A Pioneer Miner Story (II)

Previously on Ungovernable Misfits. I've already told this story on the show and started mining on a PC that I built. And, I was like, oh, this doesn't do anything. I have to connect my computer to something that I don't understand like,

it's the government, man. So anyway, bought an Asnaim then I can like take the heat out of that and I can send the heat around the house. I had gotten a cow. Face fucking melted. The dad drove over the mom in a tractor and killed her. If I could lease that land, and I'm like, oh, wouldn't it be cool if I could run miners there someday?

A coal bed methane well. It's five miles from my house. Really? I didn't know that part of the story. I wasn't literally on the phone to you as it happened, as it unfolded.

Okay. So I get to take a good look at it, and I get there, and it's like this fenced in area. And it's got all this equipment, and I don't even know what the fuck it is. And it's got a big giant garage on it and a little office attached to the side. Like, wow. This is really something.

Within the next couple days, I get to meet with Jim down there and the owner of the well, and that is mister Mark Lidecker. So they take me around, and Mark explains that he built this site in the early nineties.

It is a coal bed methane well. And what they do here is hold on a second. I'm a try to burp. I've swallowed too much air. Oh my god. Now no one can listen to this. It's a real burp, not a reverse burp.

So what Mark did, and I'll just tell you the story of Mark Lidecker right now. So Mark was 50 years in oil and gas. He's in his late seventies. Mark used to work oil and gas as a well driller and petroleum engineer for a decent size

outfit in Western Pennsylvania, and this is before fracking came in about, and he got injured. And during his convalescence after he he injured his arm, he realized, you know what? I don't wanna go back to that company. I just wanna work for myself.

So he takes some time to think about that, gets better, and decides he's gonna go out on his own. And what he decided to do with him and his partners at the time was Mark used to map out old coal mines.

And what he would do is try to overlay the coal mine map with the real map and decide where he could tap into that coal mine and suck out the methane that builds up into a shuttered old coal mine. So when they used to mine out old coal mines, you would leave large pillars

of rock there to keep the mine up. Like, it isn't just the supports that you see on movies and stuff. They also leave large pillars of rock. And back then, especially, they didn't mine out the entire thing. They didn't go and get every little inch of coal. What they did was just follow the main seam of coal

and got out as much as you possibly could. So he finds this coal mine here. It is shuttered. It started in, I think, 1917, 1918, that coal mine. And it helped build the industrial base in this town that I live in. It's a patch town. It's entirely company houses and a a company store.

Over there, there was a a buddy of mine rented a garage right next to the old company store, and, apparently, in the basement there was a brothel. So the coal miners used to frequent that brothel. That coal mine is part of the fabric of this town that I live in. So Mark finds this coal mine,

gets a lease on the property, gets a lease on some of the other properties around there, and taps into the coal mine. And what you do

is all that methane kind of builds up there, you tap into it, and you put a compressor on there that puts that line under negative pressure. And at first, you pull out a lot of water. You pull out of a lot of inert gases that have built up in the coal mine there. But, eventually,

once you get rid of all that water and the c o two and h two s, that it's pretty much all methane, and you suck that out with the compressor. So he's got the wellhead. He has another conventional well that ends up being the start gas for that compressor.

All of the gas gets sucked out of the coal mine from the compressor,

and it got sent into a number of different pieces of equipment that would dry the gas out. There was a mechanical filter separator, kinda takes out a lot of the water from the gas, and there was another, something called an amine plant, which took out additional c o two from the gas and then went into a de high unit,

dry the gas even more. As it went out the site and onto local pipeline, it got Mercaptan put in on it, and that's the smell that you smell when you when you have your gas on. So when Mark built that site, really, with his own two hands,

drilled the well, ran the excavator to grade everything, the gas that comes out of a coal bed methane well often isn't of the highest BTU like a conventional well is. So what he did, he was one of the first he was the first person on Columbia Gas to put propane onto his gas before he sent it out to market

because that gas was about 900 well, probably at that time, it was in in the eight hundreds BTUs. So he has there's a 30,000 gallon propane tank there.

Still there. So he would dope the gas with propane. And he actually had to go to Columbus, Ohio and and meet with the executives at Columbia Gas to do this plan. Like, this is how crazy this whole fucking plan was.

