England

I've been back about a week now from my work trip to England.  Overall it was a successful project and we got a lot more done than expected.  The working conditions were pretty crappy, and we didn't get to see too much, but it was an OK trip.  There's a pretty good chance we'll be going back for more, I just hope it's not until it warms up.  We were working mostly inside a building, but there was no heat, so we were sitting in freezing temps all day, without much moving around.  Also, we were getting to work in the dark and heading home in the dark, so we didn't get to see much of the town either.  Some unseasonably cold conditions while we were there and they don't deal with it very well.  All I really took pictures of was the site, so here's a few of those:

 Driving around Huddersfield in "Arctic Conditions".

 Dave driving the Audi A6 we had.  Front wheel drive with tires that had no tread (rain grooves only) = pathetic in the snow.

 One of the rooms I was working in.  Notice the big puddle in the foreground.

 The roof above where I was working in one spot.  This was an easy one to avoid, but many other places, I had to keep moving around my table as new leaks in the roof and sprinkler system dripped all over my equipment.

 Another view of that first room.

 At least they cleaned the place up for us...

 Several of the rooms didn't have any light, so I was often working by headlamp.

 One of the cleaner parts of the facility...

 Pretty much all the stuff we usually have packed in one of those trucks, mounted on a pallet.  Before we found these extra-long pallets, we had to move things around piece by piece.  There's also a 200-lb nitrogen cylinder under the table that you can't see.  The rod sticking out of the ground in the foreground is a hole I just finished.

 Another room.  I like the lighting on this picture.

 More damp, cold and dirty stuff.

 By the last day or so, it had warmed up enough, we could do a few holes outside.  We had this van for that purpose.  The machine in the foreground is a "geoprobe", which is what drives our rods into the ground.  It's basically just a fancy, track-mounted, really fast and powerful jack-hammer.  The drillers were from Belgium.

 Another view of one of the outside holes, with a backdrop of some breathtaking English architecture.

 The van had a manual transmission.  The pedals were in the same place (gas right, clutch left), but shifting left handed took a bit of getting used to.  That and the fact that the cab of this thing was super cramped for me.

 We finished a day early and did some sightseeing in York.  York had some neat sights to see, but I'd left my camera in the car.  Here we have Vinny driving into the sunset on the way home, which was one of the few times we actually saw the sun...

Another crappy hotel room, the night before we left.















It's pretty glamorous being a globe-trotting geologist, let me tell ya...