Turning north at Beulah I headed up into a sea of grey green grassy hills and coming over a rise I saw my destination, a great mute blue monolith in soft focus, Richter-esque, if you will. First, on the left I passed a great hole in the earth where enormous machines with tires that boggle the find haul out the coal, This part of the west, it seems, is one big lump of coal with grass growing over top and cattle munching on the grass. Then to the right a coal gasification plant which smelled both horrible and appetizing, like over smoked rancid ham, the intensity of which made me wonder how long I could stand it. Then, past the ham gasification plant my stop, a big coal power plant. I pulled up to the guard shack and checked in with a surprisingly beautiful woman who seemed unsure why I was there but directed me to one of the Siemens employees who was just getting off his shift. This gruff union troll told me to pull in and park to the side of the road and he would show me where to go since he had o head back with his car to get his tools.
Inside the power plant he directed me to head "back towards that corner and then take an elevator to the 4th floor and ask around up there. These elevators here are so busy you're libel to end up on the 15th floor before you know it."
He was yelling all this at me. He was yelling because the noise in a power plant, you might guess, is a bit overwhelming. It isn't painful overwhelming like a jet or a siren, just a background whir and hum and it isn't until you try to hear someone that you realize just how loud it is.
I headed back toward the corner through a landscape bewildering in its scale and instrumentation. I felt i was walking through an industrial-apocalyptic movie scene such as the one in Batman when the Joker falls into the acid. Is it the Joker?
Some ceilings were low and then opened up 4 stories or 15, all around machines spun and valves hissed. Does it really take all this to generate some electricity?
I found the elevator and headed to the 4th floor. There I encountered a large man with a thick southern accent who, when I told him I was from Melton said "Boy am I glad to see you!" He then explained that he and his coworkers were employees of Siemens. One of the things Siemens does is build power plants. They had been making some repairs or additions to this plant and now were done. It would be my job to take their tools back to the home base just outside of Atlanta. They were glad to see me because, i suppose, these southerners were ready to be done with North Dakota.
They said that I was earlier than they had expected and were pleased since that meant that they could foist the responsibility of loading me onto the night shift.
It was raining lightly and ceaselessly.
They had me back into a bay in the center of the plant, in a part that was open 5 floors, 5 tall floors, probably 100 ft. While I waited for night shift to get done with a safety meeting I repaired my tarps that had been cut in a few places by the sharp grain bin parts.
Eventually loading began and took the better part of 6 hours since all of these steel boxes full of tools (some of them not particularly big) had to be lowered by crane from the 4th floor. This wouldn't have been so bad if afterwards I had not had to pull out and tarp it in the light rain at 12:30 in the morning. Anything with many levels is difficult to tarp since wherever there is a level change there is a possibility for loose tarp and loose tarp means flapping and flapping can result in loosening or tearing of the tarp. This load had enough levels to resemble a city scape and many sharp "ears", where hooks could be fasten to hoist or lower the boxes by crane and so all the ears needed padding before the thing could be tarped and tarping sucks (even more) when you are tired. I finished and slept, still having not caught up on my sleep from my "busy" weekend at the college reunion.
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