So, Where Did I Go?

Galveston. We've acquired some projects, and it looks like the scope of work will increase. That will lead to maybe months of out of town work. I'll get a VPN service, so I don't feel so paranoid about using a motel wifi for connection.

Anyway, Galveston is something everyone should see at least once in their life. Why? There is no reason why. It's unique, but a lot of the things I found unique decades ago are now changed.

If you haven't been in a long, long time, you'll find Galveston has grown and many of the things that made it very special floated away during hurricane Ike.

When I was a child, when you reached around 61st street, Galveston became rural. Many of the old WW2 bunkers and gun placement foundations were still to be found on the land side of the seawall. Hotels, strip malls, restaurants and other wonders of urban blight have assimilated the past and turned it into the neon, fluorescent, nationwide clones of modern retail. Otherwise, if you turn your head at the right moment, you could be in any city in the country and feel right at home...if that's what you find comfortable.

The ferry/ferries are still there. The newer ferries are much larger and you can have an option of up to two to ride on any given day. The wait during this time of the year can be short; depending on what time of the day you decide to go for the ride. At night, only one runs and the wait can be up to an hour; even if you're first in line.

Across the ferry - on the Bolivar Peninsula, anything you once remembered is probably gone; except for the old lighthouse. Hurricane Ike turned a substantial amount of the peninsula into clean sand. Most of the old cabins and stores are gone and the new building are not the same as the old. What once were quaint, sometimes almost ramshackle camps, are not built to standards that demand a height above a storm surge and able to take hurricane force winds. In construction code, that means much more money to afford to live there. Many didn't return and the new property owners are more affluent. That may be good, but it removes some of the unique characters you used to encounter along the beach.

I'm not a big tourist type of person, so I'm more comfortable in the other part of Galveston, which is major port. Industry docks far outnumber the cruise ship dock and it's somewhere many people would feel uncomfortable if they happened to wander away from the seawall.

That's where I'm working. The facility processes sulpher (that's a correct spelling too; although Blogger would rather I spelled it sulfur.) That's how the customer spells it, so that's good enough for me.

If you've never been around sulphur, you probably don't know how the wonderful yellow color hides the nastiness of the stuff. It smells bad, catches on fire with as little as really low humidity and the steam heat required to melt it for processing makes a day in the facility similar to wandering around the edge of a volcano.

We wear hydrogen sulfide monitors, since it's prevalent with sulphur. In high concentrations, it will drop you within seconds and the prognosis is dire if that should happen. If you don't die, lifetime problems could become something to deal with.  

So, that's were I've been and probably will be for awhile. As they say in the movies, this week has been a real slice.