All-Natural Nightmare, Part 6

“Did you realize…that you’re a champion in their eyes?”

Groggily I realized that I wasn’t dead.  More surprising still, awakening to international douchebag Kanye West’s voice on my alarm clock meant I had fallen asleep at some point in the night.  I sprung out of the tent.  It wasn’t yet light out.  The sky resembled a backlit canopy which had been viciously attacked by a holepunch. 

I spent a moment pondering life, the universe and everything.  We survived.  Mortality had been considered and our lives examined as they flashed before our eyes.  Being lost, dehydrated, then hypothermic and exposed hadn’t cost us anything permanent. 

Contrarily, it provided a gift which seems permanent.  Contemplating one’s life in movies always ends with some clown finding religion or regretting actions both undertaken and unachieved.  I never felt that way, I realized.  I doubt my companions did either.  I went into this experience as a convicted lover of science and the world around me, proud of what I’ve accomplished and knowing I’ve screwed up quite potently on multiple occasions.  Lying awake listening to my potential cause of death arcing across the sky invited me to question those characteristics, but didn’t compel me to change my mind.

I kept on pondering this while cooking breakfast and breaking down the tent.  I pondered it while we set out at dawn for base camp.  I continued doing so during our inconsiderately steep ascents and descents throughout the afternoon.  Did I really have that tv moment wherein everything makes sense and everything is messed up all at once?  When we reach base camp and hugged and laughed and yelled and limped to the store to buy ice cream, I was certain I had. 

So as we reach the conclusion to this story, one which was inevitable because, duh, I wrote it, so I must have survived, it becomes time to do conclusion-ey things.  Typically this is the time and place for broad, sweeping generalizations.  What was learned here?  How does one turn a weekend away into easily digestible facts and nuggets to put into print and feel good about?  Live your life such that if you’re trapped in a tent in a lightning storm with your friends, that you emerge from that tent as the same person.  There is no more rewarding experience than performing a potentially last-minute soul search and discovering that it’s been there all along, and that you’re totally satisfied with the product.  

All-Natural Nightmare, Part 5

Irony: īrənē

the expression of one's meaning by using language that normally signifies the opposite, typically for humorous or emphatic effect

Irony is frequently misused.  Alanis Morrissette famously ruined this word in the 90’s anthem of the same name, wherein she posited rhetorically whether a number of downright awful events were “a little bit ironic.  Don’t you think?”

“No, damn it,” I’ve often ranted to imaginary Alanis, ”You’re abusing the hell out of that term.  Rain on your wedding day just sucks.  A fly in your chardonnay just sucks.  Things don’t even have to be bad to be ironic.  Read a book.”

Spa knows I feel this way.  The subject had been covered in detail at some point along the hike, in the glory days when imminent death wasn’t yet the topic du jour. But he then proceeded to point out the alleged irony of the way a lack of water had not so long ago threatened us, and we had begged aloud for rain.  His words were punctuated by a thunderclap so loud and close it could have come from inside my own head.

“Spa?”

“Yeah?”

“If we live through this, I might have to kill you for that.”

            “This is bad.”

            “Agreed.  What can we do?”

            “He needs to stay active.  Mobile. “

           “Pushups, jumping jacks, that kinda stuff?”

           “Yeah.”

           “That’s gonna look kinda funny in his underwear.”

           “Wasn’t he your pledge brother?  Didn’t you guys cover this in initial hazing?”

            “He was, but we were pussies.  We hazed like Girl Scouts.”

Schil was in a bind.  Every article of clothing was soaked through with freezing rain, including the clothes on his body, which we instructed him to remove for that reason.  To an uneducated onlooker, we seemed to want to dress the cacti surrounding the small clearing we had pegged for a campsite. 

Schil’s 165-pound, 6’4” frame, a splicing of James Franco and Ichabod Crane, lacked any insulation.  The temperature was dropping and the wind was picking up.  Hypothermia was taking hold – his hands and feet lost feeling, and he was shivering like a marital aid plugged into a car battery. 

Spa and I needed action.  And action we provided.  I tore through my camping pack and found our stove.  Thankfully my shoulders are naturally loose, or I could have pulled something while patting my own back for fixing this device the day before.  I pressurized the fuel source, lit the pilot, threw open the valve, and was greeted with the friendly roar of blue butane flames.  I poured water, our frenemy, into the small pot and silently willed it to heat faster.  I looked over at Spa to see if he could join me in being uselessly frustrated at thermodynamics, but he was busy erecting our tent.  Schil, I then confirmed, did look ridiculous doing bare-ass pushups in the middle of a National Park. 

“Schil, c’mere.” I beckoned, remembering the gravity of the situation. 

“Put this on.” My sleeping bag, due to the advice of Spa, had been wrapped in a garbage bag during the downpour.  At the time of this advice, I had ungratefully considered Spa out of his mother-loving mind for suggesting it might rain on this barren hellscape.  Oops.  The water then reached a boil, and I poured it into canteens.  These I wrapped in my own somewhat damp clothes. “And put these in there with you.” Schil thusly wound up in a sleeping bag clutching heated water bottles like Teddy Bears.

Then we ate.  And ate some more.  Finding we had additional rice leftover we then continued eating.  We were full.  We were stable.  Schil had once again not died despite our best efforts at poor camping planning.  So it was time to go to sleep.  Our alarms set for the wee hours and our minds already on the commute home, we settled into the tent to sleep off any residual bad luck. 

Then the storm came back, and any certainty we felt about our safety evaporated into the night air.

All-Natural Nightmare, Part 4

               Most people can’t tell you the last time they were afraid for their life.  They almost certainly can’t tell you the last time they willingly placed themselves in a situation of mortal peril, let alone paid for it and made tremendous effort to ensure it occurred.  But we can. 

Lying awake, helpless but for our advanced half-assed yoga knowledge, our tent somehow seemed even smaller.  The tent fit three six-foot-plus men inside of it, with sleeping bags and not much else.  At its apex, it stood four and a half feet above the ground.  Its two canvas layers were supported by a system of aluminum poles. 

“Would lightning melt the poles?” Schil asked no one in particular, as the thunder grew audibly closer.  With two friends within elbowing distance, somehow it was still clear that this question was only asked to himself. 

“Think the tent would melt onto us?  Wonder if that’ll make us harder to ID.” I semi-responded, also not expecting my query to be fielded.

