A rented mule.

I worked a lot today, and the first half of the day was the worst driving day I've had.

Yesterday I found out I was on-call with two other drivers to do a heli-ski pickup, at an outfit in the boonies. The nearest place is called Gold Bridge, and it's in the Chilcotan Mountains. That's four hours of fast driving north of Whistler.

We do these sorts of pick-ups if it's too cloudy or snowy for a helicopter to take off and land. Of course a heli trip is preferable, since it's about a 1-hour flight to Vancouver, versus a 6-hour drive in one of our SUVs. There were thirteen people that needed to go to Vancouver, so three SUV went up there, including one with me driving.

The office overbooked the truck I was driving, scheduling it to go down to the airport at 04:30. Andrew would have to pin it back up and get the truck to me by about 08:30, and then Luc and I would both rush to get to the heli-ski place.

I had a sense that something was going to go wrong on this trip. I was really hoping the weather would clear and I wouldn't have to drive up. The ominous and foreboding feeling only got worse when I got a text from the office saying "Drive like the wind. But be safe." At least they were being honest.

So, off we went. I tried to follow Luc as best as I could, but he's a faster driver than I am. We were dominating the roads though, and there were few other cars. I was getting good at gearing down around corners and during down-grades instead of braking. The terrain is very rolling, and you'll fry your brakes if you use them too much.

Just after the half-way mark, the road got really sketchy. It's a road that is sometimes gravel, and sometimes paved, and rarely safe. It's been carved into the side of the mountain, so there are cliffs on one side, and extreme drops to the other.

In places, the road is only one car wide. In most places, it's one and half cars wide. As a driver, you must always be looking ahead to see if there's a car coming toward you. If you don't pay attention, you could run him off the road and over the cliff, sending him plummeting to his death.

Since there are cliffs right on the side of the road, rocks often fall onto the road. It was raining/snowing today, so this got a lot of rocks moving. Most of the time the rocks that fell were the size of golf balls and softballs, but there were a few the size of ten pin bowling balls. One must always be watching the road, and driving around these hazards.

One spot almost made me fill my trousers. On the opposite side of the road, the rain had caused some erosion to eat away at the road. It was only about a foot and a half of road that was washed away, but when the whole road is less than two cars wide, it's pretty significant. I tried not to look over the edge as I drove, but I did notice I couldn't see the bottom. It was hundreds of feet (maybe even meters) to the bottom of the ravine.

When we turned up the final semi-private road to the heli-skiing lodge, the road got even sketchier than it was before. The road is a typical dirt road, but was getting really slick as it was just beginning to snow. The snow was all slippery on top of an already slippery muddy clay mix.

I found I was drifting around corners without wanting to, and that my front wheels would sometimes be turning, but the vehicle would keep going straight. I toned down my speed at that point, wanting to make it to the lodge on time and in one piece.

I crested a hill, and began a short decent. As I tried to turn, the vehicle didn't respond, and I drifted right into the ditch at a pretty decent clip. If one could see a picture of me at that moment, they would see a face bathed in pure stressful emotion.

The ditch was small, and I didn't want to get caught in it, so I kept driving, and drove my way out. But the ditch wasn't just covered in grass. It was filled with all kinds of unknown detritus covered in snow...I imagine it was mostly rocks and trees, but I wouldn't be surprised if there were some mufflers and other garbage in there. When I careened into it, I hoped my big truck would handle it well, and come out unscathed.

I was wrong. It was a very loud, bumpy ride in the ditch, and when I drove out of it, my dashboard lit up with warnings about tire pressure. I pulled over to the other side of the road, to take stock of the damage.

I was really happy to see that nothing was wrong with the body of the truck. Despite hitting the ditch hard and presumably hitting some stout branches on my way in, there were no scratches. I was disappointed to see a hole the size of a quarter in my left rear tire though. Obviously, it was flat.