Imagine this guy. I injure my arm. I'm off of work. I'm gonna do the craziest fucking thing I possibly can. I could just go back to work and be a normal fucking Joe, nine to five it, live a pretty good life. A gas guy, you know, worker makes a pretty decent living.

No. I'm gonna find a coal mine and tap into it, and then I'm gonna suck the methane out of there. I'm gonna find out how to get all of these leases and how I can drill another conventional well just to start the compressor up. Because you have to start the compressor up on a different fuel source after you have it started.

It runs off of the methane that comes out of the coal mine, but you gotta get the thing started first. Drills another well. Well, that well hit is a thousand feet away from here. Give up my entire life. Risk everything.

Meet with Columbia Gas and say, I'm gonna put propane on there. Initially, when he started things up, he lived there on-site. He brought a camper and slept there every night in the middle of the winter, and

the propane tank was putting out so much propane because the gas was so fucking shitty that there were huge chunks of ice all over that propane tank. Mark Lidecker is just an amazing fucking guy. He's like a total inspiration

to me in in so many ways. I kept thinking about this all summer. Like, what would Mark have done? He wouldn't even have gone home. You know?

He would have slept here. What would Mark do? I kept thinking about it all summer long. Like, I have a duty to him to keep this gas well going. I know the history of this place. I know the lineage here. I know the work and risk that he put into it, and there's more to that story too.

That's what I see when I get there to first survey this land. And, you know, at this time, I'm like, this is it. I found the thing. This has to happen.

I'm going to make this happen. So I tour the area. So there's two access roads to it. There's one that's to the main gas plant, and then you have to go way around the corner, like, another five minutes away to get to another access road where my conventional well is. We're driving around, Mark and Jim and I, and I say to them,

I say, you know what? I put an offer on that property over there to run cows, and Mark's like, this guy will probably let you run cows up here. He don't care. He don't do anything with it. You know, like, those old heads like that, they really hate this second, third generation

folks where now they've gotten gas money, and they don't give a shit about running animals anymore. Like, they've all given up their farmer heritage because they don't have to. Lazy. They get a fiat job, and I got a $5,000

fucking check coming in every month from you know, that they fracked a well here. And then Jim says, you're interested in regenerative agriculture. My dad started the rotational grazing program at Penn State. I was like, holy shit.

This is crazy. They all these things keep lining up. And once again, you've heard all this. So Yeah. Yeah. But to me, I just get tickled by the whole fucking story. It was meant to be.

Oh, dude. Absolutely meant to be. So, anyway, that's super neat, and we get to talking, and we have, you know, lunch and dinner at Longhorn Steakhouse, and, you know, I put an offer on that. And Mark's just, like, the coolest fucking guy in the world. Mark and I signed the deal.

I go down to his lawyer's office, and he's like, I wanna come up and show you some stuff. And so he comes up, literally had to record him, like, an hour's worth of footage of him explaining everything.

We went to every site, went to conventional well, went to the valve bank, went where it goes on pipeline, in the creek bed, in the garage. You know, it's an hour and something of footage of me recording him so he can explain how the hell this all works because I don't fucking know anything about oil and gas.

I do now. This has been a hell of an upbringing in this industry, but I didn't know anything at that time. And so while we're going to one of the wells, Martin tells me this story.

And he says, you know, when I first decided to do this project, I had a well hand, young guy. And he worked for me for a while, but he would just slack off. You know?

He was supposed to be going and checking meters and dumping filter separators and stuff like that, and he would, like, just go off hunting or something like that and not get the work done. And he's like, nice kid. I really hated to do it. I had to fire him. Couple months goes by, and the kid dies in a hunting accident.

He was, up in a tree stand, and I guess he was hunting with a friend. And the friend put a rifle against a tree, and it fell, and it went off, and it killed him. So it's something like that, the story. But, anyway, the kid dies in a hunting accident. Shit.

And Mark goes to the kid's funeral, and the mom comes up to Mark and says, oh, Mark,

I just wanna really thank you so much for giving Jimmy a job. He just was always kind of a a free spirit kinda thing, and you you took a chance on him. And he always just told me how wonderful you were and how much he appreciated working for you. And the point of that is the kid never even told his mom that Mark had fired him.

