Another busy season in the bush

Been busy, working in an isolated fly-in camp...Not much, and too much to report, but the season is going very well and I still have quite a lot to go.

Will post pictures and longer posts when I'll have time, probably meaning after the season...

Again, and again, and again...

Time to get this blog out of hibernation!

Leaving for Edmonton this afternoon, getting ready for another tree planting season.

There's a few days of pre-season work at the Spruce Grove yard, then we're driving up to Grande Prairie to set up camp. Planters will show up on May 12th, and the season officially starts the following day.

Should be a good one.

Time to leave on a jet-plane...

Treeplanting Motivational 2008

This is the time of the year when my seasonal job comes back to haunt me. As a friend once said; "the day I won't miss planting when the winter approaches, I know I'll be done with it." Funny enough, I absolutely hated the experience during my first year. Now, every year, I miss it more and sooner...Guess I'm not done just yet!

Here's my treeplanting motivational posters for the 2008 season:

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Shitty Trucks, Big Trucks, Good Luck!

The first two photos are not mine, but I couldn't resist stealing them, mostly since we see the great times I had dealing with an over-heating truck on Canada Day Eve.



It started the week off on the right step, taking 6 hours to get to a city 3 hours away...



And this is the giant trucks we had to deal when we were replanting land in the middle of a gigantic open-pit coal mine.



But the best truck I had to drive this season was the rollogon. The slowest machine to ever roll over earth, and sometimes, mud. Contrary to my supervisor's original beliefs, it won't go over a crevasse though. I'm doing the classic John-John pose there.

Alright, guess I just wanted to post pictures of shitty and/or big trucks. I'll leave you with this one:

Busy But Alive

Working hard, slept in only two beds in a month and today was the first actual day off I've had (And I've been forgotten in Rocky Mountain House as the cook took my truck to go get the food order and left for camp, so no one picked me up and I'm still sitting in the hotel lobby...Awesome!)

The Saskatchewan contract lasted three weeks and was quite difficult on everybody, but we now moved onto the beautiful Rocky Mountain House area for our spring contract there. We planted about half of the prescribed trees in the shift that ended yesterday. Been working a lot, with not much rest, but it is less demanding physically and emotionally than last year and I have had a few very easy days (including heli slinging duty which mean 10% work and 90% wait). Also, we started with three crews and are now down to two since a crew left to plant oilfields in northern Alberta. We still have two tree deliverers, and delivering one crew is not a difficult job most of the time. Mostly when you're used to deliver three crews alone. We might lose another crew in a week or so, so I'll be delivering one crew plus additional planters from Ontario as their spring season ends. Then, towards the end of our summer contracts, all the original crews should be back together for the final stretch.

I've been writing daily entries about the season so far, but I won't post them until the season ends as I have nop time and internet fares are prohibitive.

Until then, keep pounding!

time to go wait...

Getting There...

So I'm at work and I'm bored. I'm also slightly pissed at the Montreal Canadiens.

I've been asked, for the last few weeks, to do follow-ups and supervisor calls to angry/unsatisfied/abusive/plain crazy customers. So I dont walk the floor, helping/assisting fellow agents anymore, I simply sit at my desk, looking into problematic accounts, resolving situations and calling the customers to inform them or to let them vent about their expectations versus what we actually offer and what they have accepted upon agreeing to the Terms and Conditions of Service (My usual approach is to press mute and wait. When they're done complaining/yelling, I wait one more second, as it makes them uneasy. Then I explain everything with a really calm, quiet voice. Usually works everytime!)

Sometimes it sucks, as the customer is actually right and there's nothing I can do, other times, the customer is either an arrogant douchebag who tought he could circumvent the information given by the agent who took the call and get preferential treatment or unjustified credits (usually through lies or self-important crap like "I built the Surrey Sports Complex!") or a customer who was given the wrong information by the first agent. But most of the time, I resolve the problem. I'm actually quite good at what I do. I don't like it, but I'm good.

So good that it takes me an hour to do all the daily scheduled follow-ups (Might also be that there isn't that much to do). My multiple bosses don't seem to realize that yet (Good luck! I have only two days to go and I'm calling off tomorrow), so I enjoy the rest of the day browsing the web, reading, writing or simply doing fucking nothing, waiting for the clock to get to the point where I punch-out.

But damn, I can't wait to get out and go back to my tree-hugging, $60,000-worth truck-idling, shitloads-paying tree-planting job! In a few days I'm off to exciting Edmonton, Alberta for some yard work before getting to inappropriately-named Hudson Bay, Saskatchewan (probably an old Hudson's Bay trading post) to start the season and really bust my ass.

