COWI Ajman

Ajman is another Emirate in the UAE approx 20 km north of Dubai. It is a very different place. Ajman is the smallest emirate of only 260 sq km. It is comprised of a city to the west, bordering the Arabian gulf. To the east is an area of predominantly undeveloped desert. There are 360,000 people in the city. There is only one "business class" hotel in the entire city. Electricity and water are the only utilities to be found and residents will quickly tell you not to drink the water. Gas in brought into apartments for cooking in large red bottles. Waste water is collected in storage tanks below the buildings and carried away in trucks, similar to American garbage trucks. Everything is covered in sand. Most of the limited parking here actually is sand. Ajman aspires to be the next Dubai, encouraging development of large complexes, but still is lagging years behind its more developed neighbor.

View From the apartment

Same view, just looking more down. Everything really is covered in sand.

I live and work in the same building. COWI Ajman occupies an office on the first floor and an apartment for three (and maid/cook) on the 20th floor. My commute is 45 seconds down an elevator. SCORE.

I am assigned to a single project, the Al Zorah Development. It is approximately 5 square miles of mixed used development. When its done, it will be a self contained resort / housing / schools / hospital / power plant with 10 marinas and 15 miles of canals for 200,000 people. My responsibility is to take the preliminary design and turn those designs into a complete construction documents package that will contain all of the information the contractor(s) need to construct over 25 miles of seawall, revetments, breakwaters and beaches. This website has more info, in case you're not bored yet: http://www.overseaspropertymall.com/regions/middle-east-property/uae-property/is-ajman-going-to-be-the-next-mini-dubai/

A small portion of the Al Zorah site, we'll develop all the way to buildings in the back of this picture.

I've never seen a general on a battlefield, but I imagine that my project manager is about as close as I'll ever see. He walks into a room and people jump. His air of authority is like nothing I've seen before. Thankfully, I'm on his good side. I'm one of the engineers he asks for help.

The project office is an interesting place. It occupies a 3 bedroom apartment. 15 of us work here. Predominantly, there are Danes and Indians. I am the sole American. The project manager is British. There are also Pakistanis, Chinese and Italians. Work takes place in either English or Danish and everything is published in English.

We have two drivers. The office and apartment share a chinese woman, Tunisa, who works here as a maid and a cook. She cooks three meals a day, as well as delivers coffee or tea to my desk when I arrive in the office and after lunch. She does the laundry too. Not only does she wash the clothes, she irons everything (including my t-shirts) and folds it. After that, she goes as far as putting everything away in the closet neatly for me. We're supposed to leave dishes on the table and everything is served as if in a restaurant.

My room at the apartment.

I currently work from 8 to 5. I eat lunch with a couple westerners in the Office breakroom. Tunisa cooks a hot lunch for everyone. Once I get into the project a bit more, I'll start working longer hours. I have a pakistani drafter to make my drawings for me. After the first couple layouts, we'll go to mass production mode. We estimate that a project this size may have as many as 700 drawings that are 24"x36". He'll help me prepare a package that we'll send to India to do the bulk of the work. Then, he and I will work our way through to make all the necessary corrections.

So thats what I do. But there's still some time to explore on the weekends...

The Second Weekend

I went home to shower and clean up before I went back out to meet David and Pedro. While I was back at the hotel, I realized that my phone wouldn’t turn on. There goes calling David to meet up. I hope they gave me good enough directions. That adds getting my phone fixed to my weekend plans.

I wanted to take a taxi to Hotel Majestic and I was going straight from dinner, so that limited dinner to walking distance. I found TGI Friday’s or McDonalds. TFIG it is. I’ve never seen a TGIF like this. They served all the regular food, but the whole staff, who is nothing but young Chinese women, is totally decked in flair (reference: Jennifer Anniston in Office Space) from head to toe, floppy jester hat included. They have on American pop music. Everytime Rihanna or Sean Paul come on, they stop their jobs, meet in the center of the restaurant and rock out to this line dance that is rather suggestive, especially for this conservative Arab country. Dinner is over, I’ve got some time to kill so I walk around for a bit. Catch a Taxi. Like most cabs, my driver is Indian, he drives like he has a death-wish and knows some god forsaken back alley that will get us there faster. He doesn’t speak any English, and I certainly don’t know Indian, so it was a pretty quiet ride. I tried to ask him the names of the roads we were on. His only response was that the roads were new, no name yet. Okay.