You know, Mark's like, it just took me over. This is just a really emotional moment, and he he was building a well at the time, and he he just said, god, I'm gonna dedicate my life to being an obedient son of yours. I'm a total straight and narrow path. I just want to live my life for you. And

at that moment, like, his life just completely turned around. That well came into his life, and he started to build that and poured his heart into it. And every moment, like, something wasn't going to go well, like, they weren't gonna get on the pipeline with Columbia Gas,

or they drilled, one well and it collapsed, and they actually had to go to a different location to tap into the coal mine. You know, there were it's like, I'm trying to piece together all of his stories.

Just so many things that weren't going to work out, and they worked out. There was just something providential. It was that hand of God always kind of pushing him over the next hurdle. And, you know, I really believe that he kind of attributes that to that moment that he dedicated his life to God. So he's telling me this story,

and we're sitting in his truck. And I was like, Mark, can we just sit down and pray with each other here? And I was like, because I often feel that that providential hand of God, how I came about, you know, to meet you and to find this opportunity.

And we did, and to me, at that prayer was like that prayer with Daniel. It's like, I really came out of that thinking that I had heard something from the Lord. So I take over the well, and this was, like, November.

And the first thing I have to do is to find machines. You know? I can't just, like, okay. Now I have a gas well. Oh, by the way, it got kicked off of pipeline, so I can't even sell the gas through the winter, which would have been great.

I would have made quite a bit of money through the winter if I were selling gas, but now it got kicked off because, you know, what happened during that time that it was off for so long. So Mark being a nice guy, all he really needed that well at this point in his career was so he could secure the deep rights, the fracking rights.

Mark became terribly successful. This wasn't his only venture. This was just his first.

Mhmm. And so very successful guy. And in order to keep the gas plant going so he could keep his rights going, he actually gave the gas plant or sold it probably for nothing knowing him to his well tender. And, you know, Mark goes to Florida. He's got a church down there in Florida that he build, this super great charitable guy.

One of the free gas customers, which I still serve with free gas, calls up and says, I don't have any gas. And Mark's like, well, you should. Okay. Let me call up and see what happened. You know? So he calls the guy that he gave the well to, and this guy hadn't been properly maintaining

the gas plant. That particular well, that's the start gas well, had, filled up with water. It needed swabbed out. That's why it wasn't producing, and it had kinda gone to shit for a while. So Mark had to come up from Florida and get everything going back at the well. And but after that, he really wasn't too interested in it.

And, the guy that maintained it kinda let things go for a while. The compressor went down for a while. So what happened is the compressor was down for a while, and the gas company come to fill up the mercaptan tank, and the mercaptan got everywhere.

So when they turned the gas plant back on, there was a leak somewhere, and that smell wasn't necessarily gas leak, a severe gas leak. It was a little. That happens.

But that smell was everywhere. And there were, like, eight to 90 trouble calls in the area for a gas leak even though there was none. So they came down hard on the well. They didn't admit any fault. Really, they shouldn't have been filling it up when the compressor was off. Well, gas was not flowing.

You shouldn't have been filling it up at that time. Possibly overfilled it. Who knows? Doesn't really matter. I sorta know the story. Whatever. We'll let sleeping dogs lie. So it was not on pipeline this entire winter, which would have been hugely beneficial to me that would have funded

a big part of this build, but it didn't, and that's okay. And there were a number of assets on there that I'm no longer using that I should have been able to sell over the past year, and maybe two people have called me to sell these things. So it didn't even start off very well once I took everything over. The next hurdle was to find

generators. I've gotta consume this gas. And the reason that's important is because this being a coal bed methane well with a compressor, you have to do something with the gas once you suck it out. It isn't like a conventional well where you can say, oh, I'm gonna close this valve down or or it's butted up against the generator. So,

as long as I rag it down, that gas isn't going anywhere. And I'm simply gonna consume the amount of gas that I need to, the amount of gas that this thing produces, but not with a compressor.

You gotta send that gas somewhere. You gotta vent it, you gotta flare it, or you gotta push it back into the compressor. So we've designed a really complicated valve bank with a pilot motor valve and regulator and all this stuff, and it pushes it back into the compressor.

