Welcome to My World

     Welcome to my first ever blog.  What I will bring to the reader are tales from the Bakken oil patch....  the great things that are happening,  the trials of the men and women actually out here doing it, the sobering words from the people back home, and my friends "who have always been here." 

     It has been said, "Ain't nothing finer than a pipeliner."  My girlfriend would agree, but my two ex-wives may have a different opinion.   It's all good.   I'm not telling their stories.  These are my stories.  

     These are stories from real people, real lives, real outcomes.  I am just a heavy equipment operator out here, on the Tioga Lateral Project, a 12 inch pipeline,  going from Tioga to Sherwood, North Dakota. I am just one of the 10 guys on a coating crew. My story is typical of those who come out here.  We are all just coming and coming and coming to find a decent wage for an honest day’s work.  We come from Minnesota, Wisconsin, Oklahoma, Wyoming, North Dakota, Texas, and Tennessee.  It's a trip.

     The days are getting longer now, which is good and bad. It means home soon to be with my kids, but less money to do something fun with them. Got a message from the new grandson today,  he just was showing me a peace sign.  So I sent one back at him via Haley's phone or some other gadget.  Sounds like me and him will get to come home about the same time.  God has a plan.  He is already answering our prayers.

     I have met a good friend, Jose Jimenez.  Jose comes from an interesting background.  I feel that I must intimate to the reader his tales also and the friendship that is developing.  My friend Jose and I drove to Williston today. Did our usual, had a bite to eat, went to church and visited our friends. I have to go pick him up shortly and bring him back to camp. I invited him to attend church with me at New Hope Wesleyan. He declined because he didn't want to fall out of favor with the new pope. Figures he's got a clean slate with the new dude, so in the pope he hopes. Speaking of New Hope, wasn't that the name of the Star Wars original? Read in the paper today that there was an altercation the night my friend Jose went to town to pick up some guys from our crew at the bar. A man is still at large with a heart tattoo on his neck. I asked him if he knew or saw anything that night. He just said, “Uff Da ! Mi amo Jose Jimenez.... No hablo ingles. Soy trabajo,"