We stop at Hotel Majestic and I pay him. I tried to tip him, but he yells at me to get out of the cab. I walk into “Music Club.” I find Pedro and David at a table near the stage. Pedro is Filipino and had suggested this bar because, as I now see, this is a big Filipino hang out spot. He informs us that the band, three Filipino women wearing short skirts and fishnets and two Filipino men, who looked as if they had abused drugs for the past 30 years, have been the same act for the past three years. They play only American hard rock and metal. I walk to the bar for a beer.

{Sidebar: The UAE is a dry country. Drinking is strictly not allowed in Islam. Obviously, to attract this many expats, they had to make some allowances. Alcohol, albeit highly regulated, is allowed to be served in "tourist" hotels. Drinking and driving is strictly prohibited and punishable by large fines and 25 years in jail. Public drunkennes is punishable by 10 years in jail. The average cost of a beer on tap is between $12 and $15. "Good" beers cost more. End Sidebar}

I started talking to a girl at the bar. Okay, no big deal. About thirty seconds into the conversation I realize what’s going on here. It’s time for me to take my beer and leave. I make my way back to the table and ask if encounters like these are similar in the U.A.E. The guys laugh and decide when we finish our beers they’re going to take me to another place.

We walk in this place and it looks like a cool scene. I buy a round of Carlsson, Probably the best beer in the world. (I don’t actually think this is a great beer, that’s a reference to the guys I went to Italy with.) The band is again playing American music. The predominantly male band is either Canadian or American and dressed in jeans and Cowboy hats, including the single female singer. They’ve got the place hopping.

A minute after we arrive, two Chinese girls approach and start talking to us. They ask us our names and where we’re from. This starts sounding familiar to that 30 second conversation I had at the last bar. Folks, the world’s oldest profession is alive and well in Dubai. I swear to you we had no less than 35 girls (at least 32 of which were Chinese) and ask a simple, routine set of four questions:

1) What’s your name?

2) Where are you from?

3) How long have you been here?

4) Would you like to go home with me tonight?

After another round, my fourth since arriving in this country 10 days ago (yes mother, I’m being good), Pedro and I have decided we’ve had enough. We give David the high sign and head home, ALONE.

My plan for Friday was to check out the Dubai Offshore Sailing Club, DOSC, and see if I could crew on a big boat, or take out my own dinghy. As it turns out, a couple waste trucks had pumped out in a storm sewer that drained into the DOSC basin. Despite the start of racing season, DOSC is closed for health reasons. New plan.

I checked the hotel guide book out and saw sand skiing, this sounds interesting, but I just went to the desert last weekend. Wait a second, Dubai is supposed to have an indoor snow skiing hill. I can’t come to Dubai and not check this thing out. A’ight, game time. I track it down. Cleverly enough, its called “Ski Dubai.” It’s located at the end of Emirates Mall a few exits beyond my office. Done.

Emirates mall is gigantic. I’ve never seen a mall this big. Or this nice. The mall is yet another 5 star establishment. To walk from one side to the other, at a good clip, is about 15-20 minutes, to walk front to back, is another 10-15 minutes. The american movie theater is playing all the latest movies. All of the designer stores are here. I check out Lacoste hoping to catch a good deal on the exchange rate. Negative, a shirt is $150 US. Finally, in the last of four corners, I find Ski Dubai.

The view entering Emirates Mall.

Looking across at one of the Cafes in Emirates Mall

A two hour lift ticket, including rentals and a locker is $70. Oh well, how often do you get to ski in a desert. Of course, the slope is basic, but the snow is actually not half bad. The staff is enormous and like any western resort is all decked out in matching snow team gear. There are I somehow neglected to bring my ski helmet from home... Oh well, I got in a good first of the season run. I didn't rent a jacket and snowpants, instead opting for jeans and a sweatshirt. At first some of the staff kind of laughed at me but after a run or two, they got jealous asked me if I could teach them to ski...

Ski Dubai, View from the mall.

Ski Dubai from the Top of the "Slope"

Ski Dubai!

Me!

Ski Dubai, The lodge.