I wasn't even sure that this was going to work, but as you know, that was a big struggle. What am I gonna do with this excess gas? Like, I can get one generator for $300,000. You know? That was the quote from Cleveland Brothers for big caterpillar generator and consume all the gas that this thing produces.

Or I can start small, see whatever generators I can get, maybe put the compressor RPMs down low, not produce so much gas, hope the pressures and temperatures don't build up, and now the compressor shuts down on a high temp alarm.

I gotta find generators. Once again, KT to the rescue. He had some assets in West Virginia, and he also had a friend who had some assets in another part of West Virginia. So you remember this video. I had to go up on this fucking hilltop, and we had a tractor and a dozer and a flatbed trailer to get all this equipment.

And we got it down off of this hill, this, like, goat path down off of this hill. You remember them, like, towing Yes. Like, having to chain the truck to a tractor or a dozer to get it back down.

It's quite a feat. It was quite a feat. Yeah. And then I had borrowed, once again, Andy back in the story. Andy's deck over trailer and towed all this stuff back to the well pack. Good. Now I got a 100 kilowatt generator, which is a giant fucking piece of shit. I hate that fucking generator. It still doesn't fucking work.

S e s aero. That's not the one that went down today. That's the other one. No. It's not the one that went down today. Thanks for reminding me. I forgot. That generator is a fucking piece of fucking shit.

Anyway, two generators that end up bringing a a buddy of mine into Baha'i because I was like, okay. Well, I'm running out of money. Does anybody wanna buy some gas from me? So a buddy of mine comes in and gets those two generators,

which they were a bitch to get also as you may know, probably being while I'm driving talking to you. In the middle of nowhere, West Virginia, but to take my truck, and I have this tilt bed trailer with a winch on the front of it.

And and what I do is just take that tilt bed trailer and tilt it down in front of the container and get the winch and yank it up. You got a really sweet system for that. Fucking works. Hey. If anybody needs any generators or containers moved, please give me a call. I am for hire. You're an expert. And the system is pretty sweet.

Give you a decent deal because I sure ain't making no money mining. But I have developed this logistics system. These were, like, in remote sites where it literally took me, like, an hour to just get down the hill, like, going five miles an hour because these are so fucking remote.

And I meet this well tender up there. He was the one running these containers and doing the gas, this guy named Brent. I'll tell you about Brent. I saw him running around, disconnect the pipes, running down the hill. He jumps out with a freaking chainsaw.

He's jumping up in the air with a chainsaw trying to trim trees so we can clear the roads. There's just been a a big storm. I was like, man, this dude hustles. It's very rare. Oh, I mean, yeah, it's rare indeed.

This guy fucking goes to town. And I said to him, I said, you want any side work? He's like, yeah, man. You know, just like he's real you alright? Pay me this much? Yeah. Alright. I'll do it. Like that.

Brian, if you ever listened to this podcast, probably haven't told you to your face because, I don't know. It's just not something dudes do, but really appreciate you. I I could not have done this without you.

Although you're often a pain in the ass and say you're gonna come, and I know your life gets busy and you don't show up. When you do show up, I just couldn't have done this without you, man. I I really, really, really appreciate you.

I meet him. I meet his cousin, Cecil. When Cecil and Brent show up, sometimes it's 03:00 in the morning. Those dudes work for, like, twenty five hours one time. Jesus. I was like, I'm going home. You know?

Alright, boss. We'll be here. Like that, you know, I I meet Brent and I meet Cecil, and now they're on the team.

I get those generators and get them set up. As you guys heard on the show, one time I was visiting Chet. Chet was here about an hour away, set up a hydro mine as only he can do. I was like, oh, I'll take the day off and I'll come visit. I'll help you pull machines out and do whatever.

You know, I just wanna spend time with you and help out. So I did, and I go up there and I see two more generators.

And I say to the kid that ran that site, who owns those generators up there? Those 50 kilowatt upstream data hash shots. And he's like this guy. And so I get his number and make an offer on those, and I get those. So now we have five generators on-site.

