Hola Señor Tortuga

Just a little something I found.

Crazy Things 2

On March 15 of this year I did a post talking about some of the crazy things I have seen while working in the field.

I just remembered something that I forgot to mention in that post.

One early morning I was walking down the center line of Baseline Road in the Laveen area and just before I got to the monument I wanted to shoot I look down and what do I see?

A blood covered tube sock with a brick in it. How do I know it was a brick? The sock had a couple of holes in it and sure enough it was a brick.

Now let me ask you this. How many directions can your mind go with that??? Mine went all over the place as it still does to this day.

What did I do? I promptly looked around, shot the point and got far away from there. I do realize that whoever tossed that thing was long gone and I found a weapon that was obviously used for something bad. I scanned the news and internet for reports of a sock/brick beating but nothing ever came up.

Working in the city does bring some strange things to a surveyor.

Obstacles

So there I am out in the middle of nowhere with my trusty eye man “Big Hig” who was actually a little guy but obtained the name by a circumstance we will not mention here.

Big Hig is set up on a ridge across from me and we are spinning out points when he turns one out that hits the only obstacle in a 2 mile radius, a shit house.

I am standing there wondering what this house is doing there to begin with, how long has it been there and just why in the bloody hell is it in the way of my second to last point on a 112° day.

Big Hig tells me that the house is in the way so I tell him to go move it. He obediently goes to move it but is unable, he yells over “this *%^%# thing is heavy and I can’t move it”.

At this point I am becoming agitated and walk a few hundred feet and proceed to help him move it. He was right it was really heavy.

After we break even more of a sweat than usual we talk for a moment and then I begin to head back.

Right as I am starting to walk away the door to the house opens and out walks the biggest Indian I have ever seen. I mean this guy was so big I still don’t know how he fit in there.

As we stand there wide eyed with mouths open, he just simply walks away without looking at us and disappears into the desert. It was like we did not exist and nothing had happened.

I don’t know if he was doing his business or sleeping or what. I was mortified, mesmerized, bewildered and just flat freaked out.

I think it had a huge impact on Big Hig to. He never spoke of it again.

Moral: Always knock on the shit house door, even when no one should be in it.

Colleagues

This last week I had the privilege of meeting new colleagues and got reacquainted with some from the past.

These were exceptionally nice experiences in that I have lost touch with my fellow surveyors over the last couple of years due to the fact that I am now an army of one.

It reminded me that I have to be more cognizant of my professional relationships especially with my peers. A mirror image on a topic or a different outlook is always appreciated and always makes me better.

It is so easy to lose touch with my peers mostly because I am so business oriented that I concentrate all of my efforts on my clients and only talk to other surveyors when I need something or need an opinion.

I have decided that this will stop and at least once a week I am going to reach out to a fellow surveyor albeit through email or telephone just to hear how things are going and get a general outlook on things.

As a small business owner my clients are far more important than anything else, however it is my peers that keep me in line and remind me of the rules and remind me to keep my head out of my ass.