. Got caught up on some old Walter Simonson Thor, that was good stuff. Essex County was really cool, you might remember Sara Quin championed it for Canada Reads. What else. Some Hulk. I love Hulk so much. Usagi Yojimbo.

This week started off so good. The first day was an overtime for double pay and it was easy money. The next day was a stat so even though it was my regular shift, it was double time and a half pay. And even easier money. Then the bubble burst yesterday when, rather than be on my truck, I was assigned to pumps. Which was my nightmare job that I hated and was the worst experience of my life. But whatever. We had to put a pump in. Which took all day and it was cold and wet and I even singed half my beard off by poking my face into a fireball. Why was there a fireball and what was I doing poking my face into it? When it's -30 pumps get all frozen for some reason, so we have to use a propane torch, basically a flamethrower, to thaw them out. I guess flames build up into fireballs in enclosed spaces.
Anyways. Today I'm even colder because I had to shave my beard off. And guess what? We have to pull that very pump since they're blasting. Nightshift never did get it working so we didn't pump so much as one gallon out of the pit. Tearing shit down is always easier than setting it up, so at least there was that. But after the blast, guess what? Back goes the pump! They asked me to stay late to get it running and I very flatly refused. Fuck em. That's why they have nightshift guys. And it'll be there tomorrow, just waiting for me to tear it apart I'm sure.

The following is an extremely true account of what happened at work the other day. A Wenco is a computerized GPS dispatching thing that knows your every move every minute.

I was hauling off of shovel 9
It's Friday and I was feeling fine
Until my Wenco started going crazy
Telling me "start hauling loads, stop being lazy"
Well, we all know, the Wenco, it's gotta go
I'll be the first to say I told you so
But how to get rid of Big Brother GPS?
I knew I'd have to scheme and be devious
Just then the radio played some Miley Ray Cyrus
And it hit me! I know, I'll make a virus!
So I mashed all the buttons on that little unit
For good measure I thought I'd pull my pants down and moon it
But then something happened that was kinda weird
There on the screen a robot appeared
It laughed and said "Now you've gone and done it
"I've taken over your truck and now I'm gonna run it"
My seat belt, it wrapped around me I'm trapped
and my truck took off like a bat that'd been zapped
Went straight for the dump, passing 145
and if you know Myriame, you know that girl can drive
we came to a stop in front of Craig's dozer
and dumped it right there, not one rock went over
He was so mad he called me snot sausage
But it's not my fault! I'm being held hostage
What the Wenco did next I should have expected
It went on the network, and so it infected
all of the trucks and shovels in PC3 pit
that's when I thought I might be in deep shit
so I used ninja tricks to jump outta my truck
just my luck I landed knee deep in the muck
I pulled myself free and looked up to see
Shovel 9 with its bucket was coming at me
It tried to eat me! I swear it's the truth
Lucky for me it was missing a tooth
I jumped through the clamshell but no time to relax
I still had to dodge shovel 9's tracks
Swinging around it came in for the kill
Time to bust out all my GI Joe skill
I adopted my patented Miyagi stance
Part kungfu with voodoo and hiphop dance
With a jab and a feint and a flying round kick
I separated shovel 9's boom from its stick
My triumph short-lived as the rest of the fleet
was headed my way and I knew I was beat
I was just about to give up in defeat
When I heard on the radio Cito say "Sweeeeet!"
So I dodged and I kicked and I punched until three
That's when I stopped for coffee lunch and a pee
At 3:30 I said "Alright" and "You betcha!
"You're coming for me but I'm gonna getcha!"
I wrecked every last truck, including the Kresses
You shoulda seen Jimmy, you know how he stresses
But anyways, to make a long story short
This is the end of my Incident Report!

The irony certainly didn't escape me. I spent all week running shovel, loving every minute I wasn't doing my normal pumpman job. You remember, the job I took because I didn't want to run shovel.
Anyways. What's with all the Russian military aircraft making like they're going to invade Canada lately? Are they bored? Feeling the Cold War Nostalgia Blues? Or getting ready to invade the Arctic to claim all its supposed oil?
Also- sewer diggers discovered bones from an Edmontosaurus and an Albertosaurus right here in Edmonton. Alberta. Not discovered- any Calgarysauruses. Cause there's no such thing sucka!
And look- all of Chewbacca's dialog from Star Wars!

