If it ain't broke....it will be:)

So sorry for the late blog guys,

The last couple of days we've been doing some work with the Cat/dozer because of the location of the pole.....it's down a steep hill, thru a creek, behind a guard rail.......you know, the perfect place for a pole right;) Well, usually a pole like this would be sent straight to the contractors but seeing as the power company that I work for isn't about to give away there work ~ we tackled the job......after many many break downs! For starters, we got the cat stuck yesterday, had to get a high hoe down this hill to even try and move her and just when we got the cat to start moving.......pop, broke a hydraulic line and was down and out until the next day. So two hours late last night but still in good spirits, brings us to the present day and well it's another late one!

We started off having to travel around to get some fluid for the cat, then headed to Bismark to tackel this darn pole in the middle of the woods down a fricken hill! When we get there and get everything back in place.....we blow the darn motor on the auger! Out of luck right, wait till tomorrow and order one is probably what your thinking but nope ~ We ended up taking the Auger motor off of the line truck and swapping it with the bad one to finish this pole. We had to cut a few switches in the other day so we could cut the power while transfering the phases. Ameren has a no gloving 12 kv off the pole policy. Now we can hot stick the phases but that's a lot of work and it's a practice that's becoming less and less used these days. I climbed the 60 foot pole, and un-tied the two phases and dropped the neutral down off the arm and cut a few feet off the old pole so we could just push the old rotten pole over with the boom. Im sorry that I could take any photos, I'll try and bring the camera tomorrow cause we're still using the cat to get to one more right of way pole back in the woods down an old hunting path.

Well, I still have a letter that I have to write for the military this weekend so I should get to it. But again, sorry for the short and late blog. One thing is for sure, lineman don't work the standard 8 to 5 job everyday. Your released when the job is done, not almost complete!

Have a great rest of the night, and I'll hopefully write more tomorrow k.

all the best,

dan