Job Change

After 7 months here it became clear that while we really liked the town, the company I hired on to was not a good fit.  Seems I am a bit crusty and set in my ways and it is hard to find the right fit.  So I changed firms after finding a boss who is a bit crusty and set in his ways.  Now I am working a three week on, one week off rotation in a fly-in/fly-out arrangement.  This is a bit unusual for the US, but not uncommon in Canada.

I was going to include some Google Earth shots of the projects I am working on, but it seems the rural plains of Canada don't get updated very often.  Even so, here is the jobsite in Alberta:

See the big open area in center of the picture next to the fertilizer factory?  It seriously does not look like that any more.  It is the future site of the Northwest Redwater Partnership's Sturgeon Refinery.  The first new refinery in North America in 30 years.  An interesting aside is that our across the street neighbor in Kitimat was born in Redwater.  Redwater being the closest thing to a town anywhere near the site.

And here is the site in Saskatchewan:

Each of the little square boxes is a square mile, Canada was also sectionalized in a pattern similar to the US.  Here there is little to no evidence of the project.  As with Alberta, it looks much different now.  Not really close to anyplace the actual project is 20 kilometers (15 miles) down a dirt road from the nearest highway, and just over an hour's drive from Regina.  On of the big parts of this project is to build the housing (camp) for the workers on a fly-in/fly-out rotation.

Not all of the work is interesting, but the job is constantly changing and it is hard to get bored.

Kitimat

Kitimat is a different kind of place.  It is a designed community build out of basically nothing in the 1950's the purpose of the town was to house and support the workers at Alcan's aluminium smelting operation.  It is remote, 50 kilometers (30 miles) down a dead end road from the nearest other town (Terrace, which is not huge either).  I could say a lot more, but Wikipedia and the official website do it better:

Wikipedia on Kitimat

Official Site

The short story is we like it here.  Made some wonderful new friends and brought an old friend back to the town of his boyhood.

Where next?

This is the RioTinto Alcan site in Kitimat, BC, Canada.  The Kitimat Modernization Project is a huge job in a very small town.  It sounded like fun and adventure, so we went.  More than a bit spur of the moment, but it isn't the first time we have done that.

Definitely time for an update or two...

While it may seem so to some, or many, that I have again dropped off the face of the earth, that is not the case.  The earth is not that lucky.  New Mexico went bust for a lot of different reasons, but in a weird case of synchronicity something came up in my sister's life where she needed a bit of help.  So we packed it up and moved to southern California.  It was wonderful to spend time there with family, but SoCal is not a good place for me.  Too many ghosts and demons, drove me more than a little bit crazy.  So we moved on.  But I will be eternally grateful to my sister and her husband for their warm welcome and hospitality.