The adventures to the archery range in Houston.

Long lost friends - I hadn't seen my friends from Alaska since I left Alaska and now here we are meeting up in Houston - who would have ever guessed that!

Peter and I in the lake near Asker. This is the lake that I can easily walk to from work and where I live.

A Clerk?

Getting off the boat all I wanted to do was walk. I wanted to go further than 82 meters in one direction. And that is exactly what I did. The very first day off the boat I dragged 4 friends along and walked a few km down to the fjords for a picnic. The next day 3 of us walked all over Oslo for this food fest (and tried whale along the way, plus a lot of reindeer and Norwegian brown cheese). That night I walked over to the lake to camp out, and back the next day. Then after work I walked to the lake again go swimming. This is why I love where I work in Norway. After work, I walked home, changed clothes, and walked about 30 minutes over to the lake. The walk takes you through town, up along the road past this old church, past the prince’s house, then down along some farm fields before coming out at the lake. Cliffy hills surround the lake. Fabulous.

I can’t say the same for here in Houston. From work I can walk along some highways. So I’ve had to find other endeavors besides walking. I’ve been finding other random stuff to do or having other random encounters. One guy from work is really into Mongolian horseback archery. He’s rounded a few of us up from work and taken us off to this shooting range to practice. It’s an interesting mix of bows – the ones they use for the Olympics to compounds for hunting. You can shoot at targets, at fake deers, or fake hogs. Its fun.

Where I am staying they have wine, cheese and some small appetizer every night. One night I was down there and an older man was waiting for the wine so I offered to pour it for him. He started joking about having a nice pretty young girl pour him wine, so I started joking about that. As we were leaving he apologized or said he was sorry for bantering about that. I said, oh its no big deal, I work off shore and have to do this banter all the time. He turned and said “oh are you a clerk?” I repeated it, “a clerk? Nope, I’m out there doing the work”. I’m not sure he totally believed me, but he was shocked none-the-less. Nope. Not a clerk.

This is how we celebrated Norwegian national day on board (note my very blue tongue and my color appropriate outfit)

This is Emerald probably around 3 am or so. I got pretty excited taking early morning pictures.

This was around 12:45am on the back deck.

Communities and Decisions

it's been way too long, I know, but after the first week I tried not to turn on my computer after work (since I was sitting in front of one for most of work). Instead I ended up playing lots of foosball, working out in the gym, and doing lots of QHSE stuff for the boat. Now I'm back on land, but I'm actually missing the boat. part of it is the community. Below is an exerpt from my journal from a few weeks ago.

It’s really cool how you learn some of life’s basic lessons here on the boat. Kind of like in the wilderness, life is broken down into the basics. Here on board, you have one sole purpose in life and that is to get seismic data. Perhaps the people in the office and I work for the same company, with ultimately the same goal, however, their daily life is not one purpose. They are working on several projects – some people with marine, some with land, some are finance people. They go home at the end of the day, may see people different from work (although perhaps not), they have a life outside of work. But while they all have the “same goal” they are working on it in very unrelated ways. However, here on the boat, the goal is very tangible and it is the same for all of us – how do we shoot seismic, to get the best data and get it fast? Therefore decision making is very different, and more urgent than say in the office. It requires both a single person as well as the group.

Today we realized how poorly ballasted some of the streamers were. And we couldn’t go into production until we fixed it – 8 couldn’t stay at 8 meters, 6 was a roller coaster, and 1 was barely any better. Good thing 1 and 8 are on the outside (just kidding – this is not good). We had 2 options – 1. Go out in the work boat, and ballast by filling with kerosene, all of cable 1, 6, and 8. Or recover all the cables. The work boat option would take 1 day, well one full (24 hours) in the work boat, plus we can only go out in 1 boat due to limited dry suits / survival gear. While recovering and then deploying the cables is estimated to take 6 days. Why not the work boat? The seas are rough and expected to get worse on Sunday (today is Friday). Not sure if we will ever get a window. It came down to an impromptu meeting with most of acquisition, nav, and gunners there, plus Keith. Keith was very good natured about it. Everyone offered their advice and ultimately it came down to Ernie saying what he thought was best. People setting timelines, and then questioning them and determining a new one. First we decided on what was most important if the workboat were to go out. Then we thought – what if we recovered the streamers, then we set a deadline of 3pm – if no weather window, then retrieve. Then we asked, why not start retrieving now and save those 6 hours?

It was cool, because I think in some way everyone felt a part of the process, and everyone agreed with the decision.

I think the cool part as well is that a decision was made – it wasn’t just suggestions that no one will ever act on. We had to make a decision right there and then.

So the last 4 hours it was out on the backdeck again recovering.