Unfortunately, Saturday I couldn't spend any time exploring because it was time to move to the field office in Ajman. Much more on Ajman coming soon.

COWI Dubai

The first day, the office driver picked me up. The following couple days, I took a taxi to work. About the fifth day or so, I got a rental car. The ride to work is about 10-15 km, shouldn’t be too bad at all. The traffic is just about like any major US city. Terrible. The only difference is the ego factor. In Dubai, when someone cuts you off, you are compelled to speed up, cut someone else off in order to pass the original offender, cut them off and slow down to well below the speed limit. This sets off a chain reaction until the entire 12 lane highway is inching along. This happens on a daily basis. Morning commute takes about 30 minutes. There are a limited number of free parking spaces at the office. I always arrive early enough to get one of these.

As I said, the office is brand new. They’ve only moved here two months ago. Only the senior managers have offices. I sit amongst a group of senior engineers in a very open room. Throughout the week, various things continue to arrive, bookshelves, desks, cubicle walls, computers, plants etc…

The overall project is called Al Zorah; it is located about 25 km north of Dubai in the emirate of Ajman, UAE. It is a mixed use development of approximately 20 square kilometers. There will be a number of different housing options from apartments and condos to large waterfront mansions. There is to be a hospital, two schools, high-end retail shopping and more. A creek and canals will line the entire development. I’ll see if I can post the project description.

My primary assignment is to assist with the final design and produce construction drawings and specifications for the concrete block retaining walls that will line the canals in the development. Most major marine engineering companies develop their own in-house software for this type of design. COWI is no exception; they’ve done so through a complicated multi sheet excel workbook. This is the program I promised to discuss more. To use the software, I have to pass through a series of security checks and remote logins to gain remote access to special calculation PCs in Denmark. After defining the geometry of the wall, various soil parameters, a number of load cases including water levels, applied loadings, and susceptibility to earthquakes, a series of macros is begun, and Factors of Safety for a variety of failure methods is produced. It took two days to acquire and create all the permissions necessary for me to access the sheet. Working remotely was especially slow as every key stroke and mouse click is relayed hundreds of miles to Denmark, and then back to Dubai. All-in-all, a real pain.

Lunch is delivered from a fast food Arabic restaurant. I never would have guessed, but Emirati fast-food is even worse than American fast food. Some of the office eats together. I eat with them on occasion but mostly eat by computer and continue waiting for the remote connection to keep up. Afternoon is the same as the morning until about 4:00PM (8AM your time) when everyone from home starts logging on and sending emails. There’s a brief period where I get to catch up on home life before its quitting time.

Getting home through afternoon rush hour is much worse than the morning. It takes an hour to get home, if not more, most of which is spent sitting still, or riding my brakes. Then begins the nightly ritual of feeding myself. The hotel has one restaurant where they advertise a buffet for 139 Dirhams, ~$45. That’s a bit much for a daily dinner. No thanks. Rumor on the street there are places I can find good local food for cheap. I have yet to find any of these places. A couple of really nice expensive restaurants are around. Outside of those, restaurants are predominantly American chains. TGI Fridays, Chiles, Applebees, KFC, McDonalds, and Burger King are all here. Anything else is too far away. I have yet to succumb to fast food, but I have eaten most of my dinners at the American chains.

Dubai is known for its resorts. Most of these resorts are all inclusive. I tried to check out a couple resorts but was discouraged, 1) because I wasn’t staying there and 2) I didn’t have enough money to spend at those kind of places. So be it, there’s plenty else to see.

After dinner, I head back to the hotel, catch up online or try to write some more of this. There are old trashy movies on TV every night, like Die Hard, Alien vs. Predator and all manner of other lousy American cinema.

That’s a typical work day in Dubai. I go through the week with little variation on this scheme. Along again comes Thursday. David, the building engineering director and Pedro invite me to join them at a music club at Hotel Majestic at 9:30. Thus begins the second weekend.

The first weekend

The weekends here are Friday and Saturday. While you guys are home going out on Saturday night, I'm showering for work and on the way to the office. On the other hand, my weekend starts your time about 9:00 Thursday morning.

When I woke up for work that first Thursday, the jet lag was barely noticeable. The time difference is 8 hours. Sweet. I'm always overtired so my body is pretty good at falling asleep. I decided to reward myself and not set an alarm. Figured I'd wake up around 9:00. I woke up at 11:30 to the sound of room service knocking to clean my room. Great, I missed breakfast and half an exploring day.

