Complex Numbers

It's a gas

So yesterday I get called out to a job site where a contractor is very carefully putting a road over the main gas feeder line to the city. It's actually two lines in parallel, but anyway, the problem with gas lines (other than the obvious) is that it's hard to tell how deep they are without digging, and the only way to dig is by hand, because equipment will pop those suckers open like overripe bananas.

So here's two laborers in a 7' hole in the ground, and about six other guys (me the engineer, the developer's agents, the construction foreman, the backhoe operator who had nothing to do until it came time to refill the hole, and so on) standing around the hole. I watched them clear some dirt away from the top of a bright yellow gas main. Satisfied that they'd found the right one, I started to wander off with one of the developers when this old guy comes up - I don't know what his job was - and squints into the hole.

I'm talking to the developer when I glance over and see that the old guy is smoking a goddamn cigarette.

Over a recently exposed gas main.

Now, I'm not going to say I ran away, but about then it started to rain and I said, "See ya!" and tore out of there in four wheel drive.

Now, it should be noted that the chance that there was any leak of gas from the line is vanishingly small. However, the result if there were a leak is... well, I can't even contemplate it. A disaster of biblical proportions. Dogs and cats sleeping together. Mass hysteria.

I don't write about my work much, mostly because it's usually mind-numbingly boring to DO, let alone read about, but every once in a while something will happen to get my adrenaline flowing.