Rocky grind to the finish
30
The semester wound down very quickly. Following our COVID-19 quarantine Harrison needed to attend classes Monday and Tuesday the next week. Then it was back home for Thanksgiving Break.
We spent the Thanksgiving holiday as a family in Taos, New Mexico. It seemed we had recovered well from COVID so we decided to run the Rio Grande Gorge rim-to-rim-to-rim — eight miles round trip from the Upper Slide Trailhead to the Taos Junction Bridge, crossing the river, then climbing the west side of the gorge 800 vertical feet to the Orilla Verde summit. The view back to the east was a cold and blustery scene of steel-gray clouds and patches of snow on the high desert, with the Sangre de Cristo Range as a backdrop. Then we retraced our steps back to the trailhead.
After the break, it appeared Harrison had the semester in the bag with one last week of classes before finals week. He was working on his bend test in Shielded Metal Arc welding, and had started brazing in Oxy-Fuel. However, he called Tuesday evening and was not feeling well. By Wednesday morning he was clearly sick again and so I rushed back to Leadville. I found him wrapped in blankets in his bed. This time it was the flu. Clearly I needed to get him back home. I contacted his professors, packed up the room again and loaded him up for drive back.
He was well enough to return the following Monday afternoon for finals week. We bundled up and went for a short run together before I headed home. It was cold and lightly snowing with the sun peeking through the clouds. On our way out we encountered Blueberry wearing just shorts and a T-shirt, running back toward campus. He glided by with his smooth, open stride and breathlessly said, without pause, “I just ran 13 miles.”
Harrison seemed to be in a good headspace. During breakfast on Tuesday, however, the annual holiday video was unveiled. This was basically an end-of-semester production that included faculty, staff and students. When Harrison realized he had missed his chance to be in the video due to being sick when it was being made, he melted down in the cafeteria, yelling and screaming. He threw his phone. Nate helped him get it back together and escorted him out of the dining hall. The upshot was yet another Care Report and Conduct Violation to close out the semester. Being left out was a real trigger for him even though it could not have been avoided.
With this news, I decided to head back up on Wednesday and see him through the rest of the week. I met him in the welding shop that evening. As a celebration to end the semester, Charlie, the Oxy-Fuel professor, had brought the makings for S’mores, which were cooked using welding torches. There were jokes about failing grades for burning the marshmallows.
The next day Harrison concluded his final welding class in Shielded Metal Arc welding. I met him at the welding shop where he emerged into the snow-covered landscape with a black face, his orange bucket of welding artifacts, gear bag — and a huge smile.
Notes from The Blur
After Thanksgiving break I only had two weeks left in the semester. The first day back I made a dustpan out of thin metal and welded it together in Oxy-fuel welding class. This went together well and I was pleased how it turned out.
However, in Shielded Arc welding I became disappointed and frustrated with my bend test for the final project. This involved taking two pieces of fairly thick pre-cut metal with each end being cut at opposing angles of 45 degrees. Next, I had to bring them together forming a V in the bottom with a small gap on the top. I then tack-welded a backing bar to the backside to temporarily hold everything together while I also tacked the gaps at the ends in the V-notch in the front. A tack weld is a single dot that you make with the stick, or electrode, to hold the metal in place before laying down actual welds.
This is where I made a critical error. After I tacked everything, I made the mistake of running a weld over the tacks holding the backing bar. This was because I didn’t understand that the backing bar was going to be removed later.
After this tacking bar was removed, Geoff, my professor, put my test in the bender and it cracked. This meant I didn’t pass. I wasn’t the only student whose “coupon” didn’t pass. Geoff gave me another chance to get it right.
When I got back to my room from welding class, I started feeling strange. I began coughing later in the day but had a choir club meeting. I thought the cough was nothing serious. We discussed a potential holiday caroling event in downtown Leadville. The following day, the coughing didn’t seem to stop and I thought, “Oh no, here we go again.” I took a COVID test and it was negative.
The next morning I woke up early and threw up. I felt frustrated to be sick again. I think having COVID might have weakened my immune system. This made me unable to do the things I usually do in the morning, like go to breakfast and run. I stayed in bed for half the day. During that time, my Apple Watch kept alerting me of a high heart rate.
My dad drove up that afternoon and found me sick in bed. I still had another welding class that day. So my dad talked to my welding prof, and they agreed for me to go home early. And so it went. I ended up missing more days and some holiday activities.
When I finally came back that Sunday night, I was hoping to have a good last week of my first semester. However, one morning at breakfast, I found out that I was not in the holiday video. I was very frustrated to miss out on this due to being sick. I lost control of my emotions and had a loud outburst. The cafeteria was not crowded but there were a few people in there. Nate helped me through this situation and got me out of the cafeteria. I found out later the cafeteria staff had to submit a Care Report on this incident.
None of this of course was a great start to this final week. However, later that evening, I redid my bend test in arc welding. I avoided the mistakes I made the first attempt, and this time passed the test with a 94 percent. Geoff only marked it down for a slight cosmetic defect.
The day after that in Oxy-Fuel welding, our professor, Charlie, brought pizza and also stuff to make S’mores. He had everyone roast marshmallows with welding torches before assembling their S’mores as normal. It was a fun way to finish the class.
I had just one more welding class with Geoff the next afternoon and then I was done. As I left the shop for the last time that semester, I felt a sense of accomplishment that I had completed these welding classes and my first semester of college, not to mention all the other experiences I’d had and challenges I’d been through.
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