The office director recommended I go see the Dubai Aquarium at Jumeirah Marina. I wandered over to the information desk to find out how to get there. The gentlemen there told me the resort was closed to those who didn't have a booking. It had just opened and overwhelmed with guests. So there goes that idea. I ask what tours are available. He recommends the desert 4x4 safari and pulls out a brochure. Desert safari? 4x4? I'm so down. The tour leaves at 3:00. Perfect time to wander around and find something to eat, change and come back.

Three o'clock comes and a group of us climb into the van. There is our driver. Mohammed is in his late 20s and recently arrived from Syria. He wants to work in Europe. He is fascinated with American biker gangs and wants to know if they really start fights everywhere they go. There are two attractive french girls on vacation, who barely speak english, two aussie guys and a third aussie woman traveling by herself.

We stopped for gas, us tourists bought sodas and snacks. We drove to the meeting point. About 25 SUVs showed up, all full. All but one were Toyota Land Cruisers, which is apparently the official vehicle of the desert. The lead guide was in a hummer H2. There can be 25 - 50 SUVs in a given caravan. We stop for pictures as the guides deflate the tires.

This was our ride for the night.

Our Driver, Mohammed

A few other SUVs as we all met up, notice the landcruiser back right is stuck and being pulled forward.

The next part of the tour consisted of good old-fashioned fun. Driving around the dunes. Once they let the air out of the tires, these things could really move around the sand. We'd climb up and down dunes, follow ridge lines, bomb up over crests. I'm pretty sure we heard Shakira's "Hips Don't Lie" at least 5 times as we rode along. At certain points, we'd stop and get out for photos ops.

Dunes in the Distance

Out the front window...

There were tons of ATVs following us.

From the rear window...

After 2 hours or so, we pull into "camp." Here, there are all kinds of attractions for tourists. Camel riding, falcon feeding, and the camel stables are the primary ones. Clearly, I cannot travel this far and not ride a camel...

Camel Riding

After exploring the outside with the three Aussies (the French girls have disappeared), we go inside the tent ring. There are a number of small trinket shops. Farther inside, they have a station set up with Arabic coffee and some fried dough thing. Alright I'm game. I'll apologize in advance, I don't remember the appropriate names of any of the food I tried, so I'll just describe it by how it seemed to me. Arabic coffee tastes like REALLY strong tea, but I don't know where they get the name coffee from. The fried dough stuff tastes just like the fried dough you get at a county fair, or on the fourth of July, only its covered in honey instead of powdered sugar. We move on.

There was another falcon inside, but I decided that pushing a line of little kids out of the way to get my picture with the bird was inappropriate. Another station has a type of bread. It is similar to fried pita with balsamic vinegar.

Next comes dinner. There is an enormous buffet set up for all the tours. I go through and get at least one of everything. First is a salad-esque dish, then rice, and now on to Kebabs. There are a variety of kebab meats, interspersed with tomato, onion, carrot, peppers etc.. I can't tell you for sure, but I'm pretty sure I ate at least some combination of the following animals, chicken, cow, lamb and goat. One of the guides told us he was serving camel and then laughed. I don't know if he laughed because he was tricking us, or because we were actually eating camel. All of the kebabs were spiced very heavily in a spice that was new to me.

After dinner, we moved to a central ring that contained the dance floor. So begins the Belly Dancing. About 5 minutes into the show, one of the speakers blew out. I don't mean like it ripped or something. It actually caught fire and was smoking pretty good. About 5 minutes later someone came out with a new one which was promptly thrown up and wired in. The show lasted another 20 minutes. The dancer often dragged the audience up on stage to dance with her. I thankfully didn't get a personal call out, but at the last dance they asked everyone to come up on stage. After the dance, it was thoroughly dark and we returned to hotel. I grabbed my first beer in the UAE at the hotel bar with the three Aussies. It was 35 Dirhams ~ 10 Dollars.

There was supposed to be a pic of belly dancing here, but the light didn't work. Sorry y'all.