Schil started to reply, but was stopped midsentence by thunder so close it could have come from one of us. 

“What’d you say?” I followed up.

“I said, just don’t decide you’re cold and need warmth right before we fry.  My parents will have enough to be sad about without wondering if we Brokeback’ed it.”

The water fundamentally changed our individual worldviews.  The mere sight of the cache from a quarter mile out replaced Spa and I’s blood with rocket fuel, Mentos and Diet Coke.  Schil couldn’t exactly move any more – dehydration and sunstroke had left him shivering, slurring, and incapable of productivity.  He rested in the shade while Spa and I nearly sprinted to the bearbox storing our treasure. 

With 5 gallons of our own water plus a few marked “free” and “yummy,” Spa and I returned to the ranchhouse.  We were in a verbal pissing contest over who was happier.  This ended in a tie when we saw the bounty of trail mix and snacks Schil had artlessly arranged on the cold dusty hardwood.  I hooked up the stove and we soon learned what it feels like to consume, in 15 minutes, 2 quarts of water, 2 packets of oatmeal and 1000 calories of trail mix.  Each. 

The demon of dehydration behind us, we decided to march onward.  The three of us are unburdened by the weight of financial inheritance, and were all looking forward to the 9 hour drive home, and work on Monday, with the same utter lack of optimism.  The more miles we crunched tonight, the more hours we could sleep Sunday.  Plus the temperature was dropping precipitously, which we welcomed.  Onward.

The arid, bleached mountain terrain gradually gave way to greener, equally frustrating mountain terrain.  Ever the optimist, Spa posited that this could mean wildlife sightings.  Ever the pain in Spa’s ass, I countered that with our luck that wildlife would be large, hungry and toothy.  He conceded.

We hiked into a canyon shallow enough that calling it a canyon could be written off on my taxes.  The hard, dirt path of the previous lifeless wasteland gave way to a thick layer of gravel, giving our calves a workout akin to playing soccer on a beach.  Kick us while we’re down, Big Bend.

And then it did.

“Wait…is that rain?”

Big Bend National Park averages about an inch of rain per month.  At the time of our visit, no celestial water had graced it for over four months.  To say we were underprepared would be to say Hitler wasn’t a big bagel guy. Schil’s clothes were exclusively cotton.  Half of mine were.  We had two garbage bags to our name and zero rain gear.  But by this time it was 2 miles back to the ranch house.  We had to push through it.

We chose poorly.  Rather than pass us by as a minor inconvenience, the storm settled on us like Pig Pen’s dirt cloud.  Worse still, once the storm zeroed in on its target, it deployed all available ordnance.  Pea-sized hail struck our necks, prompting the return of our soaked hats and bandana-cum-turbans.  Thunder threatened in the distance.  Swirling winds propelled us according to their caprices, and the temperature dropped into the low thirties.

“I don’t think the heavy stuff’s gonna come down for a while,” my attempt at Caddy Shack referencing was ignored.  Spa was busily navigating, while Schil, I soon realized, was once again busily trying not to die. 

“You ok dude?”

“Little chilly,” Schil deadpanned.

“Keep moving.  It’ll keep us warm.  We might actually have a situation here.  Hypothermia is real.  You have only cotton clothes?”

“Yes,” Schil audibly shivered.’

“Shit.”

All-Natural Nightmare, Part 3

“So guys, a question.” I posed, trying to reverse the negative vibes ,“Remember when we had the opposite problem, and thought we’d never drink water again, and Spa mentioned we still had whiskey in the bag?”

“Yes.  Awful.” Schill unsurprisingly recalled. 

“And I told him ‘I’d sooner fellate a terrorist?’  What’d you guys think of that?”

“Loved it.  Thought I might die smiling,” Schil replied.

Spa confirmed “Yep.  Anything with terrorists is funny.”

We laughed through thunder and lightning surrounding us.  It almost buried our uncomfortably unavoidable thoughts about the temporary nature of life.  Almost.

             We were sharing  Spa’s map, while he broke a mental sweat with a compass and GPS. 

“I’m not too bummed.  We lost time but got that extra water earlier.  Shouldn’t be a problem.” I answered, oblivious to the fact that no one had asked me. “This view’s pretty spectacular.”

Aside from the lack of a visible path or trail, the view rivalled any form of substance abuse to make the mind go blank.  After reaching an impasse in the drainage ditch we assumed was the trail, we took the path of least resistance out of the ditch.  “Least Resistance” soon became a relative term.  The path we optimistically imagined we were on deteriorated to waist-high scrubs and cacti of equal proportions in all directions, leaving us with only one option: climb.  Roughly 1,500 vertical feet and an hour later, we stood atop a real life Pride Rock crowning  a huge thorny hill or a tiny thorny mountain.  And the view knocked our $19 wool hiking socks off.

“How’s my bandana flow?” I asked, offering Schil my camera.  Despite the impossibilities of sharing the Big Bend scenery with the world, I was determined to proselytize via facebook photos at least enough to make men jealous and make women wonder how I’m still single. 

“Adequate.” Schil responded.  My red bandana and blue fishing shirt flapped freely in the wind.  I heard the shutter snap and looked into the wilderness, feigning pensive. 

“So how boned are we, Spa?” I inquired. 

“Minimally,” he responded, “We need to head about 400 meters that way,” he gesticulated accordingly, “and we should hit the trail again.”

Schill and I’s telepathically agreed not to argue.  Onward we trudged through the bramble, both wondering who the hell uses meters.

“Seriously though, you’ll need a callsign upgrade,” I informed Spa, “Schil is a decently tough name for a mountain man.  And look at the beard.  He’s like a homeless Chuck Norris.”

“Yeah, I could use some rugged-ing up.” Spa replied, “but you already called me Spa in the Costa Rica chronicles. Consistency is crucial to my character development.”

“True. But your name makes me think of a middle aged woman with cucumbers on her eyes and a golf pro in her mouth.”

“Dude, there was a golf pro at the country club I grew up at, and if one tenth of the stories I heard about that guy were true, you’re gonna see a lot of pro golfers who all look alike coming out of Denver in the next few years.”  Schil contributed.

“I chose my career poorly.  How about WipesWithRocks?  I still think that’s crazy.” I responded.

