A Driver Nightmare...

This is what every tree deliverer or foreman dreads: Getting stuck in front of a bunch of planters

Getting stuck happens in the bush. And it doesn't need much! Dirt roads can get muddy quickly. Imagine after a week of uninterrupted rain! When you are rushed by time, needing to get trees somewhere before the planters run out or even get there, it adds an undesired stress factor.

But getting stuck in front of a crew of unhelping planters, who are judging, describing and "documenting" every move, might make the situation worst, mostly if the driver's pride is affected and he starts using doubtful methods to get the truck out(and further).



It was probably not the best way to get a truck unstuck. The truck's canopy is obviously full of boxes, elevating the vehicle's center of gravity, which, as you can see, makes the truck tilt.

Also, going forward might not have been the best idea, as the road is quite steep just after the mud hole. In this case, the driver was probably not only thinking of getting out, but also of getting further along the road to deliver the trees.

Putting sticks in front of the wheels is efficient, but they need to be well placed and you usually need to put sticks in front of more than one tire, planning where the wheels will go. You also need to make sure you let the tire grip on the sticks.

And it won't always work.

It's also possible that sticks couldn't be placed efficiently behind the stuck tire, but putting them in front, advancing the truck slightly and then putting sticks behind the tire in order to go backwards could have helped. Furthermore, getting out backwards instead of forward could have been helped by the huge planter workforce pushing the truck out. A process that might have been dangerous if they were to push the truck forward.

Instead, the driver, with the initial help of the sticks, just pushed the truck half way through the deep hole, messing up with his tail gate in the process and worsening the situation, as the truck is now hopelessly stuck.

Of course, my analysis could be wrong, as a video doesn't tell everything, but it seeems that if the mud hole couldn't necessarily be avoided, the truck could have got out of this hole relatively quickly. Of course, the need to get further, people observing or the simple thought that he could get out (I could have done the same thing) probably made the time constraint worse...

A Few Vids to Fill the Time...

These videos are interesting. Not only are they somewhat funny, but they'll show a thing or two to potential rookie planters.

Dialing the shit: Building an A-frame tree cache:



My friend and fellow Québécois tree deliverer Jean-Bernard, in a completely unstaged presentation, building an A-Frame somewhere around Grande Prairie, Alberta. The A-frame is necessary to protect tree seedlings during the summer part of the season, by letting the trees breathe while being protected from the sun. During the spring we usually just put a tarp over unopened boxes.

And what a clean truck, dude (Looks like the bed's body is a little concave tough)! The ending is some classic J-B.

Now, a "treeplanting record":



Apart from the first part not really being a record (I've seen better in more difficult land, not to mention a relatively unfair comparison given the land difference, but it's supposed to be a joke), the video shows classic rookie cluelessness. As a rookie, expect to waste a lot of time, at first, to figure out where you should plant, with lots of time in between to wonder what you're doing there...

Looks like they filmed me during my first year!

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...

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...