Luc noticed I hadn't been following him, so he came back and found me. We both (but mostly Luc) changed the flat with the spare tire. It was a milestone in my life, the first tire I've changed at the side of the road. It took about half an hour or more, and included borrowing a 30lb sledge hammer from a house down the road to knock the tire off the mount. It had rusted/corroded itself onto the axle. It took about five solid whacks.

Changing the flat was quite a process. Lowering the spare from beneath the vehicle (it's on a pulley system that you wind with the jack); jacking the vehicle up only to find the jack sinking in the soft mud; finding some wood to use for an enlarged footprint; bashing the wheel with the sledge hammer; putting the spare on, and re-mounting the busted tire under the vehicle.

I was really thankful for Luc's help, since I wouldn't have been able to do it myself. We got the spare on, and drove the last few kilometers to the lodge and picked up all the guests. Because we had bombed the road coming in, we were still on time for the pickup.

On the way back, there were even more rocks to dodge on the road. In the hour or two since we'd been there last, there were hundreds more rocks on the road. This time it was more worrisome, because I had a truck full of people. I was also constantly thinking about sliding the truck into the ditch again, except this time there would be paying customers in my truck. Also, instead of a ditch there would be...nothing. Just a few seconds of free-fall, then a huge explosion.

I was quite stressed. It was snowing, the road was thin, there were rocks all over, and I was shell-shocked from losing control of the truck and ditching the vehicle an hour before.

I was also having to avoid all the rocks on the road. I hit one pretty hard, that caused the whole truck to bounce. It hit something under the truck, and made a terrific BANG! and gave us all a start. A picture of my face at that time would provide another example of pure emotion.

We made it though that section, and stopped at the next small town. They had a Subway restaurant, so we pulled in there for a bathroom break. I checked my tires, and now the other rear tire was really low. I filled it at a gas station, but the pressure wouldn't keep.

Luc and I listened at the tire, and heard a constant hissing coming out of it, and realized we'd have to change the tire. Since we'd already used the spare from my truck, we had to use the spare from Luc's truck. This second change happened faster, since we'd done one only an hour or two before. We were also under more pressure, since our guests were waiting inside the Subway.

When we got the tire off, I found a small piece of sharp shale embedded into the tire, causing the leak. It must have happened as I drove over all the rocks I wasn't able to avoid on the road. I must have been driving with the low air pressure for at least 50Km as well. Yikes!

So, two flat tires in about two hours. Hours and hours of intense winter driving, trying to make up time and be fast. It was my worst driving day. The trip from Whistler to the lodge then back to Vancouver took 12 hours all in. I wasn't done though...I still had two airport pickups to do. I was to bring one party to a hotel downtown, then return to YVR and bring more people up to Whistler.

At the end of the day, I had worked 17 hours straight. This included getting two flat tires and changing them, one on the side of the road in the snow, and the other in a parking lot in the rain. It included the most intense and stressful driving I've ever done, and the fastest driving I've ever done.

I think tomorrow I'll write some thoughts about being "asked" to drive super fast over really dangerous roads, and asked to work insane hours. I felt a bit like a rented mule today. I sit and graze for days and days, and then suddenly get whipped into 17 hours of mentally and physically challenging work. But I'm tired, so if I'm up for it I'll write about that later.

So, two flat tires in one trip. Very annoying and stressful. Also, driving that road was annoying and stressful. I think I should qualify for danger pay. Or overtime, for working 17 hours. Unfortunately, I won't get either of those.

Soon, I'd like to have a job where a mistake or mis-cue doesn't mean severe injury or death like it would have today. I don't feel I'm paid enough to be a mountain goat out there.

Yawn. I've been up for quite awhile now. I'm going to sleep for a year. OK, I'll probably wake up sometime tomorrow (Saturday) and I sure hope it's not because the office is calling to give me another heli-ski trip. I honestly think I would say no. That area is like the Bermuda Triangle for me.

Two flats!

(I'll re-read and edit this tomorrow. Time for bed!)