Schil and I laughed.  Spa had earned a legitimate bachelors of science in alpine survival on his Alaskan adventure.  This expedition taught him some of the less-than-fine arts of wilderness life. I was more eager to adopt some kernels of wisdom than others.  To keep my mind on more savory subjects, I wondered aloud about the appropriateness of using my borrowed military-issued Ka-bar knife to cut cheese and salami. We agreed that since the cheese was not French, but “Murrican,” I could go without penalty.  Huge relief. 

“How are we on water?” I probed.  My gallon jug was considerably lighter than when we left the unexpected cache.  I doubted any strength gains were responsible for this weight difference. 

“Not good,” Schil and Spa echoed in unison.  Schil tried to take a pull from his camelback.  The hiss of air through the nozzle added audible emphasis to the statement immediately prior.

“This four quarts a day thing…is that for people?  Or for small lizards?”  We shared an uneasy laugh at my comment.  This laughter stemmed far more from not wanting to acknowledge the gravity of the situation than actual humor content.  Remoteness and dry water bottles could make Newt Gingrich think he’s Jerry Seinfeld. 

Onward we marched.  Some hours later, we settled for a break. 

“You’re dry too?” I asked Spa, already knowing the answer.  He merely nodded, his makeshift turban adding a Darth Vader-esque gravity to the confirmation.  Realizing the pointlessness of this water break with no water, we took a moment to survey what lay in front of us.  The beauty of the landscape decried its obvious danger.  Generously distributed iron gave the local stratigraphy the illusion of being life-bearing, or at minimum friendly.  Canyons seemingly hand-shoveled out of the Earth danced in unpredictable patterns for miles in every direction.  The path ahead sloped gently downward until disappearing out of sight around the mountain we would next descend. 

Dehydration has curious effects on a body.  It saps the muscles of their strength and handicaps coordination and balance.  But moreover it cripples the mind.  Focus is impossible, and in narrow mountainous paths this is particularly dangerous.  I thought back to the Hampton Inn at Fort Stockton.  Arriving after 1am and leaving after only a few short hours, we had been surrounded by more food and water in that time than in the 48 since.  The powdered fake eggs at the breakfast buffet weren’t so bad, in retrospect.  Even the 4 hours of sleep, paltry by modern yuppy standards, reigned supreme over tossing and turning in a tiny tent on top of rocks and unforgiving caliche.  The towel service woul-

“SHIT!”

Pain.  Much pain.  Lack of focus led me to step on unworthy terrain, and rewarded me with road rash which felt like a napalm splash on my right thigh.  I searched for the camouflaged Taliban sniper who had just shot my knee, which was now 9 months pregnant with a pain baby.  Not my finest hour. 

“Ugh…how far are we from the cache?” I inquired, righting myself wholly without dignity or grace.  We had previously stashed water near the phony touristy ranchhouse we had been approaching for the last two days.

“Does it matter?” Spa contritely replied.  This was less of a smart-ass quip than a simple rhetorical statement of logistics.  We had passed the point of no return.  If we wanted water, we had to walk to the water.  It was closer to go forward than back. 

“Shit…” I reiterated, illustrating the diversity of the word. Glancing from Spa to Schill, I noticed the dazed look of a Loony Toon freshly struck by a frying pan.  I then realized that while my water supply had been on empty for an hour or two, he had been out since lunch.  The heat was palpable, and he was wilting.

“I don’t feel so good. How do I look?” Schil’s highly technical medical complaint was as slurred and dry, like a drunk high-schooler who just rinsed his mouth out with sand.

Eloquence begets eloquence, and Spa calmly replied, “Like shit.”

All-Natural Nightmare, Part 2

“There is one thing we can do, I guess…” Spa began, clearly having racked his brain for the type of action-oriented precautions I prefer.  “There’s a thing called lightning position.  Hands and knees on the ground.  Keep your head up so when we get fried your brain won’t explode.”

“Like a plank?” Schill tried to clarify. 

“No it’s more like a girl push-up.” I explained.  I tricked myself into believing that when our tent was struck by lightning a half-assed yoga pose would leave me unharmed.  And able to hike 3 miles to the nearest road.  And thumb a ride.  From a car driving by at midnight during a thunderstorm.  On Easter.  Copacetic. 

That morning, the group’s spirits were downright festive.  Schil had pointed out the bearbox first.  He certainly needed its contents the most– the previous day’s 11 mile hike had carved bloody teebox divots into his heels, and more egregiously drained most of his water supply.   

“There’s at least 5 quarts in here unclaimed,” I said unnecessarily.  My companions were gainfully employed college grads.  I reckon they had mastered the art of counting on fingers. 

“What about the emergency stash?” Schil pointed out the gallons of cached water thusly identified.

“We already have 4 quarts per person per day.  The rest is just bonus.  We’re rich.  Leave the emergency stash for someone who needs it.”  Spa came close to showing real human emotion as he summarized.  Spa’s intense focus, sharpened during a month glacier hiking in Alaska and years as a strategic consultant, gave his words authority which could not be argued against.  This stoicism defined Spa, making him perhaps out of place at Austin City Limits, surrounded by drug-addled festival folk losing their mind to “Sex is on Fire.”  This trait also rendered him indispensable on a hiking trip which would, much to our surprise, wind up with us trying to determine the least compromising position for our bodies to be found in.

Thirty pound packs strapped on, we marched through the arid mountain paradise, making great time.  Silence proved an unspoken law during the many climbs and steep descents.  Air was thin, packs were heavy and focus was critical.  During straightaways, however, all the world’s problems were ripe to be solved. 

“I wonder if you could compute exactly how much hotter a chick we’d meet out here would be compared to meeting her at Ice House or whatever,” I pondered.

“I think it’s a solid plus-two.”

“You’re dumb.  That would make a two only a four, but by your own statement you wouldn’t touch a four with a ten foot pole.  If you’ve been wandering out here for two weeks you’d get halfway through hearing her first name before you very politely propositioned her.  ”

“So the Mountain Nymph Factor is multiplicative or exponential?”

“So it’s a flat rate boost, but with a ‘time since civilization’ factor recalculated hourly. MNF equals sum of raw score plus two, raised to the power of 1 plus hours doing this shit divided by 100.”

“You lost me.”

“You’re hopeless.”

“So I think the path came out of this dry drainage creek before we did.  We missed a cairn.” Spa cut us off, rudely not contributing. 

“What?” Schil and I responded identically.

“Yeah.  We’re lost.”

All-Natural Nightmare, Part 1

“You had to know you wouldn’t be alive to write the best one of these, right?”

