9.5. A Contest of Convictions
"Why don't you get the first round, Will? You can just bill it to the project." Al gave me a weak smile to go with his weak joke. I got up and pushed my way through the crowd to buy the drinks. It serves me right for being so keen, I thought.
As soon as I had arrived home from visiting Martha I called my project team to set up an early meeting the next day. I wanted to waste no time in identifying who would be who on the project. Instead of simply agreeing to be there, Al had insisted that the two of us get together, now, that same night. There were important issues, he said. It had been a very long day and here I was standing at the bar of an English style pub called the Gasping Goose or the Twisted Chicken, ordering a couple of mugs of some strange English-style brew. As I returned to the table, I spilled beer on three different people. Nobody seemed to mind.
"Here you go Al," I said, sliding him a mug of something called Ruddles Bitter. We sat silently regarding our beer for a few minutes until I could stand it no longer. "So what was it you wanted to talk about?"
"My first job out of college was assistant supervisor of a drilling crew on an oil rig. Al took a sip of his beer. "Armadillo Oil was the company. Down in Texas. I was fresh out of college with my shiny new engineering degree and they put me in charge of a bunch of roughnecks. Know what happened?"
I tried my beer. It had a thick, bitter taste and it didn't seem to be carbonated. It was ...