Ölüdeniz & Paragliding

I have been falling down on the job....as far as getting my weekly posts written goes anyway. I have somewhat of an excuse in that access to any blog sites was been banned for awhile, some sort of extension to the youtube ban that has been in effect in Turkey for some time now. I won't elaborated on it here as a quick web search will turn up more than enough info on the subject. Here's a link to a BBC story http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6427355.stm.

The month has slipped by pretty quickly and here it is Halloween already. The kids have increasingly faint memories of this pagan North American ritual. If fact it has not come up at all this year. Nicolai probably would claim to have never heard of it although he was dragged around the neighborhood in HVGB at least once if my memory serves correct....perhaps it was just Galina?

We did manage to make what will most likely be our last trip to the beach this year when we went to Ölüdeniz to take in the 9th international paragliding event. The water and weather were lovely and watching the para gliders is never easy to tire of. Not too many pictures to share since we took mostly video. Here's one though showing the beach and one glider. It doesn't do justice to the number of kites that were generally in the sky at any one time. Saw two mishaps; one when a pilot managed to land into a steel framed hut near the beach and had to be carted off by ambulance, another when a sail? kite? wing? looked like it started to come apart in the sky and the pilot had to pull his emergency chute and ended up ditching in the water. There were a disproportionately large number of people limping around with assorted casts and bandages. This might lead you to believe that the sport is mostly for the young and foolish however there are many 40+ year olds that are involved and the tandem jumps with a professional are taken by more than a few in their 60's.

Nino and I each did a tandem jump in 2006. Her's was a nice, leisurely 45 minute ride down from Babadağ, with a brief vomitous moment, straight down onto the unsuspecting sunbathers below, brought on by the nauseating ride up the mountain, sitting sideways in the back of a truck. Later in the day I had a scream packed 20 minute ride with a kamikaze style pilot who mistook my innocent question about acrobatics for a desire to do some, and promptly hurled us into tight descending turns which brought on screams from me that are still echoing around the hills I am sure. I would do it again though and watching this year brought on renewed interest to perhaps take the training required to go solo. Who knows and Nino would also not be shy about it I think.

Anyway this year we were strictly observers.

We also spent a bit more time in Fethiye and get a fairly close up look at one of the more famous Lycian tombs which are all around but mostly difficult to get close to since they are carved into faces of the hills surrounding the city. We also drove around the harbour and found where a few 'Bodrum' style boats were under construction. All in all a nice trip to the coast for that time of year.

Iyi Bayram Lar...and Gold Eagles

Well Ramadan and the Bayram (holiday) associated with its ending are over for another year. Since the start of this religious observance is based on the lunar calendar it retreats every year by ten days or so. This makes it increasingly harder for observers who choose to fast as the lengthening daylight hours require longer periods of obsrvance.

It made it particularly hard for us this year at the mine site when we seemed to be afflicted by 'The Curse of the Investment Analysts' who started a tour of the operation immediately following Bayram...what would be the Christian equivalent of January 2nd.

A lot of our equipment seemingly conspired against us to pick last week to self destruct and what should have been time spent celebrating with family turned into a nightmare for many of us.

One of those weeks where you wonder why in the hell you ever decided to get into the mining business.

As is becoming regular, our guys rose to the challenge and although there were a few wrinkles if you looked closely, the Tuesday of the big visit dawned sunny and warm and the whole show was ticking along like a Swiss watch while they came and kicked the tires.

Unless you are familiar with a heap leach operation, the following may not make much of an impact on you....but here goes...keep in mind that already for about three weeks, many employees have not been eating, drinking or smoking during daylight hours, coupled with little sleep as they celebrate with family and friends during the night. Tired and hungry is an understatement...

We go into the last week of Ramadan hoping that the liners in our gyratory crusher will hold up only to realize that there is every chance that they won't and if we do not shut the show down for 4-5 days during Bayram to change them out, the IA's will be here while the crusher is torn apart and won't get to see our shiny new 150 t CAT trucks hauling muck to feed it. The 'COTIA' begins.

So two days before we decide to jump into that job, and have told about ten guys that...'Hey, you've got to work through Bayram, (the equivalent of Christmas and New Year's), our 700 meter long overland conveyor decides to tear in half. An hour later, our conveyor tripper car decides to ram itself into the rail stops and bends itself to ratshit.

So the crew that is already tired comes out to fix things and get more tired before they start the reline job that is going to really make them tired. All while family and friends are enjoying the most important holiday of the year without them.

They did well though and made us all proud. Then the weekend came, three days before the big IA visit and we saw something like 28 mm of rain in 24 hours....a leach pad operator's nightmare. Heavy rain on a pad with a 12% slope can cause you grief but we survived relatively well....just more fix up stuff to take care of before the show.

Just as all hands were getting ready to grab some well earned rest before the start of the new week, word arrived that the new gyratory mainshaft liner was wonky. After about eight hours of trying to tighten it up by swinging a battering ram against it, we all went home and kept out fingers crossed....only to find out that three hours after starting crushing the upper mantle came loose again. The IAs were arriving in about six hours and it's 0130 hrs on the 7th and your's truly is wedged between the concaves and the mainshaft trying to figure out what in the name of Christ to do. About 6 shiny new 785 trucks were backed up and the IA's were having breakfast at the Dulguroglu Hotel getting ready to hit the bus to the minesite.

Nothing to do but keep pouring the muck into it and hope for the best and believe it or not, it kept together for not just one day, but three days.

The whole time the IA's were on site the entire operation was humming along famously...and has been ever since. I love this business...

In the midst of all this fun, I continue to be consumed by the unfolding events related to the lack of credit in the world's banking community. Even though I have been expecting it for years it is somewhat like watching a car wreck. You feel like you should turn away but you just have to watch.
Among the incredible stories unfolding is this one... http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/business/story.html?id=3bc8e278-9546-41b5-aa10-c49ce11e20cb where the US Mint announces that it will no longer produce Gold Eagles because of high demand!!! Can you imagine if GM declared they were not going to produce any more of a certain car model because too many people wanted to buy them?
The truth is TPTB want your money in a bank account where they can get their hands on it. Not much good to them if it is tied up in gold coins...or at home stuffed in your mattress. One arm of the US G'ment is propping up the banks while Paulson declared today that he expects as many as 1500 US banks to fail. Rough waters ahead.....