The Perfect Storm

If you have never heard of Castle Dale Utah don't worry, you are among the 99% of human beings that will live on this earth. My job takes me to some great places and this is one of them, it is out in the middle of no where but it is still very beautiful. To preface this trip I should say I actually spent a large amount of my summer vacations in this area. Castle Dale is about 20 minutes south of Price, UT. My parents are both from this area and my Dad's coal mine is about 5 minutes from Castle Dale. So when I heard we were coming down here I kept my mouth shut about my past experiences in Price. Everyone had to make their wise cracks about how crummy Price is. I didn't want to rain on their parade or make them feel uncomfortable for making fun of my childhood vacation home, it wasn't until the day before we left that I mentioned I knew the area really well.

So in my job there are three auditing interns, two that travel ( I am one of those ) and one that stays at the base and condenses all the information. The one that stays in Salt Lake did my job two summers ago so he is training us. Well we scheduled this trip to goto Price and then our trainer realized he had jury duty. So he finds out last night he needed to be in Salt Lake for jury duty. Being the over zealous worker I am, I thought we don't need a trainer we have all the information and I took an audit class. . .that should have been a red flag because audit classes don't really mean much in the real world. So off me and the other intern went. Needless to say today was a disaster, everything came together to make life horrible for one long afternoon. We got to the office, spent 4 hours doing about 1 hour of work because we didn't know what the paperwork actually looked like in the field. Not to the mention the sweet lady who bought us lunch, gave us plenty to drink, and provided everything we could imagine needing; ended up crying because we got there and had no idea what we were doing and just made her day hell. Her operations are pretty tough to audit in and of themselves let alone when one newbie decides he is ready to hit the audit road after one class and three days of training.

When I took my auditing class, it was probably my toughest class last year because auditing isn't something that you can learn in a book. It is crucial to a company, it is like playing baseball without keeping stats (as nerdy as that analogy is.) Yet you will never know how important it is until you get out and do it. This internship is providing me with a lot of growing opportunities, today it was learning empathy for the wonderful people whose day-to-day operations I will tear apart for the rest of the summer.

Today was a rough day. I felt bad for the amazing lady whose day I made even worse with all my questions. But I got through it, checked into a hotel that is about 500 yards from my cousin's house, who if he knew I was staying in a hotel is so nice would probably come down and make me come stay with him, had a nice dinner at Groggs (a local pub I had never even heard of...) and showed my co-workers all that is to be shown in Price. I actually enjoy being here.

The drive to the office

The Power Plant out our work room window

The pile of coal

Some dense population

The canyon covered by clouds is Huntington canyon. My dad use to be a coal miner up that canyon.

It is funny, over 25 years ago my Dad got laid off from the mines. At the time I am sure he and my mom thought it was a pretty rough time. They ended up moving up to Salt Lake and eventually moving into the house that I grew up in. If it hadn't been for that lay off I doubt they would have such awesome kids as they have today. I am grateful my parents worked as hard as they did so I can have the opportunity to be where I am today. I know they would have been great parents but I don't know if we would have had the opportunities my brothers, sister, and I have enjoyed being in Salt Lake. Funny how so much good came from such a hard event.