After paying $500 bail they let me out again. Next Monday I went to court, where the District Attorney appeared a good sport and let the charges down from 30mph (50km/h) over to 15-20mph. Mrs. Judge then centenced me to a $50 fine + $40 costs and I received the rest of my $500 back.... so I got my mugshot for only 90 bucks and 7 hours time, bargain! (try that in Holland). All in all a nice experience....

So I spent 5 min in a US Jail! Now how many tourists get to say that?...

According to the coppers who booked me in (all my 10 fingerprints and my iris scans are in Big Brothers' posession now...) I was the first one to smile at a mug shot.... I actually thought it was all quite funny... So did they and took my picture with my camera phone.

Somewhere this week, at 5.45 in the morning I met Anthony the Deputy Sheriff as he drove in the opposite direction as I was through the little valley where I worked. Unluckily for me he switched on his radar device to discover that I was having fun on the winding mounain road.... at 80 mph (honestly, who really drives 50 at that time of the day). Outrunning was not an option as the valley does not have any hiding or turnoff opportunities (I did try it for a couple of minutes anyway, as he was about 1 km behind me and did not gain....). In the end I decided it might be cheaper to stop and wait for him. After taking a look at my beautiful Dutch drivers' licence he decided he had to arrest (!) me and let me pay a bail bond in order for me to show up in court.... So I followed him to his office (50 km in the opposite direction) where he booked me in... He was a good sport though and let me take his picture.

The valley road: 40 km of fun (if you swerve the potholes in some sections)

Some bad weather moving in: I got to test the rainsuit afterall

I am busy becoming the backhoe-expert

New toys to play with: cranes and backhoe excavators

Every 30 m this tool (inside a protective casing) is lowered down inside the rods to check the dip of the hole

Travis busy mixing new mud

The cuttings

This is the tank where the mud is mixed. The mud, air and cuttings come in through the blue hose into a cyclone, which separates the air from the mud and cuttings. The mud and cuttings are guided over a shaker screen whick separates the cuttings again from the mud.

And the mud school I followed in Houston in January comes in handy: in these tough drilling conditions the mud properties are critical. We do 3 tests per 12 hour shift to check these.

The principle behind flooded reverse drilling: The rods are actually double walled, made up of an inner and outer rod. Around the outer rod there is drilling mud that fills the hole. In the annulus between the two rods air is pumped down, which enters the inner rod near the bit. The mud in the inner rod becomes less dense than the outside mud due to the air bubbles in it and flows up.

When rods are added they are lifted with a winch but need to be held in place while the top thread is screwed in... time to build muscle

The drill collars (extra heavy rods to add weight on the bit) are tightened up to the right torque with a big wrench, clamp and a hydraulic cylinder

Roller reamer to keep the drill string centered in the hole to prevent hole deviation

The tricone bit that is used for the surface casing (compare it to the truck wheels)

On this rig everything is big: the rods for instance weigh about 250kg each. As this largely rules out manual handling the work is actually less demanding than on the coring rigs (but you do need to be even more careful with your fingers)

It appears that the neighbours have a small problem with gas escaping in large amounts... the gas is flared off. Quite spectacular at night: flames as big as the rig (40 m)!

The Exxon rig is drilling next door and will move to our site next week.

This is the site where I will be working with this week, with a Lang LM200 rig in the center. Method of drilling is 'flooded reverse rotary' with which you can drill in very difficult ground conditions. In fact Lang is hired in this case to drill the first 800m for Exxon, as they are having severe trouble... After the 800 m Exxon comes in with a large oilfield rig to drill down to a gas reserve at 1500m.

At Rangely in Colorado I passed an oilfield with numerous pumps and drilling rigs

made it....

Somewhere near the border with Colorado there appeared to be a wonderful playground for 4x4's... the sheer coincidence that I have a Jeep rental!...

High in the mountains things are just thawing up. I could still see countless snowmobile tracks on the ice and snow up the mountains, I think I should pay this place a visit in the winter too.

On my way to Colorado where I'll be drilling the coming week I saw this transport. Anyone need some cool tires for their ride?

From anywhere in Salt Lake City you can see the mountains that surround it, which helps to make it a really nice city.

The coming weeks I'll be working for Lang Exploratory Drilling. This company was aquired in the early '80s by Boart Longyear and now makes and uses the big stuff: rigs for rotary drilling. In the picture their latest creation: the LM700, about twice as big than the next largest rig they have ever made. It will be used to drill through the overburden (first couple of hundred meters), after this it will make way for an oilfield rig that will drill the rest down to a gas reserve.

....from where the journey continued to Salt Lake City

This mini-plain made it all the way from Wytheville to Detroit

On this map you can actually see where Pearisburg and the limestone mine (cross) are, about 1 hr from Wytheville