I reluctantly conceded the truth in Spa’s quip.  A strong desire to write rules my life.  Lack of legitimate writing talent complicates things.  It requires me to keep my life as exciting as possible to prevent reader boredom.  Turns out mortal peril is a real people-pleaser. 

In between screaming wind gusts and rolling thunder, I replied “You’re right.  But think about the guy who finds the bodies.  His life sucks worse than ours.” 

               Many stories start with obvious fate-goading foreshadowing.  Statements like “The weekend began innocently enough” or “they were such nice young boys.”  Such half-baked clichés have no place here.  We aren’t idyllic nice young boys, and the weekend was riddled with subtle hints to quit and turn back from an early point.  Heeding those warnings would have saved a lot of grief.

               Arriving at a Hampton Inn near Fort Stockton at 1am didn’t bring our spirits down, even though we could have been asleep by midnight had our navigation skills not lacked luster.  Waking before the Sun to stash water at mile 24 of Big Bend’s 35 mile Outer Mountain Loop Trail was met with grins and optimism.  A tree fell directly on our path less than a mile into the journey, and less than 20 feet from the protagonists.  No heed was paid. If any divine message was intended by bloodying Schil’s heels after mile 2 with blisters, then it was completely ignored.  After 12 miles of hiking, even a malfunctioning stove couldn’t turn us back.  Repairs ensued, tunes emanated from Spa’s iphone, and instant rice-and-beans flowed like the Salmon of Capistrano.  We had an answer, it seemed, for whatever this trail threw at us.

               We just. Wouldn’t. Listen.

Brazilian Shorthaake - A Second Helping

Eating salad helps you lose weight.  This is well-known. What may be news to some readers is that eating a salad in a third world country weaponizes the digestive track with greater efficiency than any known Uranium-enrichment process.  If the North Koreans discover this, say goodbye to Seoul.

So I'm sick as a dog thanks to my subtle effort to be healthy, and Macae's unclean public water system.  Rather than do anything daring, like go outside or shave, I'll respond to some FAQ's.  Shorthaake, mailbag edition.  It's worth a shot.

Have you tried this you crybaby?

    No. The line at the Brazillian Walmart is too ridiculous.

Are women in coveralls hot?

                Yes.  It’s an automatic +2.

That garment is called a “cover-all.” It does exactly that. Why is that hot?

                No one knows.  Might be the buttflap.

What’s the demographic make-up of your survival school?

We represent 5 continents  - the roster contains 3 Englishmen, 1 Scot, 1 South African, 2 Indians, a Singaporean, a Malaysian, a Venezuelan, a Mexican and myself.  The English level varies, with the Scotsman obviously offering the least prowess.

                Not surprisingly, my class is entirely male.  I could nearly replace the word “class” with “industry.”  There are a few women engineers/operators in town. I’ve met them both.  They’re quite pleased to be here, as they are treated like royalty when spoken to directly.  They just gradually learn to be treated like raw steak the rest of the time. 

What do they actually teach in survival school?  Do you think you’re cool/tough now?

                In reverse order, no I’ll never be as cool as either of my brothers.

                The course material alternates between the painfully obvious and the undeniably practical.  The course exists merely to cover the collective buttflaps of the various bosses we serve, and to pad the pockets of local businesses at foreigners' expense.  It also involves 30 minute coffee breaks and 2 hour lunches.  This would be fine, if not for my actual work to handle here.

                Topics range from general employment policies, employee rights and other political hoopla to First Aid and proper job planning.  Mouth-to-mouth CPR is no longer recommended, which means I'll need to rethink my seduction of Wendy Peppercorn. Survival swimming is taught in a giant pool and we familiarize ourselves with life-saving equipment and practices.  A firefighting practical and exam conclude the training, and certify us all as adults in some way. We got pins.  Sounds legit.

When are you coming back?

                No one knows.  I embark (take a chopper to the rig) on the 19^th.  The rest is up to god, which is Portuguese for Petrobras.  They run this joint in a gangster-ey way, and I mean pinstriped suit old school gangsters, not Fifty Cent. It's crazy to see a whole town so clearly under the thumb of a single entity not called Walmart.

Do you miss me?

                Of course.

You’re so handsome.

                That’s not a question

Will you return married?

                No, but hopefully engaged.  The Tinder scene here defies description.

How’s your hotel?

I am in a palacial single-bedroom bachelor pad.  This was given to me as a “no hard feelings” after the Corpulent Hooker Chronicles.  This does not help get the noises or visions of the CHC out of my head but it’s a start. 

My employer’s logistics group asked what time I’d like to be picked up by our in-house transportation people.  This was so they would know exactly when not to come.  The bus has been late every day, and my cab bill is thusly huge. The gym doesn’t work and neither does the laundry service.  This forced me to go to a Brazilian Wal-Mart to buy shirts, marking the third continent on which I've Wal-Marted. 

                A bottle of water here costs $4, and they add a $13 corkage fee to it.  Orange juice is $5.  Wifi is a monthly $60 charge.  How does this robbery go unpunished?  Oil money.  Sheraton got wise to the fact that the army of commuters here don’t care what it costs, and the various employers of said commuters learned that trying to reduce overhead by nickel-and-dime-ing their people simply wasn’t an option.  This results in the Sheraton Macae being one of Sheraton’s highest-revenue operations, and in my losing track of how much a bottle of water should cost.

I live in (anywhere in the USA but Houston or Lafayette) and don't know what oilfield people are like.  Could you educate me?

                With extremely rare exceptions, expats and commuters here are a bizarre, enormous family.  Many traits are common among this group of men from all corners of the world. The pressures of being far from home, especially during the holidays, are universal.  Everyone likes working for the same clients as everyone else.  Everyone hates working for the same clients as everyone else.  Shell and BP are constantly appreciated for their spare-no-expense, take-your-time approach to offshore work.  National Oil Companies are widely derided for their nepotistic hiring practices and unrealistic performance expectations. 

A strange sense of worldliness without formal education prevails here; a sense of having explored without reading the map or the wiki.  I wish more of these people took the time to publish stories from their trips, instead of just recanting them over a standard Brazilian 45 minute coffee break.  The material is there.  The experiential learning and global empathy these people possess decries the rough first impression the tattoos, piercings and gruff ambience create.  Looking through these people comes naturally to many highbrow white collar folks.  They don't know what they're missing.

