Great Circle

Welcome to the Great Circle Guest Writers’ Carnival. Over the next two weeks, you can expect to read how people won the war on work, a disorganised mind and the evil Snooze-button … and more! Let’s kick things off with one of my favourite storytellers …

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How I Won the War on… that Stupid Pipe

By Robert Hruzek at Middle Zone Musings

OK, before you get the wrong image, let’s clear up the first point. I’m not talking about a pipe you smoke – nope, I’m talking about a piece of 1” pipe that kept, uh, hitting me. Over and over… and over…

A long time ago, I received a brief (three weeks) assignment at a paper company down near the Houston Ship Channel. This company made that brown paper that covers that staple of home improvement everywhere, sheetrock (or, if you prefer: gypsum board).

If you’ve never seen a paper machine, it’s quite a huge piece of equipment; up to a hundred or more feet in length. Giant rollers, big vats of steamy paper pulp (which look exactly like oatmeal, but smell – oh, so not!), various catwalks and ladders all over the place – plus, about a million small pipes running all over the thing. It gives it a sortof “Rube Goldberg meets Frankenstein’s laboratory” look.

Well, it my job was to route a new steam line from one end of this gargantuan thing to the other. Normally, this wouldn’t have been any big deal; I mean, design one pipe from point A to point B? No problem!

But that was before I met… the pipe (sound of terrified scream)!

See, the route I chose was along a catwalk that conveniently went from one end of the paper machine to the other. It was a perfect place to run a new pipe; the catwalk handrail supports provided a ready-made solution to how it could be supported Hey, this was going to be easier than I thought (he blithely said to himself)!

But there was this one spot…

Did I mention that paper machines have about a million pipes on them, running every which way? What’s worse, some of them even crossed over the catwalk in odd places. Needless to say, we try to avoid that since it’s pretty poor design; our job is usually to route things so they don’t obstruct access ways. It’s a safety issue, you see.

Anyway, in order to get correct dimensions, I had to walk back and forth on the machine’s catwalk about a hundred times, and there was this one spot where a pipe crossed at about ankle-height above the walkway, making it a tripping hazard. Now, that’s bad enough, but in almost exactly the same spot, there was another pipe crossing at about 6 feet high, putting it right about hard hat level to me.

The end result was that the first time I passed that spot, as I carefully stepped over the lower pipe at ankle-level, I hit my head on the upper pipe! Sheesh, lucky I had a hard hat on; but still…

Well, it’s sort of embarrassing to admit, but the next time, sure enough, I hit my head again! Then again the third time! Now I know what they say about old dogs and new tricks, but still, you’d think this would be an easy lesson to learn, right? Alas, in a series of scenes worthy of a Charlie Chaplin routine, I ended up hitting my head over and over…

Well, you’ll be pleased to know – by the end of those three weeks, I was completely punch-drunk I finally managed to get through that spot without killing myself. All I have to say is it’s a good thing I didn’t have to walk and chew gum at the same time!

All right, by now you’re probably wondering just how in the world I won out on that particular war. And I’ll tell you. But first, let me say this:

In life, sometimes we encounter certain, shall we say, unchangeables. I’m talking about things that, no matter what we do, think, envision, scheme or plan – well, they’re still there, and still have to be dealt with.

So, how do you deal with unchangeables? There’s only one way I know of: Adapt. Yep, instead of wasting time attempting to change a situation that simply can’t be changed, we have to change ourselves!

So, although it took me awhile to learn the lesson and win that particular war, I finally adapted enough to avoid the obstacles and accomplish the job in spite of it!

Let’s just call it V-P day (Victory over Pipe).

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Hey, why not drop by Middle Zone Musings this week and check out our What I Learned From… group writing project. This month’s topic is CHANGE, and we’d love to have you join the fray! Just write a new post on your blog about something you learned from change, and send me a link. All entries will be listed on Monday, September 10th!