I woke up Saturday in time to catch the free hotel breakfast. The hotel has a free shuttle to Jumeirah Beach. Perfect, there's the exploration destination for the day. The shuttle left at 11:00. I now know where Jumeirah beach is and could get there again, but I could not even begin to tell you which way the bus went. Like I said, national pasttime to know back alleys to get everywhere. So Jumeirah beach is pretty much just a beach. It was in a nice park, a beach side shack or two selling burgers, fries and sodas. The water was pretty clear. The only real difference is that on either side of the beach were large barriers. Clearly I have to check this out. On the other side of the barriers is miscellaneous construction. Beach filling to the south, and some kind of large jetty constrution to the north. In the middle of my walking up the beach, a dredging ship showed up and started throwing even more sand up on the beach.

Jumeirah Beach with Burj Al Arab in the Distance

Camels on the Beach!

Dredge and fill - make more islands...

As the day was ending, I headed home and ate at whatever American chain happened to be closest, probably Chiles. I turned into bed about 10PM. My phone went off about midnight. I was very confused, it was too early to go to work. Mohammed, the driver from the off-road safari was calling. He wanted to take me clubbing in the city. I told him I couldn't make it as I had to be at the office in 8 hours. Thanks though... Sunday morning --> Back to work.

The first 36 hours

I can't lie to you. I had 8 days between returning from Key West until I had to leave for Dubai. That should have been plenty of time to prepare, right? My plane left on Tuesday, Oct 7. I started packing Monday morning. My second camera died the previous weekend (my underwater camera died 8 feet down in a pool in Key West), so Sunday and Monday afternoon were spent looking for a camera no one appeared to sell. Monday mid day I met my parents for lunch at Triumph as they were driving home from Maryland.

So I've got my exit plan in place. I was going to wake up early and go on a bike ride with Dom, who was "sick" that day, go out to breakfast, and then catch a ride with Dom to the airport as he drove to Delaware.

Fault: my plane left Philly at 3, not 5. Scratch the bike ride. Thankfully I checked again the night before and realized this before departure day. Everything else worked really well. I finished packing and even managed to fit everything into one checked bag. I went out for a great breakfast, in good company, at a diner in the 'yunk for my last meal in America. When I got back, Dom took me to the airport.

It turns out most banks, and even many currency exchange companies can't convert US Dollars to Emirati Dirhams. Who knew? Thankfully, someone had exchanged some right at the airport shortly before I called looking for it. I walked right up to the Travelex outside the international gates where the money was waiting with my name on the reservation. Score!

Even with two computers, camera, multiple battery chargers and all kinds of other electronic paraphernalia this trip had to be about the easisest I've ever breezed through security. After entering the terminal, I went straight to newspaper stand where I bought two books and three magazines.

The flight to Atlanta was packed, like the other flights I've had to Atlanta in the previous weeks (OCC flies Delta - Atlanta is Delta's hub). The layover wasn't too bad. I made a few last minute phone calls to family, found a comfy chair and read my book. --> Word to the wise, anyone who has a long layover in Atlanta should check out the international terminal. Thats where they hide the best restaurants and all the gates have big comfy chairs.

My second flight was direct from Atlanta to Dubai, a full 14and 1/2 hours. The flight left at 9. I sat next to this cool indian guy who owned a pharmaceutical distribution company in Dubai. He was really excited that we were both divers, though he couldn't really grasp the concept of commercial diving where you can't see anything... Anyway, as soon as we were airborne, they served us an American style dinner. I read a bit, slept for a while and then they served us a decidedly more Arabic style dinner. Its about this point that I realize this may be the time in my life where I will finally have to learn to love couscous and hummus. Second dinner being over, we crossed the Iraq-Iran border and half an hour later we land in Dubai.

The Dubai airport, that's DXB for you travelers, is like being in a 5 star hotel and casino, without the booze seeing as alcohol is nationally prohibited (more on this later). There were contests to win Porsches and Ferraris about every 50 feet, bright neon lights, chandeliers, marble floors, all kinds of service personnel, etc...etc... I walted through customs. US Citizens don't need a Visa as long as the visit is less than two months. Funny, my assignment here is 7 weeks.

I picked up my checked bag and found the exit. Dileep, the COWI driver, was waiting outside with a big green and white sign. He promptly would not let me carry my own bags. We walked over and get into our brand spankin' new company 2007 corolla and away we went.

