Hey Folks,
Not the REAL Elvis. I'm talking about Elvis the dog. He's a little gray poodle that I spent the week with - but I'm getting ahead of myself.
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| Elvis |
As most of you know, I'm assigned to a large gas line inspection project here in Provo, in the South Salt Lake Valley. Our client, Questar Gas, services the whole valley but also all of the small towns scattered throughout Utah and even into Wyoming. These little towns need to be inspected on a regular basis so plans are made early in the survey year to send technicians into these places. These jobs usually last 4 days, 10 hours each, and we're through by Thursday evening. This past week five technicians and myself were sent with a Questar foreman for a 4 day project to survey Carbon and Emery counties in Southeast Utah. We all used an RV park in the town of Price as our base of operations and branched out from there each day. LuLu stayed at home in Provo since Margo was working at the KOA and I bunked with another tech - Pat, his wife Nancy, and their little dog, Elvis. I've known Pat and Nancy since working together in Nashville over a year ago and consider them to be dear friends. Elvis was a puppy the last time I saw him and he hasn't changed a bit. He's one of those one in a hundred dogs you come by with a ton of personality and uniqueness. Well behaved and mischievous at the same time and always the center of attention. He's a little force to be reckoned with, especially when we made our way back home at the end of the day and were greeted as only a dog can do. Nancy went all out every day, having a huge meal ready for us. Thank you so much Nancy, I actually think I GAINED weight on this trip.
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| Elvis sleeps here - I did too |
Carbon and Emery County are located in Southeast Utah and contain little towns with only a couple of hundred to perhaps a thousand or so people each. Towns like East Carbon; named after the large coal (carbon) deposits in the area. Castle Dale; named for the local geologic formations that look like castles. Elmo; named after.... well probably not the red puppet we're all familiar with but named for something. I'm not sure about that one. My point is, these are small places with miles of nothing in between. We each were assigned an area and went to it. I had the town of Castle Dale. Like most of the towns in Utah the street grid was laid out by Brigham Young's standards. The center of town is always the intersection of "Center St and Main St". All streets spreading out from there are numbered by 100 with the corresponding compass heading. If you can count by 100 and know the four points of the compass you can find any address quite easily. The streets, even the residential streets, are extremely wide. A local told me it's because they wanted each street to be wide enough for 2 teams of horses (or oxen) and a wagon to be able to turn around and head in the other direction.
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| Typical W-I-D-E residential street |
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| Miles of nothing ....... |
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| ...... in between towns |
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| Pat heading back from East Carbon |
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| Castle Dale City Hall |
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| Fire Department for the whole Castle Dale "Metro" |
By the end of the week the 6 of us had walked over 341,000 feet of gas main, that's 64 miles. We collectively walked up to and checked 3,162 individual gas meters. Our Quesar foreman, Scott, was running around almost as frantically as Elvis to keep up with us since invariably I would have an issue at the same time another tech 35 miles away would have one. In the end though - and as always, our client seamlessly took care of things. I was the lead for our other 5 techs but there was no need for supervision with these people. With their experience and devotion they just went out and took care of business.
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| Scott, Our Questar foreman. More than just a client. |
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| The Crew |
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| Pat, Nancy and Elvis |
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| Large and in charge on the dashboard |
I want to thank Pat, Nancy and Elvis, for having me as their guest. I do have to say that the best part of this job are the people (and dogs) I work with.
