Frat House

"I feel like I'm in a Frat house" says our replacement processor as he walks up to our crew-house apartment from his hotel across the street.  I'm standing in flip-flops, beer in hand, grilling steaks outside our door on the little portable BBQ we bought.  He has just recently arrived in town to replace our current processor who is rotating out on vacation in the next couple days.  Our shirtless, mullet-sporting neighbour sits on his porch pumping out rock music.  I laugh because the statement is true, it pretty much is a frat-house.  Since this is a longer several month project, the office arranged to rent us (the field crew) an apartment.  As a result of living together there's much goofing around and bachelor pad frat-housery that occurs when we're not working, especially when the two of us are both around the same age and get along well.

Apartments are cheaper for the company than hotels for long-term jobs, but they're also kind of nice for us as well.  Hotels and restaurant food get pretty old after a few weeks, never-mind the whole summer.  Its kind of nice to have a home away from home.

Our apartment is located on the floor above a real estate office and hair salon.  Its a pretty good sized unit, but wins no Martha Steward awards.  I suppose we can't be picky in a small town.  In short its a five-bedroom slum-house.  One of the bedrooms is so stained and had such a musty smell we refuse to go in there and just use it for storage.  It quickly earned the nickname "murder room", because the smell and carpet stains looked like there very well could have been a grisly murder take place.  The 4th bedroom we've converted into a little office, while the remaining 3 serve as actual bedrooms.  The rest of the apartment is dated but sufficient.  In the hallway a tiny 2-stroke pocket bike sits in pieces - a result of an impulsive purchase that was a heck of a lot of fun, but only lasted 2 days before we broke it.  We're in the process of repairing it, but at the moment lack the tools, expertise, and initiative to tackle it any further than disassembling it into the state that it is in now.

Aside from being away from my girl for long periods, life is here is pretty good.  I could stay here all summer pretty happily if she was here with me.  The weather stays relatively warm, there's lots of world-class hiking to do on our days off, and I've bought a membership to the local gym for a price that's laughably affordable.  The flying schedule is undemanding to say the least as there is fog off-shore every morning, so most days we don't manage to get airborne until late-afternoon and fly until early evening.