Sheik Zayed Road (this is the three lane onramp - actual road to the left)

Seeing as it was now 9:00PM local time, Dileep took me straight to the hotel. On the way, he pointed out all the new towers. Here is this tower, its open 6 months now. There is that tower, it only has 25 floors, open 2 years now. We drive over this enormous 12 lane bridge. It was a cool bridge, but even more so because it had only been open for 3 weeks (and already its crowded with traffic). I asked about my hotel which had a little different architecture. He apologized to me and said the normal hotel was full and this one was very very old, almost 10 years now.

Hotel Ibis - My room for the first two weeks.

Converting to US 110V Power

Somehow, I managed to fall right back asleep. The day is now Thursday. Got up in the morning, ate breakfast at the hotel provided buffet and when I was done, Dileep was waiting outside to take me to the office. We took Sheik Zayed road. Sheik Zayed is between 10 and 14 lanes across at all points. It is always congested. As we’re sitting in traffic, Dileep points out many of the towers as we pass by. He points out this gold plated building, a little shorter than the others, maybe only 20 stories, he says that that building was our old office. The office is now in a brand new building, a bit outside of town. COWI is the first tenant to move in.

The "Golden" office building.

We park, and take the elevator up. The building is 4 stories, and mostly unfinished. The elevator is full of dust. Most of the floors are still occupied by construction debris. Our office is quite nice. There are a few exterior offices with windows. Most of the office is open. There is a central core with the bathrooms and break room. Dileep takes me into meet Jesper. Jesper is direct from the home COWI office in Denmark. He is the Managing director of both COWI Dubai office, as well as the entire COWI Gulf region. We chat for a bit. He takes me to my desk and introduces me to the people I will primarily be working with. Bushra is the senior engineer responsible for the concrete block walls. Most of my work will be for her. I will also work with Usama, senior engineer responsible for revetments, Husan, geotechnical engineering and Brad , who arrived from Chicago with his wife about a week before me. They show me the computer program and give me an introductory problem to solve -- more on this excel based program later. 20 minutes after I arrive, I’m plugging away again with good old trusty Excel. The end of the day comes and they wish me a good weekend. I am confused. It is Thursday. Turns out the weekend here is Friday and Saturday. Cool. Dileep takes me back to the hotel. So begins the weekend.

A Jaunt in Key West

I arrive in the Key West airport and meet, for the first time, the other two guys from OCC I'll be sharing a house and going to class with. I can tell its them because they're wearing OCC hats. Their names are Matt and Zach. A fourth guy, from Stantec, one of our competitors, by the name of Frank, will be joining us, at the house and in class. We find all of our bags, pick up the rental car and meet our course director, the inconspicuous Bob Smith, I swear that's his real name.

Let's take a moment and appreciate Bob Smith. This man is Key West. He is the Sheriff's department, the community college, ex head of the entire YMCA SCUBA Program, friend of every bar owner in the town, and just about every aspect of Key West imaginable.

So we meet Bob in his Cadillac, and he takes us straight to a seafood bar where the boats unload fresh fish in the back and half an hour later they're served on your plate. Delicious. We get precious little time to explore the Keys...

Smathers Beach

So there's four of us in the house. Three bedrooms. We drew straws. I lost. I ended up sharing, so be it. The first three days consist of playing crazy catch up to the rest of the class. We do lots of classroom first-aid for diving injuries and all the required basic/advanced SCUBA, including some cool stuff with entanglement drills where they tie us off to heavy debris on the bottom with blacked-out masks and make us figure out to get out in zero-vis.

In total there are 15 people in class, 9 U.S. Army Corps of Engineer guys, one guy from Floriday D.O.T. guy, and one guy from South Florida Water Management. The four of us are in "Charlie" team for the duration of training, with the South Florida guy.

We quickly pass through traditional SCUBA and move onto tethered full face mask training. That means we wear a primary scuba tank, a smaller, second "bail out" bottle and a full face mask while being tethered to the surface while being in complete radio communication with the surface. We learned how to move and navigate in zero-visibility responding to nothing more than a series of tugs on the rope, known as line pull signals, given by our topside tender.

Zach, tending hose.

