Wanted: Poorly Motivated Individual, Must Have Own Rifle

Whiskey...Camp Mascot.

FABAMAS

Friday
Arctic
Bitching
And
Martini
Abstinence
Society

I need a Gin!

Never have I craved the hard bar so much. While a nice fat Zin would be delightful and tall cool pint of IPA would be quite fine right about now. 4.5oz of Plymouth or Sapphire and a twist and I would be in heaven. I guess a Trad in a dirty glass will have to suffice.

You all look wonderful. Are those new shoes?

Speaking of booze, looks as if we have lost ourselves a potential bear watcher.

So we happen to be located reasonably close to Hudson’s Bay and the ice out there is a melting fast. Big white Yogis are now roaming the coastline in search of food. Should there be no food on the coast they have to make there way inland until they find some tasty morsels to munch on. Recently the barren land grizzly has also begun to show up in the eastern arctic and they get the munchies too and this is where the bear watcher comes in handy.

The whole project revolves-quite literally –around the drill and it is a big noisy bastard. Within that drill are a couple drillers keeping themselves busy doing driller things. Most notably smoking and bitching during a run of 10ft then adding another rod and the process begins anew…for 12 hours. And did I mention it’s noisy! The job involves frequent lubrication of coarse threads on the ends of the drill rods. The grease used is supplied in five gallon buckets of a fine light brown matrix with the remarkable likeness of honey. Only it’s grease.

The bears love it. Should they catch a whiff of the stuff or just diesel fuel or say a smelly driller they’re in like flynn, but the drillers remain woefully indifferent in there noisy shack as they bitch and smoke up a storm. Many a driller has been chased out of the drill by Yogi and sometimes Boo-Boo too just for the taste of the grease.

Because working in this area has proven to be a somewhat contentious issue for many of the locals. Many positions on the project have opened for the sake of good community relations. The most coveted of them all is “Bear watcher”.

Job description:
2 people required 2 12 hour shifts, night and day. 2 weeks in 2 weeks out. Must provide own rifle. No reading, no walking, no carving, no sleeping. Just watching.

All interested please contact…

The number of replies have been off of the chart. Our two current guys are about to switch off for their breaks and most recently we have been in a panic replacing them. It wasn’t too bad until one of our hires found himself in the Grey Bar Hotel.

Ah…poor George. A local artisan whose milieu is caribou antlers on which he carves up likenesses of Inuit hunters. He had spent a week or so with us as a cook’s helper and was first in line to be one of the replacement shooters. So George is a bit of a character. My first day in Rankin he got the smell of new guy in town and tried to sell me a carving. In fact he was the first of many local carvers that I would meet during my three days in Rankin. So up he comes to camp to flip eggs and wash dishes. Always with a smoke in his mouth just waiting to be lit up the moment he’s finished in the kitchen. When not in the kitchen he chips away at his day with an antler and a Dremel tool. Caribou antler stinks. George knows all too well. After George left we recently discovered his preferred method of dealing with the odor: A plastic 1 cup blender bong!

Always wondered how powdered caribou antler could make ones eyes so glazed.

So George has a bit of a personal issue in camp one night. Seems his ex, of only a week has decided to shack up with her previous ex. He is in a bad mood. But it’s kind of funny as there is really nothing he can do about it and well he was just kind of a funny guy. The next day he asks if the helicopter is going into Rankin cuz he has to go for his once a month sign in with the Federales. A couple of days later Georges gig as “bull cook” comes to an end as we have a new cooking crew coming in and they are absolutely fabulous, but I digress.

So a couple of days later our helicopter engineer has to fly back home and the drill just happens to break a critical part. So everybody goes to town on the helicopter. Just as the engineer is about to check in for his flight he spots a familiar face. George and his fancy new matching locking bracelets. Seems on his first night back to town from camp he managed to violate his parole within mere seconds. So off to the clink in Yellowknife for who knows how long.

And to think we were going to pay this guy to sit around with a gun for 12 hours a day over a two week period doing…nothing.

Hope he’s only in for a short time. I really liked those carvings.

Happy thoughts.