The safety culture is nearly universal, and as the industry moves toward global standardization cases of exploiting lower level workers become rarer and rarer.  Drilling safety into Drillers’ heads has been a generations-long process, and it results in vertical integration of the team and peripheral crew (myself).  The reduction in hazing and general harassment is something I’ve personally witnessed – I broke out (petroleum for began a new position) as a roughneck/roustabout (entry level grunt) on a land rig in Northwest Houston.  I was 18 at the time and utterly green, both to the industry and to the world at large.  My coworkers were ex-felons with criminal records longer than my resume, and multiple ex wives and children to support.  My boss was called Timberg, and could possibly have invented oil, he’d been in the business so long.  He was an old-school tyrant. I was miserable – menial labor, tasks which had no conclusion, insults, verbal and (one time, then they learned) physical abuse.  My position during rig floor operations was “the wormhole.”  Pipe Dope, a foul lead-based grease which ruins all that it touches, kept finding ways into my ears and clothes.  You get the picture.  This contributed to an unsafe workplace, and towards that company losing my services eventually.

None of this is tolerated in the offshore world these days. Which is a good thing.  The increasingly technical nature of the work requires constant cooperation, and as distance to port increases so does the time for each embarkation.  14/14 lifestyles are becoming more and more rare, giving way to 28/28 and 35/35.  This is too much time to put up with detrimental people. There just isn’t a place for the BS any more.

I hope you feel better.

Thanks, Mom.

Shorty Out.

A Few Brazilian Thoughts

People,

           I can’t talk for long – I’m in Brazil for work. 

           I’ve wanted to say that all my life, and am not ashamed of the obvious brag-plaining. This one-liner snippet is ripped directly from callsign Ricktown’s facebook two months ago.   I missed writing, which is an extension of missing travel.  It’s been a minute, so let’s get into it.

Where am I?

I’m in Macae, the Petropolis of Brazil.  The city is simultaneously a triumph and a tragedy.  Macae is a triumph in that the town has experienced 600% population growth in the last 15 years, and its population currently enjoys double the national per capita GDP.  Those directly employed by Petrobras or its service companies enjoy the benefits of this new work, and many for the first time have proper health insurance, dental care (lots of 25 year olds with braces here), literacy and hope for advancement.  Millions more otherwise poor Brazilians have been lifted out of poverty into only-kinda-poverty, complete with downtrodden vending machine-esque apartment living from which my 23-story hotel is visible at all times.   They share this accommodation with a diverse array of prostitutes, criminals and drug dealers who move from bar to bar to accomplish commerce as if trick-or-treating.  They don’t typically have to make a long journey, as the supply of expats and commuters with ample money, minimal pee-in-a-cup concerns and pliable morals never runs dry.  Aloof, decided corrupt politicians have turned a blind eye to this for generations with no end in sight - one of the few things all Brazilians I’ve spoken to agree upon.  Despite all the money coming into this town, there is no serious hospital or police station.  The local schools are awful and the roads are typically congested, occasionally flooded. Streets 100 feet from the restaurants and hotels are no-go zones, even for locals. This makes it uncertain whether when so many dinos decided to die in the Campos, Victoria and Santos basins, they offered the future population a warm embrace or a collective Falcon Kick to the gonads.

            But let’s take a step back from the day to day of Maca-hell, as my friends here refer to it, and look at the parts of this experience which represent Brazil as a whole.  Doing so hurts the mind and soul much less.  In the same way that Parisians make Paris less desirable than it could be, Brazilians actually increase the value of whatever real estate they’re standing on.  From the two I shared an aisle with on the flight to Rio, to the team of field engineers I’m here to support, I am constantly impressed by the sincere warmth, fun mindset, all-in-this-together mentality they share, as well as the girls’ butts.  I’ve only met one Brazilian I don’t like.  He’s my survival training instructor – a self-proclaimed racist, homophobe, sexist, card-carrying ignoramus, gainfully employed as a local pastor when he isn't fumbling through teaching unimportant things like survival training. 

            To describe the people here requires anecdotes, because adjectives alone don’t cover it and tend to make for boring writing.  In my current home office, it’s no secret that the gang took a long time to warm up to each other, and that out-of-office interactions are not (for most) a daily occurrence.  Incidents of partying or any fun which is not company-approved are kept hush-hush, and corporate smiles prevail consistently over any honest display of emotion, be it positive or otherwise.  The complexity of human interaction is muffled for fear of the potential negative consequences of individuality.  Not so here.  On my first day, any thought of self-concealment to maintain my corporate stature was vacated, as no such efforts were ever extended on the part of my superiors here or my fellow grunts.  Instant honest optimism was coupled with the finest of oilfield profanity.  Tales of weekends past and profession of goals for weeknights soon to come flowed freely. I immediately learned Portuguese words for gender-specific body parts and their potential interactions.  Drinks were consumed, soccer riots were watched in real time, and concerts were attended in the first week of interaction.  I like it.  I like it a lot.

            Language here is a fascinating thing, and it’s my duty as brag-plainer/traveler to dispel a common rumor detrimental to all who believe it.  Speaking Spanish is NOT sufficient for living in a Portuguese-speaking place.  I succumbed to this belief after hearing it so many dozens of times, and planned my (lack of) studying Portuguese accordingly.  I am so screwed.  This theory sounds great and lets you sleep well at night only until you perform the smallest amount of research first hand.  Like the geocentric model of the solar system, the anti-vaccine lobby, or pull-and-pray.  Portuguese borrows syntactically and grammatically from Spanish, being a romance language along with French and Italian.  Several words are cognates.  The convenient similarities end there.  The written version introduces 3 new accent marks and 2 new letters.  The word for I or me is “Eu,” pronounced “you.”  The word for pull is “puxe,” pronounced “push-ay.”  R’s are pronounced like H’s, making my name Hoo-sell.  Or Hoosty.  When spoken aloud, Portuguese does not resemble a familiar Spanish base with some Italian slipped in.  It resembles Sebulba, the antagonistic pod-racer from Episode 1.  Furthermore it resembles Sebulba with a mouth full of live insects, angrily trying to explain something quickly to someone beneath him. 

            What are you doing there?