To practice this, we put on 30 lbs of weight so we could walk on the bottom with no danger of floating, and walk around trying to find objects on the bottom of the training lagoon. (Sidebar: the training lagoon is a pretty cool place. They've sunk a bunch of stuff down there, two cars, 32" diameter concrete pipes, a boat, and the highlight is an old school bus.) The guy before me on my team thinks he's found a pipe, but he didn't have enough air to fully explore it. We didn't really expect there to be a pipe so its new and cool and whatnot. I go down to the same location. After some searching drills, I manage to find the pipe. First thing, I can confirm, its metal, about 20 inches around. I follow it to one end and find and find its capped, almost like a hemisphere. hmm... Ok, I follow it to the other end, its two full arm spans, and about a half an armspan long, that makes it 15 feet. The other end tapers down, but is degraded pretty good. Had some radio comms with the surface. We're pretty sure this thing is an old torpedo. Its just about that time I give the high sign to haul my self up off the bottom. After a talk with the staff, they didn't know it was there, we figure out its an old dummy torpedo. US Coast Guard underwater explosive ordnance disposal practices in the same lagoon. Apparently they lost a torpedo and neglected to tell anyone about it.

Halfway through the 16 days, we switch over to the hard hats. Now these are what we'll use for work. Breathing gas is supplied to us from either huge SCUBA bottle called "K" bottles or by a compressor, or both. The air is pumped down a hose that is bolted into the side of the helmet. Along with the air, we have a secondary air hose, called a pneumofathometer, used for takign depth readings, a strength line so they can yank us back up, and again, a radio comms line.

First day in the hats - My camera died two photos after this.

This is where we did most of the cool stuff. By this point we've got the idea of how to set up and take down our dive stations. We've got down line pull signals and our team is proving to be more efficient and have far fewer errors than the other teams. The Army Corps guys did a recompression chamber drop. We put the 9 guys in the chamber and pressurized it to simulate 132' of water. It was hilarious. They're fine, they're fine.. dropping through 50', dropping through 75', fine... doing fine.. through 100'.. still good, 125' doing fine, 130' everyone's great. Now to the point of the exercise. In the simulated depth change of two feet, we gave them all Nitrogen narcosis. The whole group started simultaneously giggling like a bunch of middle school girls talking about the most recent crush. They were high as a kite from the pressure. We started bringing them back up and as they came back up to 125' all nine were sober as could be again. We did the Men of Honor test. We had a timed race and all did our own impersonation of Cuba Gooding Jr. bolting the pipe flanges together underwater.The last two days we lifted the school bus.

Before we get to the bus, we finally got our night dive in. We'd been trying to get this dive in for some time. It was first scheduled for Tuesday. We showed up, walked there in the rain to wait outside the boat while they had a vibrating shaft. Right shaft troubles. i get it. Anyway, they cancelled, we "explored the town." We had a few drinks at one bar. Then another bar. There was a third bar, at which point I went home, while there was another bar. Wednesday may or may not have been a little rough. Thursday we showed up and tried again. First they took us out to the shipwreck. The "Cayman" was a 140' long schooner that had been wrecked in a storm. She was lying in 90 feet of water. We're back to SCUBA for the fun dive. I partnered up with Frank and one of the USACoE guys. We made it down about 40', my regulator started breathing a little shallow. 50', i pretty much can't pull a breath out of it. I check teh gauges, they're probably a little lower than they should be, but still plenty of air. I give an I'm-in-trouble-but-I'll-be-ok sign to my buddies and switch over to my backup. We continue the dive, though I stick far closer than usual to my buddies. We get to the deck of the ship. Its awesome. Lots of fish, really cool debris and the vis is great. I check my air. There's not a whole lot left. From a starting pressure of 3000 PSI, I'm sitting at about 1000 PSI left. I motion to my buddies, they're still around 2000 PSI. We decided to continue and I'll keep a close eye on it. We get a little further from the descent/ascent line. I've dropped another 200 PSI and they've only dropped 100 PSI. Somewhere, I'm leaking air. I motion, we're going up, and going up now. Normally you aim to get back on the boat between 500 and 1000 PSI. By the time we were back on board, I was well below 300 PSI. I swapped out the gear before the second dive. On the boat ride, I overheard someone talking about this quarry in Pennsylvania. I couldn't help but lean over and ask if she was talking about Dutch Springs. Turns out Kierstin, the girl I was lucky enough to overhear, is from Philly and used to live in Manayunk. Damn, small world. The second dive was a shallow dive on a reef. We saw all kinds of coral, eels, lobsters, crab and two nurse sharks. We had about an hour underwater for this dive. We came up a little far from the boat and had a bit of a swim. Got back to the dock, went out for a few beers.

