Back Home And Gone Again Pt 2

 The job I was going to was in Sundre, I worked here last summer and I must say for a place to be stuck at work it really isn't too bad. There were 2 rigs on the same lease drilling 5 meters apart, all the boys were out there. 

 As you can see, the 300 is drilling into the dark, shadowy, gloomy depressing zone, and the 500 in the nice sunny dry area. That was about how the moods between the two were. I was on the 500, workin' for my buddy Keri, huge dick. Just kidding, but he did look like Captian Jack Sparrow. Alex taught him to drill for a week or so, he wore the air horn out, and probably raised Keris blood pressure a bit with some of the other shenanigans. Priceless.

This is where I spent most of my day, occasionally gettin' a wave from Rory from the 300. 

I also had Rory's brother on my crew, Angus, he was a beauty.

Because the two rigs were so close we had a bunch of problems with losing mud to them, then them pumping it back, and so on. 

 

No boss, I didn't flood the tanks, I swear. 

Some pretty weird stuff came bouncing over the shaker...

One day we had a couple hours of down time, found a bird in the shaker pit all covered in mud, poor little guy couldn't fly. We washed him in some soap and warmed him up in the doghouse before setting him free. 

After Adam left night shift, I got switched over to work with a couple other good friends, Bogdan and Eric. Stylin' lookin' cats.

Work got pretty serious when I was switched to nights.

We use some quality products here at the rig, I wonder if you can get these bearings for your skateboard. 

After nearly a month straight at work, we shut down for 4 days off. I started the drive back to B.C.

Back Home And Gone Again

Well it has been a good while since I was on here, I'm at least 4 months behind and off on another trip again. So I am going to cram the last 4 months into one post. Enjoy.

So I flew from Bali to Taiwan and stayed there for a few days.

It was nice to have a different beer for a change. 

Did I mention it was nearly +40 in the city, I didn't leave the air conditioning very often, but when I did it was for a good cause.

I arrived in Vancouver around midnight, and didn't have a flight until the morning. Got comfortable at my usual sleeping zone near the big jade statue. 

 Woke up and looked outside, SURPRISE! Raining.

The morning came and I boarded the flight back to Cranbrook, this is definitely one of my favorite flights due to this view.

I arrived home to big hugs from the family, and with blonde hair and red skin. Reminders that the tropics are a good time.

Big hugs from the big pup too.

 Spent a lot of time at the lake with my bro, definite favorite part of summer - Mineral rope swing.

Hung out with the dog during the days, she was the only one other than myself not working :)

Skateboarded with friends.

Golfed with Mom.

Then made the drive back to work :(

Actually I just decided I will break it up, too many photos. Next post tomorrow.

Sumbawa

 After a couple nights in Lombok, Kent and I drove across the island and caught a ferry to the next island to the East.

We pulled in a bit late, found the place Kents buddy had told us about, and checked in just in time for dinner. Met the others who were staying there, a Canadian guy who actually worked on the same pipeline project as I did in the winter, a Kiwi bodyboarder, an old American gnar dude, and the locals that stayed and worked there. Everybody was super friendly, and the food was outstanding. We had a beach fire after dinner and talked about the area. 

I woke up early the next couple days and walked around the beach area in front of our place, followed by breakfast and then a surf, either out front or at a different wave down the road.

 

Got a couple shots of my friends Drew, Drew, Matt and Adam on their way back to the surf camp after an early morning surf.

Spent the next couple afternoons at a nearby wave for the massive swell that was to come in. The wave is just down the road, probably shouldn't share the location, but this wave was actual Indo. Completely prefect, I'm talking not a drop out of place.
On the dirt road to the wave it wasn't odd to see these guys chillin' in the tasty grass. I got a bit too close once and got a little mock charge, didn't stick around much longer after that.

I spent the first day of the big swell hanging around, waiting for waves, eating banana pancakes, and surfing. Took some photos during the day but the break was so far out I couldn't get much. The owner of the hotel was supposed to take me out on his boat, but never got around to it. After the tide went to crap I went out on a little journey to try and find a different wave, no luck but I got a couple cool photos of the area:

I made it back for sunset and low tide so I could get out to the wave and try and get some wave shots, didn't work out, and the reef was sharp as shit, got these shots instead:

The following day was the same thing, up early and went back to the wave after breakfast. Surfed a bit and then met a friendly Aussie who takes his personal boat out to surf here. He was friendly enough to take me out with him where I was able to get a much better angle of the waves.

Hands down the best waves and best surfing I have ever seen in real life.

So the first day after sunset I had heard rumors that the locals had burned down the bridge that we needed to cross to get to our place, and also. It was over a large amount of jobs that were promised to the locals at the mine that is located on the Island. Turns out they never got the jobs they were promised and had quite the protest about it. I did pull up to the flaming, melting bridge just after dark with locals wearing bandannas over their face yielding large machetes and some even guns. The were friendly enough but told me I had to go the long way around. So I backtracked and found the dirt road to bypass the river, and made it home eventually.
The next day was the same thing, using the bypass, but never having any problems. I left the day after, and driving through the village I noticed they had set up barriers to stop anyone traveling through to see if they were employees working at the mine, I personally was not, so had no problems getting through. I came across one area where they had an SUV flipped over and smashed up. Kinda crazy, although I didn't fully understand what was going on..
It wasn't until I was on the ferry where I met a friendly local who turned out to be an employee from the mine who explained in broken English what was going on. He said one of the presidents from the mine operations promised 200 locals from nearby towns jobs at the mine when it expanded. Once the expansion was complete the president gave the jobs to close friends and family causing the locals to uprise. They stopped employee access to the mine, burned the bridge, caused the operation to shut down. The helicopter in the above photo was used to evacuate the workers to a safer place due to the violence that was growing.
Then man I met had said if they found out you were an employee while crossing these roadblocks they would cut your fingers off. He also told me the president of operations house had been burned down and he was in hiding. It seemed like a good time to leave the Island.

Kuta Lombok #2

 So the swell died our last day at Deserts, we decided to rip over to Kuta, in Lombok and try and catch the little bit of swell in Mawi. 

 The tide was fairly low when we pulled in so we decided to go on a little mission. We walked to the end of the secluded beach to the next headland. These are some of the photos I took on the way:

 This is taken from a little headland on the right side of the beach. The top one is the break, and below is just a secluded beach on the other side of said headland. 

It turned out to be quite the hike, the sand is made up of tiny bits of coral eroded into tiny balls which made you sink deeper than your ankle every step. 

Kent checking out around the corner.

 We had a fun surf then head back to town. Saw a bunch of these guys on the way:

 After a little nap we cruised to Grupuk to see our friends Sudi and Kurit, and have a little sesh in the bowl. 

Too dark for a still image and traveling with no flash ya gotta improvise.