Bear City
They must have gotten the memo. Now that they're officially listed as threatened in Alberta, the grizzly bears are out in force at the minesite. Maybe they feel much safer now that they're threatened. So far this spring I've seen 9 grizzlies. That's a personal best and I feel very proud of this accomplishment, I will probably be nominated for all sorts of Oscars and Nobels and Pullitzers very shortly. Usually it's from a distance, but the other day I was doing my rounds in my pumptruck and crested a hill to discover two furry cannonballs go shooting past my truck at a truly astonishing speed. When I recovered from my surprise I followed them slowly, doing 20 kph and they easily outdistanced me. I didn't want to go any faster because they were already spooked and I certainly don't want to cause distress to my bear brothers and sisters. "It's okay I'm your friend" I told them but they must not have heard me. Anyways they ran up this ridge and one of them hid in the trees, I could hear him making a sort of crying sound, while the other one kind of did some bluff charges at me, and she made some woofing sort of sounds at me. This brings me to
Extremely valuable lesson about grizzly bears #1: Never ever (not ever!) try to outrun a grizzly bear. I'm serious. Get it tattooed on your hand so next time you are tempted to try, you can look down at your palm and remember that this is a Bad Idea.

Yesterday I was making my rounds and discovered a bear trap that hadn't been there the day before. Not only that, but it was apparently tripped. Unless they didn't bother to trigger it when they set it up? But that makes no sense! Not being able to resist, I went up to the trap to see if there was anyone inside. Helloooo?? There's a camera there so you have to be careful about not getting your photo taken. Anyways I was eventually able to ascertain that there was a bear inside. I tapped on the trap and heard a heavy breathing sound in return- remember the velociraptors in Jurassic park when they breathed on the window? It sounded exactly like that. I peeked in the air hole and saw a gleaming eye staring back at me.
I met the U of A researcher and the park warden who set the traps the other day, they are doing research on the effects of mining on grizzly bears. Anyone who studies bears is someone I want to get to know so I gave the researcher a ride in my truck to scout out locations for his traps. Unfortunately this was not the bonding experience I had hoped for as he locked himself out of his Tundra and was more preoccupied with that than answering my questions.
Anyways when they arrived at the tripped trap they were able to determine that the bear inside was a 250 lb female they had preciously collared, so they were just going to release the trap and let her go.

This brings me to
Extremely valuable lesson about grizzly bears #2: Never ever approach a sprung bear trap. Not ever! Why not? you might ask, and indeed I asked this same question of the park warden when he told me this yesterday. It's not like it's going to be able to get out, sheesh! Yeah but, what if the bear inside the trap was a cub and the very distraught and aggravated mama bear was hiding in the bushes?

About 40 feet away from where I was working, a good 40 or 60 tons of rock came crashing down off the highwall. The pipe I was working on kicked a bit from the impact. My helper and I jumped but if we had been just down the road a bit all they would have found would have been our boots, sticking out from under a boulder.
I called my foreman to tell him the job was unsafe and that I was done. But he didn't answer and I had time to kind of cool down a bit. I looked at the wall above where we were working and it wasn't that bad. I had already cut the pipe and inserted the first of two huggers to repair it, so there was no point in leaving the job undone, the pit was slowly flooding and I wasn't about to leave it to the nightshift guy to do it. So anyways we finished the job (I commandeered the grader operator to watch the wall for us) and went home. Just another day in mining.
Earlier in the day, I was caught by my foreman and his boss hauling a flexible suction hose in a manner they deemed unsafe- I had hauled it up over the cab of my truck and chained it down so it wouldn't move. I didn't want to drag it on the ground for 10 kms so I thought this was a way better way to do it. The bosses disagreed and decided that it was better to do things the right way than the easy way. Fair enough, they even helped me rig it up differently.
A while later the big boss returned and we had an earnest heart to heart about safety. It was a lecture, but a gentle one. I didn't even mind, I am all about safety too. But then a few hours later I'm under the highwall doing my job. Boom! And I could have refused to finish that job, nobody would have blinked at that. Nonstop rain for so many days makes highwalls unstable. But I did it. I guess that makes me an unsafe worker. That's weird, eh? Last thing I want to do is get hurt, and definitely don't want to be squished by a boulder. But risk is part of the job, no matter how safety conscious you are. I don't see any way around that.

