First thank you all for the well wishes!
It's been a tough 4 days. However it looks like I made a really good first impression, the company hired a lot of people on the last call and used that as an excuse to cancel our Friday. But at the end of the day just before we left the yard, my foreman was told there was work for 5 guys on Friday. I immediately ducked down in my seat on our old school short bus to avoid being seen :whistling: as my heels are torn up and three days of healing are desperately needed. 4 guys spoke right up, a fifth said I'll take it and the foreman said "no" which got a response of "what did I do wrong?" I know but that doesn't matter here. Anyway, the foreman in his thick Jamaican accent said "I'm only taking my 5 best men," and then said to my roommate "Juan! where is your roommate?" :doh: to which I sat up and said "here Sir" and he said "do you want tomorrow?" and I said "sorry Sir, but my heels really need to heal," and he said "okay Randy." I barely made it through this day, and really thought I could jeopardize my job by not making it through a fifth day of this crucial first week.
The work consist of three tasks, setting rubber pads on the support rails, placing the Solar panels and bolting them in place. Setting the rubber is easy and anyone can do this proficiently, Setting the panels is the really physically demanding task that the young guys seem to prefer, why I don't know. The panels are about 4' long x 2.5' wide and I'm guessing they are about 25-30# :shock: and are filled with Mercury and other dangerous chemicals(you don't want to get cut by these!) they also need to be spaced just right using a wood spacer to check this placement, the third and last job is bolting the panels to the rails.
This is where I have shined! Many things need to be checked when doing this part of the process, positioning, spacing to the U-bolts at the end of the tables and using a paint pen to mark the bolts showing they aren't coming loose. Each panel needs two bolts to secure them(pics below) and I use a drill set to 80# of torque. Most other the other crew that don't see much time on the drill only do two bolts at time, but I noticed that if I place my plastic stair thing just right I can do three, which I found out is allowed. There is one guy that does nothing but drill and after watching my work told me "Randy, you are a keeper(it's really easy to get released from this job site,) if you can keep up to "me" which you do, you are staying 100%. I've done many hundreds of these bolts now and only had two fail(stripped) in that I couldn't remove them and reset. We are required to set 2 rows of 240 panels a day plus we hang rubber on the next 2 rows to get a head start for the next day, something few other crews do.
I feel blessed to be on the crew I was assigned. No nasty attitudes, great banter and joking and we all bust our a** to get the work done. Believe me, I've been observing the other crews working around us, and there is a lot of ugly stuff being said/talked about including extreme racism. Our crew has all races and we are awesome with each other, total respect for all. :yahoo: I'll tell ya what though, I have no clue what these young guys are talking about at break time sometimes, lol I'm clearly getting older. :smilie_happy:
Below are some pics including my route to the job site(Indian Springs is a military Drone base), the Solar fields(the panels are in the big boxes in the middle of the rows,) my drill and the rubbers/bolts both tightened and loose and that pic at the bottom is the only gas/mini mart between the 373/US95 junction, and if you look closely in the back to the right that is the Alien Brothel :shock: as this is Nye county, not Clark county.
~O~
oh2: But Great Googly Moogly there is nothing in my area right now. Those that are around are averaging $3,000 :shock: I'm sure that will change along with the temperatures. There are some beautiful 1500's in that price range but I'm NOT going down that road again, even though I'm sure I'll miss that power. Nope, I'm going back to a 4 banger, easier to work on and the wealth of knowledge here have made that decision for me. I saw a few nice bikes at a much more realistic price in Dan's neighborhood. How nice it would be to visit him again and come home with a new Girlfriend to boot. :yes: 