They're not placed anywhere. They're just sitting outside the fence. I'm sure you remember those pictures too. Then just freaking sitting there. I had a bunch of huge pieces of equipment that I had to remove out of there. There was the amine plant that takes out CO two from the gas. Don't need that anymore.

The well has been running for a while. It's pure methane. It actually hasn't been used for a while. Just a thought. All the photos and stuff that you have of all this equipment Okay. We should put that in the chapters. Then if anybody wants to purchase that piece of equipment, it was originally a $125,000, and I am selling it for 10,000.

Also, there is a Dehi unit that was $75,000, never been used, never even assembled, that I'm selling for 40. Okay. Please buy them. Please buy them. That's a good deal. Yeah. It's a good deal.

Will you accept corn for them? Fuck. Yeah. I don't fucking give a fuck. Okay. I'll accept literal corn for them.

Fucking bushel of corn. Yeah. There you

go. So they're right in the way. This is exactly where I need to place these generators. You know, I gotta do everything inside the fence with this lease because because I don't own the property. And that's typical of these. You don't own the property. So I gotta disassemble these fucking things. There's pipe running through it.

You know, it's going off the pipeline. It's a configured, well established gas plant. This is my first real hurdle. How the fuck am I gonna get all this shit out of here? I could hire a company. By the way, could not find anybody to move that stuff.

Could not find any. I mean, I was the first I was like, well, okay. I'll pay for somebody to come and get this stuff out of here, at least off to the side so I can take pictures of it and list it and sell it, and I couldn't find anyone. So what you're dealing with now is, like, a 40 foot contact tower.

You've got two more thirty, forty foot towers that they offer the aiming plant. The dehi has another oh my god. That thing must have been 40 feet solid,

filled with dehy fluid. Well, how am I gonna get these damn things out of there? I literally have to take them apart by hand and move them out of here. And so at that time, I was kind of complaining at work, you know, oh, I'm gonna do all this stuff. My buddy Robbie g says, oh, my son Dylan can help you out.

He's not doing anything in the summer. He's off of school. I think we did an episode where we talked about doing this Mentorship. Trying to mentor young people. You should be doing this as a grown man.

And I was like, great. This would be a great opportunity for Dylan. He's in cybersecurity in college, so he could do all the IT stuff. Do, like, a brake job on a car. He's he's not like a fucking total nerd. You know? The kid can do stuff. He's helping me now. We eventually get a high lift.

Well, first of all, I had to order, like I don't I can't tell you how many tri axle loads of gravel I've ordered. Maybe six tri axle loads of gravel. So we gotta, like, grade all this land and gravel all this. That way we can get a machine in there to get the stuff out. I get a big high lift and just start disassembling everything.

Like, literally get on the high lift and put straps up at the top and take down this big tower and lift all these things out of there and drag them. And

Dylan and I did this stuff over a couple days, and I still can't believe we did that, just the two of us. Disassembled these plants, got them out of there, took the fence down, loaded up, graded the area, You know? Loaded up all of these generators back in. Like, once again, same thing with Brent,

Cecil, Dylan. Without Dylan, I don't know how I could have pulled this off this summer. They just stayed positive the whole time. There was a time where we had worked all freaking day, and we got all the stuff out of there. And I was like, Dylan, we still gotta do this one more thing. And he's like, like, I crushed him.

And it was, like, thirty seconds after he's like, alright. Alright, man. Alright. Let's do it. Let's go. You know? And we worked for another two, three hours. The kid has just been great. I can't say enough good things about that guy. Listen. If anybody's in cybersecurity and next summer you need a cybersecurity

recent graduate, please call and let me know. The kid can fucking do anything. Like, at this point, I think cybersecurity is probably easy for him given the challenges that he met this summer and and that he overcome and the skills that he learned. You know, he'd crush any Indian cybersecurity

guy graduating with a fake degree. That's for fucking sure because he's a a real red blooded American kid who can kick ass. So let me know. Yeah. So we get all the stuff out of there. We get all of the generators in place. I even have one of these generators. I got a brand new engine put in it. Still a little fucking star.

You know? This is a fucking star. Yeah. Still a fucking star. Did you put an American you put like a Ford engine in there or something? It's their Chevy three fifties. Okay. That'd be why. Yeah. That would be why. I mean, the three fifty is like one of the most prolific engines in in history.

