Some say that the most precious commodity of all is time ….. However long we have on this planet, we know that the time is finite ……. we are all going to die at some point but we just don’t know when …… so to view the TIME we have in each of our lives as a finite commodity creates a little perspective. TIME as the most precious asset that each of us is given!!!
With that idea in mind, I was thinking about making a Christmas gift for my two children back in 2010 or 2011 and had this idea that we should spend some time together …… then the thought came to me that maybe I could memorialize the Christmas Time with a “Gift of Time”. My son Ryan was about 20 years old ….. my daughter Alanna around 16 or so.
At the time I was working in Bonnyville, Alberta for Baker Hughes. Our work was to do electronic surveys of existing oil wells in the region around Bonnyville. The majority of the time we worked on wells owned by Imperial Oil, a subsidiary of ExxonMobile. The oilfield there is part Cold Lake oilfield that is estimated to be 65 million years old. It occurred to me that a 65 million year time frame was interesting ……. the relationship between a human’s 65 – 100 years on this planet and …… 65 million years …… 65 million years is a long, long time!!!
So what could I do? I decided I would collect some of the oil and weave it into a story.
I found a couple of one ounce perfume bottles ……
You know the ones that have a tiny opening so that the user could tip it and receive a tiny amount of perfume. If you try, you will find that it is not so easy to fill such a bottle even with water …… the hole in the bottle is so small the air in it cannot escape ….. heavy oil or bitumen is another thing altogether.
I collected some crude oil from the shaft of one of the oil well pumpjacks. The folowing Youtube video demonstrates how a pumpjack actually works.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFJFiyXTOa0
I collected a cup or so of raw heavy oil, often called bitumen …… By the time I got it home it was even thicker ……. Imagine thick molasses ……. it can barely form a drip let alone pour like a liquid ……. and I needed to get it into this tiny little hole, in a tiny one ounce bottle ……. time for some creativity!!!!!
A thought came to me that at the bottom of the well, the natural temperature of the oil is quite hot …… at 2000 meters the temperature would be around 50 degrees Celsius. https://www.encyclopedie-environnement.org/en/zoom/pressures-and-temperatures-in-underground-storage/ …… and that allowed the oil to be liquid as it came to the surface. But right away it started to thicken up to the point where it was like molasses. So I fashioned up a double boiler and heated the bitumen to 100C degrees (boiling point of course) and with considerable patience …… and spooning the softer bitumen ….. I was able to create the thinnest of driplets so that the oil entered the tiny hole …… it took nearly 15 minutes per one ounce bottle!
OK!!! Step one …… I now have 65 million year old oil ….. in a bottle!!!! …… well two bottles!!! But the reality struck home …… a 16 year old girl is not going to be excited about receiving a little black bottle of ….. black goo …… (or whatever) …… not too impressive ….. or for a 20 year old boy for that matter.
So I then decided I would write a little hand written book with a simple intro that described my premise ….. that each of us has very little TIME on this planet ….. relative to the planet itself ….. and that the events of our lives are just blips time ……. blips that slip by so fast ….. I would write something simple about the events in our lives ….. starting with “here we are, celebrating Christmas, at the Hotel Vancouver, in 2010” or something to that effect ….. then, each page in my little story book would take one step back in time …… doubling the time frame for each page!! As an example:
What was happening in your life last year at this TIME?
What was happening 2 years ago? …… 4 Years ago? 8 years, 16 years, 32 years (on the planet), 64 years, 128 years, 256 years, 512 years, 1024 years, 2048 years, 4096 years, 8,192 years, 16,364 years….. which lands us before of what is considered “Recorded History” or the beginning of documented events in our world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recorded_history …… Turns out that in 13 pages, the book would be in territory prior to recorded history.
As an example ….. My daughter Alanna was born on Page 4, My son Ryan was born on Page 5, William the Conqueror invaded England from France around 1066 or Page 11, Jesus Christ was born somewhere around Page 12 , the North American Ice Age ended on Page 15 ….. and of course our oil was born way, way before that ….. 65 million years ago ….. I believe that was page 16 or so ….. and then came the conclusion to the book …..
Use your TIME wisely …… recognize your weaknesses and strengths …… make the most of the TIME you have …… consider TIME to be the most precious of assets that each of us is given …… FREE of CHARGE!!
I don’t know if each of my kids kept their “Gift of Time” ….. my hope is that they make the best of the time they have!!!!
