[whatsnewell]

Well, we've been here in Sidney, MT since September 21st. Elaine ultimately was assigned to work in the "Scale House" on the night shift (7 pm to 7 am). I am on the same shift but working on a piler unloading 106,000 pound trucks (fully laden). Elaine landed the cushy job sitting inside a warm, well lit, comfortable building. It's good that only one of us is suffering in the cold, sometimes wet, muddy, always dimly lit work environment. I haven't had any trouble keeping warm, even when it got down to 24 a couple of times. My problem has been getting too warm. This is very physical work, and I often find myself shedding a couple of layers after about 15 minutes. It's been hard on my hands, but they are getting used to it.

We only have a few days left and we will be on our way south to warmer, dryer climates. The past week has been rough due to a lot of rain. Until Wednesday we hadn't been on the job since last Friday morning when we clocked out due to wet, muddy conditions. Fortunately we get paid a minimum of 4 hours each per day when the weather is bad, or the conditions do not permit us to be on site, but we would rather work.

Elaine's job consists of printing off a weight ticket for each truck that enters the yard, and then a second one as they leave to determine the weight of the sugar beets delivered, less the weight of the truck. My job consists of keeping the area around the "piler" clean, which involves a lot of raking, and sometimes picking up spilled beets and throwing them on to the conveyor belt. Sometimes we "get" to clean the pilers which involves shutting down the piler, and locking out the electrical so we won't get squished when we are inside scraping off the beet residue that accumulates over the course of 24 hours.....some of the pilers run 24/7. We get time and a half after 8 hours each day, and again after 40 hours in a week, so the pay mounts up pretty quickly at $14.65/hour plus overtime. We'll probably gross close to $8,000 for our 21 days of labor.

So today is October 17th meaning we have just 4 days left on our contract. Looking forward to moving on.....we've lined up a camp host job near our home town for the two+ months we will be there visiting the kids and grand kids.....the same place we hosted at for a year before hitting the road. So, we'll be able to stay for free those two months.

For those of you who are interested in what a "piler" looks like and how the sugar beets are piled here is a YouTube video for your viewing pleasure.