Back from Lima

I spent last week in Lima, Ohio, working on high voltage terminations at the new Ethanol plant being built there. It was an interesting experience, as I have not worked out of my local jurisdiction before. Now I'm a big "traveler"! I worked better than 12 hours per day every day to try to get the work done (estimated two weeks worth) in one week. I had a few 16 hour days, but what the heck, there wasn't anything else to do except sit in the hotel room and watch TV, or drink. Even the restaurants and bars closed down by 11 pm. I give the superintendent who is running that job a lot of credit. He's been there for 6 months now, staying in the hotel during the week, and going home to his family on the weekends. I'd either go bonkers, or become an alcoholic if I had that much free time without friends and family around.

The local hands in Lima were all good people, but I could tell they weren't happy that someone from another local came in to do "their" work. Likewise, they were happy to see me go, once all the terminations were completed. I can see their point, and they were very gracious and polite, and treated me well while I was there. There are 18 more terminations that need to be installed, once the feeders get pulled. I'm hoping to go back to do them. I run into this attitude even here in Cleveland. Many people think that installing HV terms is no big deal, and it isn't, as long as it's done correctly, with careful preparations and a high attention to detail. Unfortunately, most men who work with 480 volts don't make the leap to being more careful when working on 5kV, 15kV, or higher. Ah well, I'm just a prima-donna splicer. All of the cables checked out good, and I'm back home now. I'm headed to the mill on Monday, to start working on a blast furnace reline project. I'm looking forward to that too. Coincidentally, I started working for Lake Erie Electric on a blast furnace reline back in 1997.