Back to the bus. Yes, buses are heavy, and this one was 40' underwater. I realize this, but underwater things are a bit lighter underwater and we had some pretty cool air balloons called lift bags that can raise 4000lbs each underwaterThat was pretty sweet. We dug down through a foot or so of silt to get underneath the bus. Matt and I were tasked with rigging the slings around the axles. He got the first one on the front left side before I could even get there. I had to clear myself around a line, and he had the second one in the front by the time I had walked around. The dually back tires were a little different. We couldn't reach behind them. We had a Silt Height Indicating Tool. Guess what they call it in the field. Since you can't push a rope, Matt fed the sling around tool for extra reach and I tried to climb under the bus to the inside edge of the back wheels. I realized I could get farther under the bus feet first since my spare air bottle kept my head from going under. Vis at this point is down to inches. I was lying on the bottom. Out of curiousity, I wondered how far I could see. I put my hand all the way up to where I was touching my mask. I still tell the difference. OK, i gave up. I let my head fall right down into the silt. If I can breathe in a helmet in water, I can breathe in silt too. Even with half of myself underneath, I still couldn't reach the stick. Our time was up so we headed back to the surface.

Dive Station, featuring Frank and my floral print shorts.

Back on the surface we devised a new plan and rigged the back axle differently. The next team got that part done. The next day we connected the air manifold system and inflated the lift bags. The bus came to the surface. To complete the training we set it back down and disconnected the whole system. I was the guy swimming around on the surface to let the air out of the bags. Not a bad job, I actually got to swim a bit, enjoy a bit of decent vis and go let the air out. So what happens when you let the air out a system holding up 12,ooo lbs of bus. It's a little freaky when all the ropes you're swimming around take off like a horse out of a gate for the bottom.

We had one more night of exploring the town. By this point, we haven't hit all, but certainly most of the bars in Key West. We left out the 800 block. For those who know where that is, you'll understand. We took one last stroll through the town and headed back to the house.

The next morning we took our final test and had one final "lessons learned" lecture. We're done at 2:00. Matt and Zach's flight leaves at 3:30. Frank and I have one last drink at the airport and head home, back through Atlanta.

The Start of the Madness

So the story starts before I even left for Dubai. Lets go all the way back to Labor Day.

I returned to the office on September 2 to a host of e-mails. About 8:15, I get a call from our Corporate office, requesting me to attend dive training. After a heart-to-heart discussion, I concede maybe this dive training is a good idea. Training is to last for 3 weeks in Key West. I am to leave in 6 days on Saturday.

About 8:45, my regional director walks into my office and asks to talk. OCC has just gotten a request to send a structural engineer to assist on a high profile project in Dubai. I now know, this is a 20 square kilometer mixed use development on what is now a vacant marsh. There will be small (for Dubai) hotels, condos, town houses, at least one school, a hospital, new canals for pleasure yachts a marina. The trip is to last two months. I am to leave 5 days after I return from Key West.

The day comes to leave for Key West. I'm at the OCC-NJ "summer" office party and I hear, just about perfect timing, Hurricane Ike is headed straight for Key West. The trip is postponed, but we remain on standby for the moment Florida Keys Community College gives us the go to come down.

The next week various trips are on and off and on again. I get a few more days to work on my infamous projects and desparately scramble to prepare to be away for effectively 3 months. Training in Key West has been rescheduled from Sept 13 to 28, with not a single day off. The night before I left, like a good boy, I went to sleep early, since it was a 5AM flight. 11PM, the airline calls, my flight has been cancelled, they can't get me into Key West until after class starts. I tell them this is unacceptable, I need to be there. American airlines found me a flight on Delta, I just had to connect in Atlanta, instead of Miami, no big deal.

I get to the airport to find out that since my flight is less than a 24 hour booking, I get the full security search. I have to empty my bags in front of security and they bomb sniff my computer and my phones. Finally, a week late and a big hassle later, I finally land in Key West.