What's New With Me

Already 16 days done this hitch. Its gone by fast, because we've been really busy in the QC office. This is because we are collecting data from an area that is covered in sand dunes. Usually all the geophones and vibration points are laid out in a nice grid, but when there are sand dunes, things get shifted all over the place. The QC office has to keep track of that.

I'm working with a QC I haven't worked with before. His name is Atila and he's from Ankara, the capital of Turkey. He's worked seismic for many years. He just came back to work after a 4 year retirement. It was a fun coincidence that I was coming from Turkey at the beginning of this hitch. We've chatted a bit about Turkish politics, food and nargila. I showed him some of my pictures.

Atila and Jamiil, another Turkish guy on the crew will sit outside at night and drink tea from water glasses and talk. Its a very Turkish thing to do. A few of these nights I and a few others have joined them. We sit at the edge of camp, looking out at miles and miles of nothingness, and our conversation jumps from Turkish to English to Arabic and back.

In other news, we have a camp move coming up. Again, we will be picking up all 20 some trailers and moving them to a location 15 kilometers west of here. As a result our camp will be closer to some sand dunes....hopefully with in running distance!

I've been running a fair amount. Yesterday I ran along an oil pipeline that passes by our camp. A few days ago I tried to run to some industrial construct I can see off in the distance from camp. I think it’s a petroleum storage tank or something like that. I didn't make it there yesterday, but I'll try again. Instead I changed my path to visit a rusty old barrel sitting alone in the middle of nowhere. It must have been sitting there for years, and it had served as a trashcan to an occasional passer-by. I was told later that these barrels sometimes mark absolute coordinate points for differential GPS calibration...or something like that. I've also been seeing some camel tracks while running, and some fresh looking camel droppings. I've yet to see an actual camel near camp this since we moved here 4 months ago, but this gives me hope.