Chapter 5

During breakfast, Rob approached with a man who appeared to be his twin, but was obviously several years younger than Rob. "Bob, I would like you to meet Junior."

"Well, it's nice to meet another one of your children." I replied holding my hand out to Junior.

As Junior shook my hand, he said, "See brother; that hard life you have been living, makes you look older than Dad."

"I do NOT look older than Dad!" exclaimed Rob.

Getting up and giving her father a hug, Jenn said, "That's okay Dad, we still love you although you look old enough to be a grandpa."

Throw his hands into the air, Rob turned and stomped off without another word, to the amused laughter of those in the dining tent. Junior and Jenn were giving each other a hug then Jenn asked Junior, "Do you think he will forgive us ... again?"

"Only if you climb onto his lap and tell him how much you love him this evening."

At that point Mary, Rob's wife, approached, saying, "Did you to pick on Rob again." With a smile pasted on her face.

"Not really. Rob introduced me to Bob here and I explained that I wasn't his son."

"All I did Mom, was to tell him I still loved him."

"Neither of you mentioned his age?"

"No, neither of them mentioned how old he was. They just commented on his good looks." I interjected.

Mary gave us a funny look, them seemed to realize what I had said. Mary gave both Jenn and Junior annoyed looks, then turned and left. Smothered chuckling was heard but no one laughed outright. "Maybe I had better arrange for another place to sleep tonight." commented Jenn.

"Look, your Dad sets himself up for this every time. All he has to do, is introduce me as his younger brother, instead of trying to foster me of as a distant relative."

"Are you REALLY his brother?" I asked.

"Yes, but I am from Dad's second wife, who was 20 years younger than him. I am actually only three years older than Jenn." explained Junior, then he continued "I am an apprentice electrician and Uncle said to help you connect up the generators."

"That would be appreciated. Do you have any idea how to span the distance from the generator, far enough up the bank, to avoid losing power due either to flooding or high winds?"

"Sure, I flew in on the first chopper with four utility poles and several hundred feet of 2 inch, thick wall semi ridged plastic conduit and assorted fittings."

We spent the next several minutes discussing what was to be done and how. The waterproof cable from the generator was over two hundred feet long and already connected to the generator and only needed to be stretched out and the conduit slipped over it for added protection. Junior said we could handle the pipe in three section length but over that it became too hard to move or pull the cable through. Now that sure sounded easy.

One of the first choices to be made was how close to put the first utility pole to the river. We decided to move it back away from the river well above the flood line. We would use the back-hoe on the front-end loader to dig a trench to the first pole.

I further found out that they had brought a two man auger with them and as soon as we identified the position for the first pole. They would drill the hole and erected it. Then the others would be erected based on the first poles position leading to the Quonset huts. A larger breaker would also be mounted on the first pole.

The first surprise of the morning was when Junior said, "Well, let's go change so we can get started."

"What do you mean changed?"

"Well, I'm not going to stand in the river dressed like this. It would be too cold."

"I agree with that but what are we going to put on?"

"I am going to put on a wet-suit, then a dry-suit over it. It may not keep us 100% dry but it should go a long ways and keep us fairly warm also."

We went to Rob's tent, where we each changed into a wet suit then added a dry-suit. I was familiar with the donning of the wet suit, having dived before. Frank Taliriktug, who was to be our safety-person helped with the sealing of the dry-suit. The last thing we put on were boots that covered the feet to just above mid-calf. The hope was we would not rip our suits above the boots.

By the time we got to the north bank of the river, I was more than ready to get into the river to cool off. The first step was for us to wade out to the second generator. On the downstream side, I uncoiled the power cable towards the north shore. By the time I had wrestled the cable to edge of the river; several men then took the power cable and stretched it out as straight as possible. Junior measured the distance from the generator to the river bottom then calculated the length of conduit needed, which was cut and glued to a sweep (a big elbow). Then a union joint was glued to each end of the assembly. Once it had dried it was worked down the cable to the river bank where Junior and I took over. We were able to slide it down the cable and connect it to the union on the generator, but it was difficult to do.

After that several straight sections of conduit were glued together with the first one having a union joint. Since the pipe was three sticks long we were able to lift up the end up out of the water long enough to glue the next three section of pipe to it. At this point, the conduit was a good ways past the edge of the north river bank. After a short conversation, Junior and I decided now would be the best time to do the same thing to the southern generator.

Our big concern was the force of the water trying to carry the cable downstream so starting at the north shore we made sure the conduit was flat on the bottom and used large rocks to hold it in place. Twice, Junior and I had to stop and remove a rock together. This was due to the fact that one of us had to hold the conduit out of the way while the other one rolled the rock out of the way. At one point we also filled in a hallowed out point by filling in the area with rocks so that the conduit would have support under it. We also placed several fairly good size rocks on the conduit to hold it in place.