Groundskeeper. Mike joins the groundskeeping crew for the Bowie Baysox, a AA minor league team at Prince Georges Stadium in Maryland. The normal crew consists of one guy, so normally another person would have doubled the crew. But Mike is not a normal guy. It might have cut it in half (or more).
First up is cutting the grass. This daily two-hour chore involves keeping the grass at an even 7/8 of an inch. Mike hops on to take care of the task, and quickly learns that the first thing that needs to happen is to lower the blades. After cutting the grass, he learns how to slide into the bases from team manager Jason, and then he gets to rake the dirt so that it is ready for the game.
Since Mike has a background in singing, he gets to perform the national anthem prior to the game. I’m not sure if this is part of his duties, or if he is just using this as an excuse to take a break. Regardless, before long he gets back to work, dragging a mat over the dirt to fix the scuffs that the players leave while running the bases. He wants his tractor back.
Boat Mooring Placer. Next up, Mike meets Dave, a former Navy SEAL, who has one of those businesses that you never think about existing. Dave replaces moorings in Lake Winnipesaukee, near Gilford, New Hampshire. You heard that right – in the lake! Naturally, so that a boat is able to connect to it, these things need to be big. We’re talking thousand-pound blocks of concrete.
The first task is to get the blocks on the barge, then cut some chain to attach to the blocks, and finally dump the blocks into the water. As interesting as the first part is, it is only once they get into the water that the real fun begins. You see, when you dump a big block of concrete into the water, it of course lands upside-down and you have to flip it over. Luckily, you can use air and the fact that the water helps you maneuver it to move things around.
Mike gets some help hooking things up, but they use compressed air to float a “balloon” above this flipped-over block, and move it into place. Once this is done, they pick up pieces of the old mooring (why they are replacing it – you don’t want to hook up to something that is falling apart!). Mike has some issues, and finally gets his worn-out self back to the boat.
Well Digger. Finally Mike gets back on dry land to help the crew of Watson Well Drilling. They are working on a retirement home near Tennessee, and their job is to install a geothermal heat system. Unlike more conventional systems, the geothermal system uses a bunch (around 90) deep shafts drilled deep into the earth (two hundred to three hundred feet!). This allows the system to use the constant ground temperature, rather than the air temperatures which can change drastically from one season to the next.
Mike is here because the process of digging that many shafts that deep into the ground is going to produce a lot of mud. Generally Watson can drill up to 15 of these systems per day. Or perhaps they can do 15 wells per day, and a well is not quite the same, since a well is a single hole, not 90 or more holes. Regardless, they can typically do 15 per day. On this day, with Mike’s help? They did one.
