New Llamas
Well, on the Ranch, the Alpaca’s mentioned a couple of posts ago have gone, and have been replaced with four llamas, three of which are pregnant!
It’s fair to say that the llamas have settled in, and get on with the guardian dogs, better than the alpacas did, plus they’re not nearly so skittish. They even go on regular wlaks down the driveway!
It’s almost six months since my last blog entry, so much happening, some good, some very sad.
I had a nice leave over Christmas, but then had to leave on New Years day. A trip over to Norway, a mobilization and then the start of a transit with the Ship bound for India. We only went as far as Malta with it, but I did get some photographs going through the Straits of Gibraltar and entering the historic Grand Harbour at Valletta. It was a short trip, then I had to return to the UK before returning to Colorado to get my Offshore Survival Refresher course done.
Every time I do my Offshore Survival I say “this is the last”, well this time I accept that it isn’t! If I do it one more time, then I can work offshore until I’m 57, which sort of ties in with when I want to retire.
After getting back to Colorado, I had a longish leave. Lots of hassles trying to get visa and paperwork sorted out for India, and also getting my new passport.
Then I had the trip to India. The job was a strange one, in many ways it did not go well, but because most of the problems were not “our” fault, but because of circumstances out of our control, the company still made money of the job, even though we had to leave it half finished.
While I was in India, I got bad news. My dad collapsed with a heart attack on Thursday the 15th. Despite the best efforts of a passer-by, who performed CPR, the emergency services and the staff at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary he never regained consciousness.
I had a mega-journey from India back to Buckie. I was able to see dad in hospital but, it was obvious that he was already gone even though it was a week before he passed.
To get back to the UK, I had two ship to ship transfers, a load of paperwork, a mad 3 hour car ride and 5 flights. The flight connections were so tight, I never even saw two of the airports that I passed through, and the only wait I had was an hour at Heathrow before my flight to Aberdeen.
After dad’s passing there was a lot to sort out in Buckie and then the funeral, before coming back to Colorado.
Now that I am back in Colorado, it’s been a long “leave”, part compassionate, part scheduled. In fact, combined, probably one of the longest leave’s I’ve had in a very long time.
New Arrivals
So, the four new Alpacas have arrived on the ranch and are slowly settling in. The vet was out today to give them the once over. We were going to geld one of the males, but have decided to keep him intact for the time being. Who know’s, he may manage to hang on to his family jewels!
So I finally made it back to Colorado after a 21 day job that entailed being away for almost eight weeks! It seems to have been a year for long trips, apart from a 12 day trip to Singapore, my other trips this year have all been over six weeks, including one of almost eight and one of almost eleven. Having said that, the 12 day trip to Singapore was only supposed to have been 5 days!
Anyway, back home again and it looks like that is me done for the year. Next thing on the cards appears to be a trip to Norway around the 4th January. Who knows, I may be past the New Year Blues by then!
The big news on the ranch is that we may be exchanging our goats for Alpacas. I’m trying my best not to wind up DW, as she did in the past maintain that she would NEVER have alpacas! I may have some pics to post of the new arrivals sometime tomorrow.
I usually do a ‘round up’ of the years events and trips, but it’s only the 11th, so there’s time yet for that in another post.
I’ve been off-shore in Australia for four weeks now, and I was in Darwin for the week before that too. The job was slow in getting started, but now things are heading slowly to an end, for us, at least! By the middle of the week we should be done and I can head back to Colorado and my dear wife again. The big question will be, ‘how long for’, the answer to which, I don’t know at the moment. It could be a short one and then off again, or,if there are delays with paperwork, it might be for a while. The next job is likely to be one in India, so I may have to do the transit there (short leave) or go down once the ship has arrived for the actual job (long leave). By the time I do get off the Sapura 3000 and head back to the USA, I should know for how long!
The migration of the on-line stores is almost complete, in fact, Melisa is almost to the satge where she’ll have to up-grade the package to be able to list more items!