            This trip, much like my Singapore venture, represents in clear fashion the pros and cons of this industry.  My trip is all expenses paid, and I’m holed up in a 3 star hotel, which is surrounded by vast stretches of unfortunate poverty-stricken brownish people of some kind. Much like the Singapore trip, I was informed of it only 3 days before my flight was to go wheels up.  MLS, I do not yet have a return trip scheduled.  I may leave before Christmas, I may not.  We don’t get holidays in this world, we get projects.  And that’s ok.

            I’m here for the field trial of [SCIENCE WORD, DELETED], which my group designed to replace an existing [SCIENCE WORD, DELETED].  This [SCIENCE WORD, DELETED] [DOES SOMETHING BETTER THAN] its predecessor, by [ECLECTICALLY IMPRESSIVE QUALITATIVE COMPARISON]. Which is pretty sweet. The Brazilian group will be using this tool here in roughly 1 week.  Until then I am responsible for training locals, undergoing “intense” survival training (today our beloved instructor defined an “Unsafe Act” for us on the board.  He informed us it will be on the test.).  I will also be medically vetted and certified (this involved pooping in a cup), and performing a failure investigation for a different [SCIENCE WORD, DELETED] which has the potential to cost us millions.  

           In my spare time I’ve been woken up by my Venezuelan roommate bringing home hookers at 3am. Twice.  The second girl looked to have not missed many meals lately, and my subsequent inquiries of who paid whom for services rendered weren’t received with the same humor they were delivered.  I’ve also played soccer with the department here, which I liken to banging on pots and pans with a wooden spoon while Boston Pops Symphony plays.  This allowed me to continue my streak of injuring myself playing pointless rec sports; a proud family tradition.  Trying to emulate my coworkers I played shoeless.  Turns out Brazilians play soccer, like, a lot more than I do.  The blisters on my feet are repulsive.  Use your imagination. 

Are you going to end with another sweeping, unqualified generalization?

            No, and you’re a jerk for asking that.  My aim in this documentation was merely to set the stage for what is to come.  Sweeping generalizations can only be produced after the journey has sufficient time to ferment.  Still to come on this trip will be an offshore visit to a science project rig, where our client has given us the green light to simply try a ton of new toys simultaneously, mine among them.  I have yet to conclusively prove me theory of the failure mechanism of [SCIENCE WORD, DELETED], and when I do I’ll self-glamorize so hard Kanye will come to me for publicity advice.  The beautiful beaches of Buzios still awake my presence this weekend.  There is so much still to learn on this trip, and my excitement for learning how much I don’t know yet is palpable.  Thanks for the emails, to the few of you who have emailed.  For now, Shorthaake out. 

            

Costa Rica - Futbol, Ziplines, and Hookers: Oh My!

Team,

Work can make a person boring. Addressing friends and coworkers the same way any time an email goes out to more than two people at once is one of the least socially caustic tendencies working a standard 8-to-5 can give a person.  The rest are worse.  Like responding with "Welp, it's Monday!" to anything that happens during those Godforsaken 24 hours.  Like doing the same on a Wednesday.  Like giving Fridays more credit than they deserve, or avoiding opportunities to go skinny-dipping at 3am on a Thursday.  Like waking up early on a Saturday to do one's ironing.

I realized, one month ago, that I did all of these things in the same week.  Cue cold sweats, calls for help, etc.  The only reasonable solution was to go to Costa Rica, watch a world cup qualifier, and surf my face off.  Doctor's orders, everyone.  Promise.  He also prescribed writing about it... so I hope you once again enjoy my selfish attempts to sound cool.

Firstly, this marked an important milestone in the Rusty's Path To Adulthood chronicles.  An international vacation was booked with friends on our own impetus.  There was no program, no large group, no obvious occasion, and not even a holiday involved.  We had merely a birthday and a soccer game to go by. We would go to San Jose, party some, watch a World Cup Qualifier, party more, go to Jaco, surf, party more, surf more, then zipline/ATV across a jungle.  Then we'd go back to work sunburned, fat, broke and utterly satisfied.  We've had worse plans.

American Airlines began their stellar performance on Thursday afternoon, procrastinating our flight back 3 hours from 4 to 7pm in gradual 20 minute increments.  This pushed back our arrival in paradise, resulting in an audible in evening plans: we would search for soccer ticket connections at the bars by the hotel!  Because those are always awesome!

Anyone familiar with a B-team bar setting (Addison) can imagine the silly strip mall scene.  Walking by closed sushi restaurants and an open McDonalds, we closed in on what sounded like Major Lazer's birthday party.  We couldn't have been more out of place had that actually been the case.  It was like a Hollister store hired a novice DJ, served overpriced shots and then kicked all the white women out. This was not without benefit: Central American hips in jean shorts can be hypnotizing, and if you told me that more than 50 words were exchanged between my companions and I, I'd question if you counting by 3's or 4's. It became abundantly clear that these people had no interest in us whatsoever (typical for me, but my companions were better looking/wealthier, so they weren't as accustomed to this), and that we were likely the oldest people in that bar by at least two hands' worth of fingers. At this point, slightly less solvent, utterly friendless and no closer to soccer tickets, we left to find another bar.  This was abortive and brought us back to HQ for the night.  Starting off right. La Da Dee Da Dee.  We Like To Party.  Hey.

Day two brought us to San Jose proper.  San Jose is not a third world city, but it's no San Francisco either.  The streets are a maze due to the Tico's (Costa Rican for "Costa Rican") preference on navigating with hand gestures and landmarks.  All stores advertise soccer in some way.  Every 15 feet we saw a stall selling the same assortment of annoying plastic horns and soccer jerseys.  I assume this is the remnant of some Mayan tradition.  The stalls were so close...it just made no sense.

In a fit of jealousy over how awesome Costa Rica is, witches from Salem cursed it during the 15th century.  They decreed that every afternoon around 2 it would rain for the next 3-5 hours.  Every.  Damn.  Day.  Our time in San Jose was no exception.  This complicated the art of scalping which was to take place in the hours approaching the game, and upon which we placed a large weight regarding the success of this vacation.

Leaving one of our team (callsign Spa) at the USA pre-game bar to guard our beer, I ventured off with the third sparkly Tri-Force constituent (callsign The Mayor) to haggle for technically illegal goods on the streets of a third world country.  In the rain.  While kinda drunk. In Spanish. This is why I don't tell my mother what I'm doing on weekends until after I've done it.

