Of new heights reached…

When your outlook shows your task list for the day as “Climb 250 feet and analyze gearbox on the wind turbine”, you know you are going to have a very different day.

Its quite peculiar, the fact that we always remember how high we have been… Every time the plane crosses 14000 feet in altitude, I quietly remind myself that I have been here before and if needed can jump out of the plane right now. To add to this quirkiness, I now claim that I can climb a straight steel rung ladder 250 feet high.

Working as a technical analyst for GE Transportation, I would have never imagined I would be panting my way up a ladder, scared stiff of looking down despite the harness, to analyze a planetary gearbox. And by analysis, I really mean playing with a cool toy called a Boroscope.

Just like surgeons that use a fiber-optic camera, I used an industrial kind to look inside the gear box at the gears and bearings. In the process I managed to completely ruin my denims, work up a sweat and make new contacts.

I climbed three wind turbines. One at Tehachapi, California and two in the same day at Trent Mesa, Texas… In California I was nicknamed as Jackie Junior, reasons for which I am too ashamed to recollect. But in Texas, I was wonderfully nicknamed as the wolverine by a guy a who called himself tadpole. Tadpole and I went about our work constantly talking about American muscle cars and what we could do to them. With guys in California, I played Frisbee amongst the scenic Sierra Nevada Mountains.

It was definitely a fun week. Tadpole told me that when people come to Texas from California they learn manners, when people like me come from the north east; we learn how to eat properly. From stakes to grilled chicken, I gorged myself fine in Texas.

So there, two states, two rental cars, eight different planes, three turbines, two nicknames and tired legs. Definitely not an average week at work…