Phone calls have been short - he is up by 5:00am for a 6:00am meeting so just a brief 'hi'. He cannot call when he goes to bed since it is 5:00am my time. OK, well he has called at 5:00am to talk to me - but apparently I'm not all that nice at that hour and just being woken up (usually after only a few hours of sleep) so he has stopped doing it - sort of sad ...
So - yesterday was a treat - we spoke for at least 1/2 hour.
After laughing about a MONUMENTALLY STUPID thing I did yesterday - culminating with a final e-mail to him titled: "I AM AN IDIOT" (no, I am NOT telling) we got down to the day to day stuff.
He then tells me he is sitting in his room drying his feet out. Thus the long conversation.
What? Ick. Ick. Ick.
Here's the thing - 13 years ago Gary went out on a ship to watch his baby: "Diana" an offshore oil something or other be installed in the Gulf of Mexico. He needed steel toed boots and a hard hat to be on the ship at all - so he dutifully acquired a pair of shoes:
There they sat ... maybe being used every now and then - I cannot remember how many times he has been to a fab yard or when his GBS going off the shore of Italy when we lived in Norway - when he was at the site they built that, filled the divot full of water and floated the behomoth off - I am sure all these times required some sort of safety garb by the über cautious company he works for and so they came in handy.
Fast forward to the jungles of Papua New Guinea. Dressing gets complicated. Steel toed boots, insect repellent socks, insect repellent pants and, you guessed it - insect repellent shirts. I am assuming a hard hat is also required - he hasn't ever mentioned wearing it but owns it for some reason ....
He tells me that daily - he is slogging around construction sites - watching his 'planning a city' come to fruition. He didn't really design a city - but that is the best description. A wharf, roads, bridges, sites for the gas treatment plant, sites for where they will extract the gas, water treatment facility and that is only what I have heard of in passing.
So he has been visiting these sites that are in their infancy - some just being bulldozed to be leveled - some - like the wharf is farther along (I didn't even know he was working on a wharf until he mentioned it yesterday ....).
He says he is most often in ankle deep mud while walking. His two greatest wishes at the moment he had called me were that:
a) he had two pairs of boots
b) his boots looked like this:
Apparently the waterproofing he put on ... he can't remember when has worn off and the boots are soaked from the mud and cleaning. And they don't dry during the night - so if he had two pairs - he could trade off while one pair was drying. The higher boots are from the fact that he is in ankle deep mud and is coveting the other guys boots that can just hose them off and not get their socks and everthing else wet before coming back into the 'office'. I use the term 'office' loosely since I suggested that he just walk around in his socks for a few hours while he was inside. He described that all that mud doesn't exactly stay outside the office floors are not all that clean. He said he is so tired of walking around in grit ... fun, fun, fun and sounds like not much of an office and more like a 'mud room' with a computer attached.He told me that the night before that his boots were caked with mud, but someone told him he had mink oil he could use - which meant somehow cleaning and drying his boots to get the oil on them. So (and here, dear reader, hold on to your hat ... it gets a little ... bumpy) he TAKES HIS TOOTHBRUSH and thouroughly cleans his boots off. No - I didn't EVEN DARE ASK ...
Addendum: Gary said it was a SPARE toothbrush ... I feel ever so much better ...
Next he sat down and for an hour and a half used a hair dryer on the boots to dry them out. Then slathered them with 4 or 5 coats of mink oil. I was impressed with his travel hair dryer - he said it only shut off once and blew the circuit once! Running it an hour and a half!
So .... problem solved ... right?
Wrong.
Put on his boots yesterday and his feet got wet again - he says he is so tired of walking around with his feet damp. Apparently he didn't use that little hair dryer long enough and now has sealed in the damp into the boot and the only way out is through the inside.
HE IS NOT A HAPPY CAMPER.
It sort of brought home to me that he is not just on a spa sort of vacation out there in the jungle. There are safety concerns from the various tribes in the area ... as much as I joke about it. He is on malaria pills, wearing clothing to help with the mosquitoes and apparently slogging around in ankle deep mud everywhere. No - not a spa vacation at all. And he goes back to do it all over again the day after I leave Brisbane ...
He left what I believe was called Gobe (since his e-mail says that is where he can be contacted) and sent me an e-mail that he made it (via helicopter) to Nogoli yesterday to check on that site. He will stay there a day or so, be choppered back to Morrow, stay the night then somehow - chopper / plane / hitchhike - I am unsure - make it to Port Moresby (the capital) by Monday morning. Then a half a day in Port Moresby (where I have begged him to shop for large wood carvings for me ... cool!) and on a plane to Brisbane. I believe that is two whole days to get out of the jungle and back to civilization. DANG!
In the meantime - he thinks he has cell phone coverage, but probably no Internet - thus no perusing my blog to access my sanity level for the next few days. MAN - I'M GOING TO TOWN!!!! Especially if 'radio silence' is the new standard for us right now. Hoping for a call after he wakes up (my afternoon) - if not - prepare yourselves for some rabid blogging. Kidding ... I leave tomorrow for Brisbane - how bad can it get in a little over 24 hours? Probably shouldn't have said that, huh?
Hopefully the last day he can wear his tennis shoes and get his feet dry -
I would hate to see him lose a few toes ....
kidding ....
sort of ....
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