What followed surprised us all - Not only was I interviewed by a Tica Journalist (I'm famous!), but we obtained three front row seats for $60 each.  These are, to reiterate, front-row seats to the biggest sports ticket in the country this year.  Thanks, global economic imbalance.  I owe you one.  We celebrated by buying a handle of bacardi at the bar for our American Outlaw friends and ourselves.  For $30.  You know, exactly like a Cowboys game and bottle service at Concrete.

The game blew the mind.  Estadio Nacional seats 34,000.  "Seats" is a bad word because no one sits.  On this night it sat roughly 33,920 Ticos and maybe 80 Americans.  I didn't do the math, but wouldn't have been surprised if the Riot Police assigned to our section outnumbered us.

USA won last time  on what is considered a gimmick (snow), and the Ticos are all painfully aware of it.  One thing that struck us all and was pointed out by The Mayor is the literacy of the crowd.  Every little thing done right by the Ticos or (more often) wrong by Tio Samuel was applauded vehemently.  I had flashbacks to SMU games with half the crowd on their smartphones and the other half absent, and cried a little on the inside.  It made me respect soccer and the Ticos.  The final was 3-1, and if you've ever been curious to see what raw passion looks like, find yourself in a third world country after they win a birth to the World Cup.  Traffic was immobile, parties erupted in the streets, and we were denied access to our own pregame bar "por su propio seguridad."  I'd never been kicked out of a bar for my own safety before.  Live and learn.  After searching for the proper post party unsuccessfully, we called it a night in preparation of the second leg of our trip:  the coastal jewel of Jaco.

The following statements should not be a surprise to anyone:
1.  Surfing is hard, and makes your nipples tender if you don't wear a shirt.
2.  Zipline needs to establish itself as a mainstream form of transportation.
3.  Most people who live in Jaco hated us.

Wait, now about that last one?

Jaco is on the Pacific coast of Costa Rica.  It is a beautiful setting and the ire of all Ticos who don't live there.  Unbeknownst to us while booking this, Jaco built up too fast.  Tourism began in the 90s based on nature, surfing, adventure-ing and the high life. This turned into money'ed spring breakers pillaging through town renting Nicaraguan and Tica hookers faster than the town could supply them and providing a market for a large supply of Panama-trafficked Bolivian nose powder.  I'm not making this up.

The Ticos refuse to sacrifice their integrity the way they feel the Mexicans did with Cancun, Acapulco etc.  Jaco, to my eyes, was a beautiful place where we could surf, do ATV things, ride on a zipline shirtless and upside down (because I'm That Guy), and get some excellent meals to boot.  Jaco is, to the Ticos' eyes, a den of drugs, prostitution, miscellaneous villainy and a cheapening of the otherwise wholesome culture of the population.  In other words, they hate it for the exact same reasons so many foreigners love it.

During a series of conversations with locals (waitress from Georgia, teacher from Jersey, her two awful fat friends from various "before" pictures), we were repeatedly indirectly scolded for being nasty tourists.  Jaco doesn't get a lot of American tourists who come for things other than Tica prostitutes, evidently.  This was news to us all.  A formidable social barrier exists between the locals and the tourists for exactly this reason.  Those who moved to Jaco adopted the sensitivities of the locals.  It would be like if I relocated in the rough part of South Oak Cliff and decided, because of my new digs, to stop watching M*A*S*H reruns and eating broccoli.  The Ticos and walk-ons are so offended by the perceived lack of genuine interest in what Costa Rica has to offer that there is a barely-not-open hostility lurking beneath the outwardly friendly exterior of most of the Jaco residents we encountered.  They feel that unchecked tourism ruined one of their finest locations.

And do you know what?  I get it.

Costa Rica sits in the world's upper echelon in natural beauty.  Generally speaking its people are hospitable, welcoming and helpful, almost to a fault.  Truly cool folks. But there is a tacit expectation among them that tourists also come with the same good faith in which they are received.  That they come to enrich themselves with the landscape and the mentality Ticos have to offer, not merely to get ones' rocks off and leave the locals with slightly more money but less culture and happiness.  When this implicit trust goes awry, the resulting disdain shouldn't baffle anyone.

It's also possible, and many will support this theory, that so many Ticos have been so damaged by American Airlines, that they've grouped any and all US citizens under the same dual-horned devil helmet worn by whoever is running that miserable operation.  I wouldn't blame them.  Spa's flight out, which he awoke at 3am to make, was delayed and subsequently cancelled.  The Mayor's bags were shipped to London, because that makes sense.

I flew United.  I met a nice girl from Brooklyn and actually enjoyed the in-flight meal.

So this will conclude my "summary" of this trip.  Hopefully you enjoyed reading it as much as I loved being all up in it and then recording it as such.  I encourage you all to live in a crappy apartment, eat microwaved frozen vegetables for at least one meal a day, shun expenses like cable and dentist appointments, and then go stamp the bujesus out of your passport.  You only get one go at this "life" thing, and it's a big world out there.

Keep Calm and Blonde On.
-That Guy

Combat Poetry: Date Auction Done Right

Friends,

This message is a departure from your regularly scheduled programming.  By popular demand, and by my own desire to grandstand and shamelessly self-promote from the safety of my own keyboard, I am going to share "the poem."

Blondes vs Brunettes Dallas owned me this summer.  I enjoyed the slavery - amazing group of people, plus philanthropy for an important cause, plus coaching.  What's not to like?

Accessory to this commitment, an opportunity arose to take part in a date auction.  I earmarked a ticket to Book of Mormon for this purpose, and then had to come up with a talent.  This proved difficult, as it turns out no one cares how long my neck was in high school (really long) or how well I think I can speak Spanish while I'm drunk (perfectamente).  I settled on what's to follow herein: a poem illustrating my prowess as a purchasable date, the night to come, and make up a few words.

Note to the feint of ear:  This is offensive.  Even to me.  I couldn't keep a straight face reading it.  Mom, go look at this instead: OMG CATS!!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BeDGuqe6O0

Transcript is below, minus one line that I made up on the fly.  Had to throw a priest joke in there...silly Catholics.

Hugs and Handpounds everybody.  Remember that every time you share my blog an angel gets its wings.

