Work life

Work is work.  Its kind of repetitive, as most jobs tend to be, even if I do work on trucks the size of two story apartment buildings.  Barrick, as a company, tries to save costs wherever it can, and these big trucks are no exception.  When a truck reaches a point of high hours, which is a culmination of hours it spends running, they need to be rebuilt, or restored.  We have a special projects group that restores trucks that have been in service for a long time, or have been damaged.  Here are some pictures of a truck torn down to nothing but a frame.

This is the front.

This is the left side.

The left side plus part of the rear.

The rear, being held up with a Super Jack.  This truck still has the rear wheel motors attached.

This is the right side.

This gives the dimensions of the trucks.

Inside the fan shroud.  That is a door on the end so people can get in to change the belt.

Another view.

This is the belt.  It is really big!

This is a truck getting the engine replaced due to high operating hours.  It is the Cummins QSK60 16 cylinder, quad turbo charged, single stage aftercooled, diesel engine.  It is 2,700 horsepower with almost 8,000 torque.  Which is a lot!!

So yeah, humdrum.  That's my job right now.

Shootin' n' stuff.

Oh my gosh!  It's been a long time since we posted anything.  Where to start?  Okay, for starters, we've introduced Marissa to guns.  When I first met her, and subsequently married her, she didn't want anything to do with guns.  She wouldn't touch them or hold them.  Nothin'.  A few months back our neighbors asked us to go shooting out in the hills with them.  I didn't really want to go, but Rissa said that she wanted to.  So I packed up the .357 Magnum and some ammo and away we went.  What's special about this moment, besides Rissa wanting to shoot, was that this was the first time I was able to shoot my .357.  But let's never mind that.  Rissa shot a .22 caliber automatic pistol.  She did really well.  She also shot a .380 auto and a .38 revolver.  Also she shot a 9mm (One of the spent casings ejected and hit her square in the forehead, haha) and my .357, which she didn't like shooting.  I don't have any pictures of our first time shooting, but I have some from a few of the other times we've gone.

 Here she is shooting .38 specials through my .357 Mag.

 This is my SKS and on the right she's shooting a .243 bolt action, which she loves!!

I went out and bought a .40 cal Smith&Wesson.  We're waiting on her 9mm which is identical to my .40, minus the caliber size.  Both are Smith&Wesson M&P.  Also, I made her shoot a 12 gauge shotgun, just so she had a good feel for a wide variety of guns.  This one hurt her.

So now my once timid and fearful-of-guns wife, she wants guns.  Lots of guns.  I'm one happy man!

Salt Lake Drive

Yesterday was a lot of driving and a little bit of fun.  One of the fun things about driving to Salt Lake is driving past the Bonneville Salt Flats.  There is a lot of automotive history and legend there.  One of these days, when I get a day off, I would like to go and see some racing on the flats!  Or anything really.  The kids like stopping there.  The rest stop has an elevated platform that lets you see kinda far into the distance.

This was taken on the platform.

Awesome!

Sadly, just a mile past the rest stop, we saw an accident where it looked like the car drove off the road and rolled.  I have never seen a car as mangled as I saw that one.  It looked like a piece of rolled up tin foil.  It had just barely happened a few minutes before passed it.  In fact, there was a lady who had made a point of walking the distance back to where the car had ejected all there stuff to get a blanket, and was headed back to the car, where as we passed, I noticed someone straightening the legs of a body laying face first in the dirt.  I only bring this up, because, and not to sound cliche, it made me think about our mortality and how life can be interrupted in the blink of an eye.  I was upset and saddened by what I saw.   It helped me to realize that we need to spend more time loving and less time stressing.

Anyway, we went to the zoo again.  They have some big LEGO thing going on there, where they have animals made of LEGO's.  Like 200,000+ of them.  It was neat.  Both pictures of apes were done with LEGO's.  That's why they look pix-elated.

Altogether, we had a fun time.  The zoo is under some construction to bring in some new animals.  It opens April of next year I think.  We are very excited for that.  And these are for my mom.

~Jake

Trains!!

Trying to find things to do in Elko, is really hard sometimes!!  In the two years that we've been here, we've done just about all one can do.  With kids anyway.  Every once in a while, we get to do something different. Today we went to a park that had a train.  Just a train.  We had a good time.  We never were able to go before with the kids because it's a popular spot for transients and other scary people.  But today we lucked out.

The cabin had all the windows removed and expanded metal put over it, but one of the pieces had been bent out.  So, a few hundred generations of pigeons have been living there.  For a really, really long time.  Judging by the poop.

We enjoyed some Fun at the parks and watched movies and ate popcorn.  Not a bad day for our last one.  Tomorrow we head out to take the kids back.~Jake

Summertime Fun!!

Having the kids here is so much fun.  Basically, we do a lot more stuff than we would had they not been here.  Today we went to Lamoille Canyon.  It's about 20 miles from Elko in the Ruby Mountains.  There is quite a bit of water that runs down, mostly because of the snow caps that never seem to melt.  The water is ICE cold!!  Just like it would be on Mount Graham.  And it's close to town, just like Mount Graham.  Unlike Mount Graham, however, there aren't a lot of evergreen trees.  But there are trees.  So that's nice.  I've been told that Lamoille Canyon is Northern Nevada's best kept secret, although we met people there from California just today.  We hiked for a bit, but with the toddler falling every two feet, sometimes over nothing whatsoever, we decided it was time to go.  Afterwards we went to Lamoille Grove, which is a small park with a creek flowing through it, apparently from the Rubies, and tall trees and lots of grass.

The canyon never ceases to be amazing, what with the hiking, the bugs, the river, etc.  Hopefully we can spend more time up there as the summer goes by.  This area doesn't get very much summer.  So when good warm weather shows up, you take advantage of it.  I took some videos with the hope of putting them here, but they were done in landscape vs. portrait, so you'd have to watch them sideways.  But i guess that wouldn't be too bad.  We did some water balloons today, too!!  It was fun.  I can't remember the last time i did that.

Anyway, that's it for today.  I have too many pictures to upload for all that we've done today.~Jake