Until then, I'll sit on it.

Also, maybe, I'll pay a visit to my dentist, book a flight out west, send a few documents to the treeplanting company's offices, pay a fine, get some supplies, try to sleep and see family and friends.

Maybe.

Guitars Around the Camp Fire

A treeplanting-related musical project?

That's the idea behind Peppermill Records' album, Hi and Ho, We Plant Trees, a "collection of old and new songs done by treeplanters, about treeplanting, and for the most part, for other treeplanters."

Check out their website, you can get the music and artwork for free. There's also plenty of other treeplanting goodies, from a lingo dictionary to a video gallery, passing by the rare, remarkable animated short by Frédéric Back: The Man Who Planted Trees.

Definitely worth it. As for me, it will be part of my playlist for the long drives between Eastern Saskatchewan and Western Alberta this spring/summer.

Tupperfan's Guide to Useless Knowledge: There's a higher percentage of artists, visual arts, cinema, photography, litterature and music students in a treeplanting camp than in the general population. There's also (generally) more pot and booze, making for really interesting camp fires jams and discussions.

Hi and Ho, We Plant Trees website:
http://www.peppermillrecords.com/pm007

Time to go plant words...

Rooted Lives

I'm slowly getting in treeplanting mode and I found this interesting video. I usually post this kind of stuff on my planting blog, but this desserves a little more attention.

Below is a trailer for Rooted Lives, a documentary directed by Erika Drushka, depicting the lives of three British-Columbia career treeplanters, known in the business as "lifers".

Here's the website, a better-quality Quicktime version of the video is available here.



Tupperfan's Guide to Useless Knowledge: B-C's treeplanting season can start as early as February on the Pacific Coast (highly rainy at that time of the year) and last over 6 months, thus earning the workers wage highly sufficient to not work for the rest of the year if they want to, allowing them to pursue any personal interests and venue, ranging from arts to travelling, passing by full-time parenting. (Some treeplanting outfits gathering to veterans and lifers will even offer children daycare services)

And so I'm back in Banff...

Wow, I really need to start posting more regularly, you stop and it's hard to get back on track!

I needed some rest before heading to yet another contract, this time delivering/crewbossing a tree spraying (with pesticides, so the trees that were planted a few years ago don't die too early) contract, so I asked my supervisor to leave the actual contract early so I could have actual down time. Since I didn't feel like heading all the way back east, I decided to go back to Banff.

And since Banff is an expensive place, mostly when you have about two weeks to kill, I found a job back at my old hotel, in order to save/make money and have a place to sleep. So what can I say about it? Well, it was th best/worst idea I ever got, as I'm having a blast, seeing old friends and meeting new people, but leaving will be hard, even if I'm scheduled to come back for a little longer in a month. It also sucks that one of my good friends will be in Banff for two weeks, only days after I leave back to the bush!

I took a few nice pictures, but I'll leave that for tomorrow as I want to post a few pics from my Alberta contract:



The land as it is between Edson and Hinton, in between Edmonton and the Rockies. The bush beeing heavily industrialized, thanks to the oil industry, you can see an oil well in the background, in front of a tarped cache where we'd plant trees(Where I had to plant a "finger" of really shitty land that became known as "my finger"...)



That's what you might run into while planting trees in the middle of a forest.



The FIST (Fiberglass Insulated Seedling Transport) unit and float trailer I had to use for most of my stint as a tree-deliverer in Alberta. A different experience.



A "crummy", a weird hybrid between a pick-up truck and a bus. As you can see from the pic, it's relatively sketchy and you won't be surprised to read that it got pulled over by the police. They asked us to get it inspected so I drove it to town and it failed for many reasons, including the deer remains on the hood, so we couldn't transport planters in the back anymore). Once, I also got locked inside the passenger area while getting my water bottle, I had to get out by a very small window...



Daily management meeting. Conrad, Matty and a beer bottle.



Aaron, Andy and Mel planning the next day.



Flip Cup Tournament.



The shirtless team had a girl who was unwilling to go farther than halfway... and a half!



We even got a referee!



Polish Luke will show up anywhere, as long as there's a decent party and some booze!



Victory!



Lost in thoughts.

Summer Plant

Usually, summer planting is a little more casual, chill. I signed up for a summer plant contract in Alberta in order to be a regular tree planter, not have any responsibilities and be done my day by 7PM max.

