Mike Pearson's Adventures on a Pale Blue Dot

The first major blasting job in Segment One ( West Vancouver ) of the Sea to Sky Highway Improvement Project. On the south side of the Upper Levels Highway, we need to blast and dig a road, so that a large retaining wall can be built. The interesting factors are.... a very busy highway right beside us....and a steep drop off that leads directly to houses and a road below us. The first of the Tamrock Ranger 800 drills has now arrived, and this is the first test. No one on the crew has even touched one of these hi-tech machines before. The vendor, Traxxon is with us constantly during the early days of breaking in the drill and operators. Because we are so close to the highway and bridge structure, we dial down the hole size to 1 3/4" and use 1 1/4 dynamite for a kinder, gentler blast. Large rubber blast mats are used on every shot. We over-did it with the mats on most shots, because we were only waiting for gaps in traffic before pushing the go button. We really couldn't afford ...

 I'll try and get through this quick......so we can get to the good stuff. That's me. the future mover of mountains For the most part, the blasting biz on the Coast was a roller coaster ride of no phone calls and no work ( no money ) , and tons of good work and fantastic money. My favorite bits were doing good work in super challenging situations. Building logging roads was always fun and I loved the people that I worked with, and the customers who appreciated the work and paid their bills on time, all good.  At about eight years into it, I could see that the business as it existed wasn't feasible any longer. The cost of doing business was sky-rocketing. Insurance premiums went through the roof every year after 911. The cost of drill parts,bits, rods and drill rigs themselves all went up, as the prices paid for work to be done stagnated or fell backwards. The choice was simple, get out of the business or spend the money to go bigger. I ran the numbers backwards and f...

So here we are, I've been approached by a developer who wants me to do his blasting work on a new subdivision. Don, the fellow schooling me in the art of blasting for whatever reason at this time, decides not to part with his company at the moment. Now I'm a bit surprised because I thought the whole point of this exercise was to pay a fair price for the existing business and hit the ground running. I tried a few more times to get a commitment, but on each occasion a vague answer would be the only thing that came back. Now to be fair, Don had his hands full with other things going on in his life and maybe this deal wasn't at the top of his agenda.  The time came to piss or get off the pot, so I met with the business man who offered me the partnership deal in the marina parking lot. We decided to move ahead on starting a brand new blasting company instead of purchasing the existing one. The upside is that it was actually cheaper to fire up a new biz than it was to pay for T...