Here is one of her latest listings:
Well, since my last post, I’ve been back in Colorado briefly and now I’m away again! In fact, I’ve been away for a while, nine days in fact. I’m in Darwin, Australia at the moment, where it’s a bit of a change from Colorado where winter is getting ever closer. Here, of course, it’s getting into summer. I had expected to be off-shore by now, but when I arrived, all keen for a crew-change, I was told that the job had been delayed for at least a week. Now I can understand, with my-self having traveled halfway around the world from Colorado, why I’ve been put up in a hotel (on pay) for a week. But it’s a bit surprising that other personnel from various parts of Australia have been kept here too! At the moment I’m scheduled to be joining the vessel on Thursday, so I’m expecting an update on that tomorrow or the day after to confirm or hear of further delays!
So, with having all this time on my hands it’s been an opportunity to a: catch up on my sleep, and b: do a bit of work on the on-line stores.
Melisa and I have had a revamp of the store as we had planned and they are now all accessible from the menus on both her, and my, blogs
Melisa’s blog is at albaranch.net while mine is at morrison.uk.net (but you know that already as you are actually here!)
Melisa’s blog has a ‘Shop Online’ menu item with a drop down for the stores; my blog has an “Alba Ranch Stores” menu item with drop down.
I’m still in Singapore working on the Sapura3000 crane barge. Things are progressing, though it’s still up in the air, it’s looking like we might even be finished by Sunday. I’ve all but given up on seeing the Singapore GP for a number of reasons. Although it’s a ‘street’ circuit, most of it is inaccessible to the casual public. You can get general access tickets, but they are all sold out, most of the grandstand tickets have been sold out and there only a handful left for the most expensive grandstands – $1300 a seat on raceday! Also, to recoup the costs of the GP the Singapore government have a hotel tax for the four days of the Grand Prix weekend; 30% on top of the room price for the hotels closest to the track and 20% on the other hotels. And the hotels themselves jack up the price. So, unless Subsea7 HAVE to put me in a hotel because they can’t get me flights, I’m not going to go out of my way to try to stay if we are finished early. Disapointed, but having to face reality!
Tomorrow I should have a better idea of when we will be finished on-board and then it will be up to Logistics to try and change my flights home (unless they want to keep me here on pay until the 23rd of October, which is when they booked my flights for originally! hahaha.
Shame on me, I haven’t made real blog posting for ages. This year has been mega busy, with long trips away. I’m writing this as I head off for another long (distance, if not duration) trip. The year started the way last year finished, with a “round the world” trip, only in the opposite direction! That one had me travelling through Seoul on the way out and Moscow on the way home, two new countries to add to my list. While on the ship we had a port call in Indonesia, which added a third! That trip was mainly maintenance and was six weeks long. After what seemed like a short leave, but which was almost six weeks, I had my longest trip to date. I flew to Dili, East Timor (fourth new country this year) via Moscow and Singapore, to join the ship. We finished the project and transited back to Europe via Singapore, Indonesia, Cape Town (add South Africa as my fifth new country) arriving back in Newcastle, England. I then had to visit the company office in Aberdeen, Scotland, before returning to Colorado after almost 11 weeks and 32000 miles. That trip wasn’t technically “round the world”, but like my trip in August last year, it was more than half way round and back again. The third trip was a relatively mundane one. Over to Scotland to join the ship, six weeks onboard, then return home from Norway. That was just under two weeks ago and now I’m off on the trip I mentioned at the start, Colorado Springs – Los Angeles – Hong Kong – Singapore, where I’ll be for approximately five days fitting one of our cable-lay spreads to a crane barge. After that I should be returning to Colorado for around two weeks. After that I’m not sure. Its likely that I will be going to Australia for a month, or alternatively, back to Norway for a month depending on what the work schedule is for my “regular” ship and the Sapura 3000 crane barge.
We’ve been re-arranging the website. My blog (what you are reading now) is now on http://morrison.uk.net, as it is now a combination of my blog, and all the stuff that was on my old ‘static’ website.
The Alba Ranch site is now Melisa’s blog and webpage, as that has now really become the main thrust of Alba Ranch, so it is now at http://albaranch.net.
The next step that we are looking at is the possibility of hosting our own on-line store. Not sure, but if it goes ahead it’s most likely to be: http://shop.albaranch.net
The last thing is that I have been reworking my mother’s old site. I’ve combined the webpages that I did for her (I love her doric stories), along with the blog she had, and that is now at http://morrison.uk.net/grace
