A Day in the Field

Today, I am in Lake Charles for a project trip. Four other project team members and I flow down today for a two day trip to gather information for a tank project. We arrived mid-day (just in time for lunch) then we headed to the terminal for a one hour safety training course. After that, we headed to the field. There had been a lot of discussion about where to locate the tank because we are putting it in the same dike area as another tank and according to NFPA there are certain spacing requires. The surveyors had been out earlier and had marked the final location of the tank and the civil contractor had probed for buried lines. Mark, the mechanical designer, and I went and measured where everything is so we can develop the plot plans. The current plot plans are fairly out of date. Then, Larry, the project manager, gave us a tour of the terminal. I have worked on several projects for this terminal, but this is the first time I had visited the terminal, so it was pretty cool the see some of the things I had worked.


Once we were finished for the day, we headed back to the same restaurant for dinner: Steamboat Bill’s – a Cajun crawfish, seafood restaurant. My project manager loves seafood! I am not a huge fan of seafood, but I don’t hate it either and I always say don’t knock it if you haven’t tried it. So, I had shrimp etoufee for lunch (which I had never heard of before) and boiled shrimp. Etoufee was like Cajun gravy served over rice with shrimp. It was pretty good, as with most seafood; I think it’s gross when it’s cold.

For dinner, Larry ordered a few pounds of crawfish for an appetizer (pictured on the left). The picture to the right is the portion I eat. Crawfish aren't that bad, but it sure is alot of work.