What kind of units would life force be measured in? And don't say midichlorians!
A while ago a bunch of us were at work shooting the breeze, and we were talking about a new mechanic on our crew who was amazing at his job, though his enthusiasm for the job was steadily diminishing each week as he got more used to some of the work conditions that were his new norm.
"Yeah you can see the life force draining out of him a little more each day", I said. Everyone laughed but one guy, who is a good friend of mine but he has a bit of a history of resolving conflict with edged weapons, he says, "Yeah I love watching the life force drain out of a guy!" at which point we all stopped laughing and exchanged nervous glances instead.
Anyways so Robin figures me taking his pumpman bid is a surefire way for me to lose some life force. After the first day, I told him I felt so good that I thought I had gained a unit of life force.
This past week, well, it's hard to say if I'm ahead on life force units or bleeding them out profusely. All I had to do was get a pump system back in the bottom of this one pit that we are quickly going to need. This job was such high priority that they brought a guy in on overtime to help me the first day, and they pulled mechanics off of the #1 shovel to fix a pump. Wow, never seen that before, right?
Long story short, there is still no pump in that pit, even after four days of working on it steady.
Where to begin? The old infrastructure for the pump had been robbed blind over the winter, so I had to weld new pipe to put in, except the generator for my pipe welder had been robbed to power the lights of a backhoe. And there was no unfrozen pipe to weld anyways.
There are tons of other little details, such as there was no sense in installing anything until after we blasted a pattern directly above the sump the pump was going in, which wasn't scheduled till day 3 of my 4 day shift. So on day 3, comes time to blast, and the drill that had drilled the pattern is about to move out when it pukes up a main motor. So that takes most of the day arranging for two bulldozers to come and drag it out and so on and on.
Even yesterday, we were ready to forklift all the stuff we needed down to the sump, but the blast had covered the road and a backhoe was sent in to open it up again. Which he did no problem, except at the very end he lost a track and blocked the whole entrance.
But I did what I could and now I'm on four days off, so my units of life force is pretty much through the roof right now.

Alright well here are a few lessons I've learned from coal mining, hopefully you will find this completely unedifying and inapplicable to your own lives. These are some things I learned the hard way:

-don't hide your hardhat in a contractor's truck so you can sneak home early for Christmas, otherwise you leave yourself open to being framed for stealing gas
-potheads are really big and heavy, so it's a good idea not to get snmashed in the face with one
-they also carry 7200 volts, so try not to disconnectode them till you get the "safe to work on the line" call
-even when they are disconnectoded, they can still carry a discharge so be careful about sticking your fingers in them. 7200 volts of static shock can clench all your muscles and render them sore for a few hours.
-no matter how many times they say they fixed shovel 6, they didn't fix shovel 6. Shovel 6 can not be fixed.
-you wouldn't think bananas can explode, but they can, and they make an awful mess of the rest of your lunch

I think tomorrow after I've had some sleep I might blog about the similarities between hockey teams and coal miners. But for now, a story about sleep.

On the first night, around 3:30 AM I was hanging out with my buddy Robin the pumpman. He had helped me with a bunch of oiler stuffs and now we were going to investigate why one of his pumps- nay, his most important pump- mysteriously stopped pumping. Such mysteries occur frequently and can have many different solutions, from pressing a reset button and everyone living happily ever after to having to replace a pump in a deep dark pit at 4 in the morning accompanied by cursings of all and sundry.
But first, coffee break. So I fell instantly asleep, and apparently was snoring. I never used to fall so deeply asleep at work but babies have that effect on you I guess. So next thing I know it's 5:45 and Robin is leaving in the coal van to pick up the coal haulers- his final duty of every shift. Groggily I slide over to the driver's seat of the pumptruck and drive away to kill off the last 45 minutes of the shift. My main concern is finding somewhere isolated to hide and try to wake up. Vaguely I wonder if Robin got that pump going or not but really, it's almost home time and I don't actually care.
Suddenly here comes the big boss, doing his morning tour in his pickup. He's making a beeline for me, thinking I'm the pumpman since I am driving the pumptruck. Oh no! I pretend I don't see him and take off. Luckily it's dark enough that I can sort of get away with that. So I drive away towards a different pit, the one with the mystery pump, and to my dismay I see Big Boss is following me. No doubt he wants to debrief about the pump but I really can't see how that conversation can possibly go well for me- I can just imagine it: Hi Homie Bear, did you get that pump going last night?
Ummm, I don't really know. Maybe?
What do you mean you don't know?
Well, I . . . am just very very tired.
So anyways I had no choice but to pretend I didn't see him. It was a little awkward when he passed me and waved but sometimes you just have to stay the course.