In the second week of working, things started to pick up in pace. I got badged for all the refineries and plants in the area, so I was allowed to work out there. One of the places we went to work before we got badged though was the Canadian River Sand & Gravel mine. We got to see the operators dumping the buckets of rock into the screening plant and watching it filter the rocks into different groups based off of size. It was really cool working out here and seeing all that goes into the gravel and sand business.
I also got the opportunity to go to a small gas plant in Allison, Texas. There was not much going on out there. I did get the opportunity to see what goes into getting a permit and learning the different hazards of working around all the loud machinery and any other danger in the industrial field. We went out there to take down some scaffolding, which did not take more than two hours. The next plant I got to go visit was another small gas plant in Cactus, Texas. When we went out there, I was on the Hydro Vac crew. The contract out there was to clean and replace catalyst tanks. The vacuum on the truck went in the top of the tanks and sucked all of the old catalyst and water out of the tanks while the other workers were in there feeding the old catalyst into the hose. Once we emptied the tanks, we tied bags of new catalyst to the hook on the crane. From there, the crane operator lifted the bag into the air and to the top of the tank. A worker then opened the bag and filled the tank. I had a really cool picture for this, but the site will not let me put it. “Sorry, this file type is not permitted for security reasons.”