Haake'ums

Date Night

Attention lovely audience, and I don't mean the males
If you're new to "date auctions," most of whats to come is just sales

I was nervous at first, id been tasked to compete,
With all these philanthropic young genius playboy elites

But my fundraising goal's high, I want to go get it
So I'll rely on appreciation for me offensively waxing poetic

The pen is mightier, there are few greater skills,
poets screw more women than republican-backed healthcare bills

My aim isnt political, please stow all the groans
Im here to impress offend and seduce, so pretend you're watching game of thrones

Superior oral prowess makes women swoon without hesitation
On date night this will be in full swing, as per the following demonstration,

With such eyes as yours a longing gaze is due
Until you look away briefly, then it's down at boobs, then back to you

Your beauty's unreal, I hope my pants don't betray
You have me upright and locked like an airline seat and table tray

You unravelled my heart, my emotions unfurled
"You're the only one who could do this, insert-name-of-girl.

I can now see in your eyes, that internal urge rising,
If I told you I googled triple orgasm would you find that enticing?

And knowing my search history,
I hope your urge is proliferating
This is a night you'll always remember while fondly reminisce-turbating

I'm committed to this date, I'm in, all four thirds!
Don't question my math, fractions speak louder than words

Never encountered engineers? Have faith, im no nOOb,
Wikipedia prepared me to handle nature's little Rubik's cube

But that website's Metallurgy section doesn't accurately depict me
 in the presence of warmth and moisture rust never, ever comes quickly

Now the Demo's finished, I believe it'd be shrewd
To discuss what will happen if I'm bid on by you

I love watching musicals, though I seem so very callous
Bid highest for me, and we'll see the sold-out Book of Mormon in Dallas

If you're unfamiliar, no recognition in mind,
Look up what a Tony Award is, this musical won 9.

And though I may seem cocky I tell you the truth is
If this goes for less than $100 ill be bluer than smurf jiz

Without further ado,
I will no longer offend,
Applaud or faint or whatever, but please throw money. The end.

Denver - My Favorite Suburb of Littleton

This Memorial Day Weekend was spent in the Land of Amazing Butts, or in the native Cherokee tongue, “Denver.”  This being but a 3 day adventure an email is hardly justified.  Denver being the land of the thin, I intend to pass off a lack of content in this message as merely following theme.  With it thusly established that this message will leave any reader only just-the-mental-tip stimulated, onward we go. 

The weekend saw two events of increasing importance.  The first was the night out in LODO, the bar scene of this wonderful little town.  The only reasonable metrics by which to judge a city, the quantity of well-worn tight dresses and the difficulty of parking, both registered two standard deviations to the right of the normal.  Well played, Denver.

The real point of this communique is the giving away of my best friend Schilldawg.  Names changed to protect the innocent….kind of.  And being that this website is dedicated to personal grandstanding and literary brag-plaining, I’ll skip to the good part and copy/paste my best man toast below:

Alex told me I'm obligated,
For the best interests of all attending
To produce one toast which was pre-written sober,
Thusly reducing my risk of offending

But my friend was sadly unaware
That for a wedding to be valid
My family tradition dictates clearly
That one toast must be a ballad

So head to the restroom or go grab a drink
If you don't have time for my song
But as King Henry said to each of his seven wives
I promise I shan't keep you long

Part one of this toast concerns this man
The tall dude who caused all of this
Part two for his wife, the gem of all gems,
Of quality which baffles gemologists

Alex has long possessed the title,
One of unique distinction,
Of being my best most loyal friend
to that, grab a glass and lets and drink some.

His salsa dancing doesn't scream "I'm Man"
his golf swing you can take to the bank though
he won't harm a fly, but he killed lots of turkeys
And vaguely resembles James Franco

His calmness always is beyond compare
A product of growing up watching Sakic
One can frivolously drop the word "cool"
But its considerably harder to enact it

But the best part of our schilldawg
Forgive me one line of sappy,
Is that nothing, NOTHING satisfies him
like seeing those close to him happy.

With that we'll move on to the woman,
Who you've conned into saying I do
It's not that I ran out of material,
Just that she's easier to look at than you.

Jessica Brehm Schiller
What a wonderful human being
And I doubt I'm alone in thinking this,
your new name has a very nice ring!

I feel that I must thank you,
I feel I'm in your debt
i was behind cancun spring break and the bachelor party,
And you haven't killed me. Yet.

Despite all alex's fore mentioned clout
One thing is far beyond debate
Even if he never began boxing
With you He's still be punching beyond his weight

This poem has a third part,
Which you can chug through if you find boring
Its compulsory to at some point to pay homage to the classic how-they-met story

Alex and Jess gelled immediately
Two better fitting people? You cannot produce them.
I hope everyone here is enjoying the party.
You're welcome - I introduced them!

The schilldawg of yore spent once spent his days
around smu with the likes of yours truly
Then Jess arrived from Waco to Dallas
To intrepidly continue her schooling

Jess was single, and not too long been in town
Alex was fed up with an ex
Cupid decreed we'd get margs at ozonas
I think the first night they had second date plans

They returned from postgrad life in Waco to Dallas
And their affection for eachother elates me
However rarely in their home do i see it myself
Because teddy their puppydog hates me

Seriously though, when I say it elates me
I'm not kidding, yall do me a favor
You're a reminder that real, honest love exists,
Worth every effort to locate, protect then savor

It's an honor to be here, plus be your best man
I hope this poem wasnt pedantic
I'm impressed and way stoked and optimistic for you,
In case that was lost in semantics

For the sake of the party Lets wrap this up, it's getting old Standing just talking
Cheers to you both,
Cheers to tonight
And as the Steve Miller Band once said, keep on rocking

The crowd then proceeded to do as instructed in the final verse.  I received a lot of congratulatory pats on the back for this, most of which by people whose names either got chased out of my brain by bourbon or were never there to begin with.  But one among these congrat-pats stuck with me because it helped answer a question I’ve been asking myself lately, which is why I don’t try to write with regularity and make money doing it. 

The congrat-pat went something like “That was really easy for you to write, wasn’t it?”  I was surprised to hear this, but the middle-aged mildly drunk gent spoke the truth.  It had been.  I churned that sucker out on the plane ride from Dallas, inserting only minor edits later.  “It’s easy when you just speak your mind about something you care about and then make it all pretty like that.  It’s barely writing, merely redecorating.”

I was mildly offended, but couldn’t help agreeing.  And that, in short, is why I don’t write on the reg for anyone anywhere.  I can’t rely on myself to have something to say, and to thusly redecorate.  Writing is raw, and forcing a feeling is a crime against oneself. 

So that’s all for now.  Thanks for reading, and by all means do follow Steve Miller’s instructions.  He’s one hell of a redecorator.