I showed up in Edson a week ago, not knowing anyone in my new camp. After planting roughly 100 trees and making an awesome 10 bucks, Byron, the camp supervisor came to me to ask me to help with tree delivery, as his tree runner needed some time off.

So I took on the delivery duties for the week, accepting many repsonsibilities, stress and very long days. Their work area is gigantic, and it's been normal for me to drive for 45 minutes to get to a few planters, then drive another half hour to get to the tree cache, then another 30 minutes to get to another crew. I logged at least 400 kilometers a day this week!

The other interesting part about the forest between Hinton and Edson is that it's heavily industrialized, with pipelines and oil rigs everywhere (Alberta having the second largest reserves of oil in the world after Saudi Arabia, mostly in the oilsands of the north of the province) and I've never seen so much heavy traffic on bush roads! So we basically have to radio our position every 5 kilometers or so, to make sure not to be hit by a wideload in a turn!

I got some pictures, but I didn't take the time to load them unto my computer. As I should have more time this week, going back to regular planting duties, I'll try to upload them so I can post some next week. Interestingly enough, Steve, a crewboss who just arrived from another Alberta camp in Fort McMurray and visited this blog before noted how blogging while planting finally ends up being apologetic for not blogging and not having time to post pics.

Well sorry guys, that's about all the time I've got, more next week!!!

Time to go lie to someone else...

Still Alive...

...but absolutely no time...besides, my computer is fucked and I just took a minute at the busy library of Hearst.

Had another though week, we are under-staffed, our equipment broke a lot this week so it meant I had a lot of long days, including a ferw ranging from 6:30AM to 11:40PM...

So, basically, I'm exhausted...

Will post pics and longer post when I'll have time, meaning probably in July...

Allright, I'm out, time to have no time!

Quick One

The first shift went by fast, as the planters had a quick start and kept me busy, so we were able to wrap the first part of the Northshore contract in 3 days and a half instead of 5 as planned.

So we're in Elliot Lake, also known as the Florida of the North because of it's huge retirement community. Needless to say we got a bunch of nasty looks, but people have been very nice. The cops gave a few tickets last night to planters pissing outside, but in retrospect, it was a pretty good day off.

Tree delivery is great, altough it's stenuous, as I've been working an average of 14 hours a day and it doersn't really stop on day off as there's a bunch to do in town like getting some supplies or the vehicles serviced.

So I'll just post a few pictures from the week and will try to catch on the next day off...



The management team busy at night. In this picture, from left to right, Callan and Maggie, crewbosses, and Linn, our camp supervisor.



Me and one of my work tools...Pretty sweet, eh?



Our first camp, the Wilderness Lodge. Really nice setup, management had the priviledge to sleep in cabins while planters were sleeping in their tents. We also had the rare luxury of eating inside, but the weather has been so nice this week that it wasn't that useful...We're already gone to another camp for a week, which should be as good as this one...



Maggie directing some rookies



From the truck



A moose skull Codie found in her piece. The thing is massive and really heavy.

Allright, I'm out, time to go get some stuff at Canadian Tire...

And There We Go Again!

And I'm up north, in Matheson, Ontario more precisely, at one of Outland's regional yards for some pre-season work and training, before getting up to our respective camps to get things ready for the planters. So we basically pack trucks up once in a while, watch videos about chainsaw safety and get back to the motel at 5PM for some beer and joints...

Good life, but it'll get busy soon! Here's a few pics I snapped today and yesterday:




Toronto-North Bay: Another ride up north in an old beat up school bus...Hopefully for the last time of the season!



A flat-deck and some Northern Ontario skies



The Matheson yard.



Tila's fetching it...



Packing up a truck for camp set-up.



Deliverers being good at doin' nothin'...I'm also really good



Our classy motel in Matheson: Vi-Mar!

But before getting there, I was in Southern Ontario, Fort Erie, Niagara Falls and Toronto, seeing planting buddy Kenny and doing some office training:



The Fort that gave it's name to the city of Fort Erie...Guess where it is located?



A mall in town..



The town from the mall...Kenny admiring.



The Glen: A gorge downstream of the world-famous Niagara Falls. On the other side of the river, the United States.



Apparently...



True!



Me kicking Kenny's ass at climbing the spider rock!




Mah, there's just a lot of water! (It was raining as well)



Niagara Falls has expended quite a lot. Last time I came, when I was about 14 years old, there was only the Minolta Tower standing (the one that looks like a drumstick)!



Kenny with Buffalo in the background. Fort Erie is basically a Canadian suburb of Buffalo.



Some windmills. I love windmills...but mostly testing my camera's zoom!

Time to go share a bed with a dude...