The Undiscovered Country

Too much of a good thing, and me without a hat.

Every spring it happens. The air warms, the sun comes out, the ground morphs from a dead brown to a lively green, and the trees burst also with green and vibrant flowers.

Something else happens. North Dakota has but two seasons: Winter and Road Construction. But it’s not just road construction, but construction everywhere! And working in the engineering field, that means our survey crews have difficulty keeping up with the sudden demand. The big problem is our summer help doesn’t start but 4 weeks after the spring demand starts.

Good for me – mostly, but I’ll get into that in a bit. Because the contractors scream for points, and with lack of warm bodies to set those points, suddenly my office work is not so important. Since Wednesday afternoon, I have been out surveying!

Yea! Again, mostly.

Murphy loved me and Casey on Wednesday. First, we didn’t have a data collector (glorified calculator that tells me where to point the instrument for setting points). We had to drive the 11 miles to the north side of Bismarck to grab it from the other survey crew (they took both, the greedy kids). We then had to return to the office to download the proper file.

That wasted an hour.

We get to the site, and discover we have but one battery for the instrument (called a total station), and we had no idea if it was even charged. I get all set up on my point (I remembered how! Yippee!), and ask Casey if we had any radios. He would be far enough away, there’s no way I could shout to him how far to go, come, left, right, etc to the next point.

We tore the vehicle apart and found nothing. The other crew must have obsconded with the other set as well.

Now what?

I remembered Dave (my hubby) had some radios he uses for hunting. I called him up and he kindly brought them to the site.

But the batteries were dead in one of them.

I got lucky! I had brought along one box of AAA thinking I would need them for one of the older data collectors. Oh, yeah, I had forgotten that part! Originally I had planned on saving an hour by using an old data collector (very old), but the job is so big, it didn’t have the room. Plus we didn’t have an extra cable to plug it into the total station.

Getting frustrated yet? Try being there! The radio took AAA as well. Murphy neglected that part.

We also found the other battery to the total station, but the charger didn’t work. Since we had two power converters that plugged into the cigarette lighter, we quickly discovered it was the converter, not the charger that was busted. Whew!

With working radios, a partially charged total station battery, we started staking.

We got to the last point, and the other radio died. With no more batteries, I figured we could use our cell phones.

Then the total station battery died, and Casey had the truck at his end with the other battery (about ½ a mile away). Made me wish we didn’t depend so much on electronic instruments, because when the power goes, you got nothing but a very expensive, useless object.

At this point it was 5:30 pm, so Casey said, “Forget it. We can tape measure the last one in.”

Thursday we went back out to stake many, many more points. I made certain we had all the batteries we needed, until I lost my radio (I so owe Dave right now!). Never did find it. But, we did find two others hiding in the back that somehow were not there on Wednesday. Figure that one out!

The wind was the biggest problem. Construction stops for nothing, let alone 30-40 mph winds with gusts up to 50 mph. Add on top of that a construction site with exposed dirt that the wind just loved to pick up and sandblast a person’s skin and eyeballs!

I also neglected to bring my hat and wear sunscreen, so I am one cooked lobster right now! Even got a blister on my left ear that I didn’t discover until this morning when I stabbed my comb through it *shudder*.

By 3pm Thursday, I was so fried and so tired of the wind, plus my poor arthritic knees screamed at me because they are not used to standing for extended periods. It was hot at 75, unrelenting wind and sunshine, and I asked myself, “Now why do I like surveying again? Couldn’t I have chosen something easier and less harmful on my aging and weak little bod for a career?”

I had set up on a point on the northeast corner of an older man’s house. This is important, along with the direction of the wind – blowing from the south. He approached me and said, “I want to test out my new sprinkler system, but with this wind, it’s going to get you wet.”

I grinned and said, “Please do! I’m baking here and would love to cool down right now.”

Was that water cold!!! It did feel good though. He apologized profusely, because he didn’t expect me to get soaked from head to toe. I kept thanking him.

Still, a half an our later after I dried up, the heat and wind beat down on me once more, and my knees kept begging me to sit, walk around, anything but stand there.

We had made plans for supper with my folks that night, so I was thrilled to have an excuse to quit at 5:30. Good thing, otherwise we would have continued staking until sunset, which up here doesn’t happen until 9:30.

Friday I was smart and took my wide-brimmed hat and wore a long sleeve shirt. Good thing I did! It was cold, still windy, and nary a peek of the sun until around lunchtime. Even my sweatshirt didn’t keep the chill away.

We finished staking at about 3pm, After returning to the office I felt like an 80-year-old woman. I realized then gone are the days when I could do anything at anytime without consequences, and if I over-extend, bounce back within 12 hours. I still after sitting for an hour or two have a difficult time not wincing when I stand up and walk the first few steps.

Okay, enough whining. I’m hoping this 3-day adventure will motivate me to walk more – and wear a hat if I’ll be out longer than ½ an hour! My bod will do what I ask it to do if I keep consistent with it. Much pain now, but lots of gain later.

To give you a better idea what I'm talking about as far as survey gear, here's a picture I took of my outside workstation on Friday morning: