Entry #4 "Hard Rocking"

Today, I'll be talking about what it's like in the day of a hard rock mining workforce, just like any other day, my father, coworkers, and I, in the same truck. Heading out to start the day. Oh, and if you were wondering how and why my coworkers drove off with us, no, they don't stay in the same house with us every morning; they meet at our house. So after driving off, we stop by the old cafe in town, get a few breakfast burritos, we take off from there to the office now a little context we have two main places that we spend most of our time at, the office and the site if we go anywhere else other than it's to get parts or equipment, So, we stop by the office for a quick briefing on what the plan is for the day run through what we need to get done, make sure we know where to start drilling then we take a couple of guys in aka what we call "The Crew" and head on out to the site to get some work done.

Photo From Google

Now, a lot of what goes on is confidential in a few ways, so I'm not going to get into the nitty gritty of our entire operation, but I can go over a little bit; when we get to the mine, we set up the mill what's a mill you ask? It's a plant that filters out specific material when running dirt, sand, or any other material you might have a suspicion about. There are all kinds of ways to figure out if there is more to this material than meets the eye; one of those ways is running radiation through it; what does that mean? So, when you run radiation through something, that piece of material, in this case, rock, has a specific wave link radiating off it; after this, you get a high-tech scanner. What kind of scanner is it? I can't tell you that either, so after this scanner runs through the specific wave link radiation that is bouncing off of this rock it reads off several different kinds of material that could be in this rock, substances such as copper, iron, zinc, rare earth materials, and like most people are looking for GOLD.

Most people think hard rock mining just involves below-ground excavating, but you would be wrong, the reason for that, as miners, we have to look below, and above when it comes to finding certain materials, so when we get those certain materials or find hints of any of those materials we run them through our mill to hopefully filter them out, now a lot goes into this process we call a mill every single piece of equipment to the biggest cyclone to the smallest pump has to be perfectly calibrated to filter out even one of those specific materials you're looking for, and who else has to run this entire operation but me, I know what you're thinking how could Drake Matney the baseball player have the opportunity or even the brain power to run an entire operations site, well when you've been in the mining business since you were 14 you learn a thing or two. 

Photo From Google

So now that we've been running the mill for a couple hours, bringing in ton after ton of material to be crushed and run through our little operations, we run into a couple of bumps along the way, including the stuff like, hoses breaking or leaking creating a runoff in the mine, in some cases, this could cause a rock slide above ground or a cave in underground due to weakening of the walls, or another big problem would be fixing the air filtration system for the underground air control one of the most essential things to underground mining, now these are just a few problems we run into when mining above and below, but I want to keep it short and simple for today. So now that all the problems are fixed up and ready to go, the plants are up and running again for a couple more hours.

Now that we are at the end of our day, we have to start running everything slower, now you're probably asking why you don't just shut it all completely down, Drake, well I'll tell ya a little secret when it comes to mining machinery you can never just shut it down completely unless an emergency arises, and even then you have to keep running certain machinery so every doesn't come crumbling down. As we were nearing the end of the process of shutting down the plant, we got everything cleaned and washed out, making sure the equipment was gassed up, ready, and set to go for the next day to come. 

After all this, we leave the site and lock everything up, and let me tell you, this is my favorite part of the day. I get to go home and relax, have some good food, and wake up and do the same thing tomorrow. So, this brings me to my conclusion and the end of the journey through the day with Drake Matney and his experience as a head mining operations manager. Thanks for tuning in guys; it means a lot.