Aransas Pass, TX N 27°53′28″ longitude W 097°09′0718″ elevation 13’
It was another eventful period in the continuing journey. I moved with the drill rig project to the ship yard where the rigs are being built in Ingleside, TX near Corpus Christi. Susan came down for about six weeks then went back to Colorado and bought a house. I reconnected on the web with a bunch of old Navy friends from forty years ago, I found my first ever Civil War relic with my metal detector, and I must be going though a mid life crisis, because I bought a motorcycle..
We finished up most of the engineering on the drill rig project in the Houston office and moved with the mechanical completion and commissioning team to the shipyard on April 4th. We are currently doing mechanical check out of the construction phase of the project. We will start the commissioning phase in conjunction with the mechanical completion. The construction schedule is behind and dates are slipping. We are working 55 hours a week headed for 70 hour weeks in July and August. The thing that can not slip is the sail away date to Brazil. There is a firm schedule for the heavy lift cranes to set these modules on the offshore platform legs. If we miss that window the crane schedule and the ocean conditions would delay the project a year. The buzz word now is “carryover”. That means the commissioning work we can not complete here in the yard will have to be carried over to off shore.
Susan came down from house hunting and kid visiting in Colorado on the 5th of April. She left in early June to go expedite the house hunting effort. We bought the house on 53 acres south of Salida that I put up on the blog several months ago. It needs some finish work and the addition a garage shop but it is what we both want. Susan lined up contractors to do painting. I was there for the week on June 10th to help with the effort. I would have liked to stay longer, but work is getting intense.
I was surfing the web the other day looking for the old cartoon of two buzzards sitting in a tree, one saying to the other”patience my ass, I’m going to go kill something” because that thought matched my mood regarding the house. During the surfing I saw a Navy shoulder patch for some submarine that made me think it had been a long time since I did a goggle search for the ship I on which I spent most of my time in the Navy. The search turned up a web site one of my old ship mates put together to get us reconnected. I registered and was talking to an old friend within an hour. I talked with a couple of more of my old friends since then.
One of my co workers interested in metal detecting did some research on a nearby area that had two civil war battles. We did a reconnaissance and I turned up a .58 caliber hollow cavity sabot almost certainly from an model 1861 Springfield Muzzleloader used by the 17th Pennsylvania Volunteers in the 1863 and 1864 battles. The Model 1861 Springfield was the first muzzleloader mass produced that had rifling in the barrel. My bullet has rifling marks. Our next trip will be focused at trying to locate the nexus of the battles.
The mid life crisis is really not that serious. It is not a red Porsche, it is a black Kawasaki KLR 650 dual sport. After a year and a half of retirement fun, I went to little time for fun. It is called work, and is very over rated. About the only time I have for anything is going back and forth to work. I really wanted a Harley, but my homeless, at the time, wife thought my priorities were a bit skewed. So, the KLR is my commuter. I got a matching helmet and enjoy the 50 miles to the gallon verses the 12 MPG for the big diesel truck. It really is fun and the 8 miles to work on back roads along the bay takes 10 minutes. Life is good.
It was another eventful period in the continuing journey. I moved with the drill rig project to the ship yard where the rigs are being built in Ingleside, TX near Corpus Christi. Susan came down for about six weeks then went back to Colorado and bought a house. I reconnected on the web with a bunch of old Navy friends from forty years ago, I found my first ever Civil War relic with my metal detector, and I must be going though a mid life crisis, because I bought a motorcycle..
We finished up most of the engineering on the drill rig project in the Houston office and moved with the mechanical completion and commissioning team to the shipyard on April 4th. We are currently doing mechanical check out of the construction phase of the project. We will start the commissioning phase in conjunction with the mechanical completion. The construction schedule is behind and dates are slipping. We are working 55 hours a week headed for 70 hour weeks in July and August. The thing that can not slip is the sail away date to Brazil. There is a firm schedule for the heavy lift cranes to set these modules on the offshore platform legs. If we miss that window the crane schedule and the ocean conditions would delay the project a year. The buzz word now is “carryover”. That means the commissioning work we can not complete here in the yard will have to be carried over to off shore.
Susan came down from house hunting and kid visiting in Colorado on the 5th of April. She left in early June to go expedite the house hunting effort. We bought the house on 53 acres south of Salida that I put up on the blog several months ago. It needs some finish work and the addition a garage shop but it is what we both want. Susan lined up contractors to do painting. I was there for the week on June 10th to help with the effort. I would have liked to stay longer, but work is getting intense.
I was surfing the web the other day looking for the old cartoon of two buzzards sitting in a tree, one saying to the other”patience my ass, I’m going to go kill something” because that thought matched my mood regarding the house. During the surfing I saw a Navy shoulder patch for some submarine that made me think it had been a long time since I did a goggle search for the ship I on which I spent most of my time in the Navy. The search turned up a web site one of my old ship mates put together to get us reconnected. I registered and was talking to an old friend within an hour. I talked with a couple of more of my old friends since then.
One of my co workers interested in metal detecting did some research on a nearby area that had two civil war battles. We did a reconnaissance and I turned up a .58 caliber hollow cavity sabot almost certainly from an model 1861 Springfield Muzzleloader used by the 17th Pennsylvania Volunteers in the 1863 and 1864 battles. The Model 1861 Springfield was the first muzzleloader mass produced that had rifling in the barrel. My bullet has rifling marks. Our next trip will be focused at trying to locate the nexus of the battles.
The mid life crisis is really not that serious. It is not a red Porsche, it is a black Kawasaki KLR 650 dual sport. After a year and a half of retirement fun, I went to little time for fun. It is called work, and is very over rated. About the only time I have for anything is going back and forth to work. I really wanted a Harley, but my homeless, at the time, wife thought my priorities were a bit skewed. So, the KLR is my commuter. I got a matching helmet and enjoy the 50 miles to the gallon verses the 12 MPG for the big diesel truck. It really is fun and the 8 miles to work on back roads along the bay takes 10 minutes. Life is good.
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