There's some stat on it. It's like more units of that engine have been sold than oh, there's a stat there's something, like, crazy. It's something like there's a million a year or or 2,000,000 a year gets sold. Not anymore, but up until the late nineties. Equally, probably the Ford 300 straight six would have been up there too.

I don't know. The stat on the three fifty. I'm sure there was a recent Top Gear episode where they were talking or not not necessarily recent, but I watched recently, which was, like, celebrating the combustion engine.

Yeah. And they went through, like, the top engines and why they're the top engines, blah blah. And I'm I'm pretty sure the Chevy three fifty was in there. Oh, I wouldn't fucking doubt it. I mean, it's a simple fucking engine. I don't know why. It was so simple yet.

There's just no reason. I think it's pressures. I think the regulator anyway, the shop talk. I think the reg is no good. I put another reg on there, but I don't think the orifice is big enough. I got another one coming. I think we're gonna put a Joe on there and take the pressure down. I think it's just a gas issue.

It's got sparked, turns over, computer's good. Anyway These are some of the problems that you face day to day as a gas man. Oh, god. Yeah. It's not changing boards. No. No. I could give a fucking shit less. You know, I'm not changing boards, fans out. I mean, to a degree, and I appreciate the fact that alteartech.io

is is a sponsor of the show because plenty of spare parts that that I can order. You know, I just went on Altair's website and just ordered a ton of fucking spare parts. And I have Dylan do that because I have no interest in fucking doing that. None. I'd rather buy a pallet of fucking used machines and just throw them in there.

And throw the other one in the fucking ocean like Warren does. Take it down to the Gulf Of America and throw it in. I don't like that stuff. As I think I said in the industry, I don't like computers.

I don't like it. Now it's time to do all the plumbing, and I have to engineer this plumbing in a very specific way. And thank God for Mark once again, came out and dusted off his petroleum engineer hat and said, I think we should do it like this. And I looked at his schematic, and I said, okay.

We'll do it just like that. We're coming out of the compressor. We're backing up against the back pressure regulator. Before the back pressure regulator, it's got a filter separator, knock out some gas. We've got an after cooler because once again, as I described, this pushing gas back into the suction side of the compressor,

you may have some temperature and pressure issues. So I'd plumbed in an after cooler. I built a deck for that. I got another drip, a desk and tower back pressure regulator. Now we're at 40 PSI. We go down on this really awesome valve bank that I completely fucking redid, and it looks awesome.

And I'm amazing into a in into a pilot motor valve or the regulator. If you could push it back to suction side of the compressor, you got a start gas there that mixes in, goes to the start side of the compressor,

come out of 40 PSI into a a buffer tank, an old filter separator that are repurposed so it can store gas and get a nice flow of gas between the pilot motor valve and the buffer tank. And then you come up to this trunk line, and the trunk line feeds all the generators.

And as you know, that took me a couple months to build, digging trenches and, you know, I I think got that propane tank there. The propane line is now over there in case I wanna pull off propane and do something with it there. It's just a lot of physical wear, a lot of threading pipe. Like, my fucking tries are jacked

from threading pipe by hand. So many if you see the pictures, just so many different joints and nineties and t's and has a lot of pipe to thread, man. A lot of holes dug, a lot of pipe thread, a lot of leaks, a lot of moving stuff around, a lot of learning how to plumb

and how gas flows work, and it was a lot. Once again, thank God for Brent, Cecil, and Dylan. We got all the gas flowing.

And Mark was super hot on wanting to see if the compressor started up. I think he thought about it, like, the whole year that everything was off. Like, oh, I hope this starts up for him. Definitely, Mark roots for me. He told me straight up. He's like, there was a time I was in the excavator, and I was grading all this out.

And he's like, I just sat there in prayer, and I said, god, what what am I doing? Just the doubt coming over me was like, what am I doing? I said, Mark, I have sat there in my truck and done the exact same thing all summer long. What am I doing?

Every day.

Every day. And he's like, I know. He said, I just don't want this place to die. I didn't want some carbon credit scammer to come and take it over. I didn't wanna plug the well. It's a good well. Nobody wants to do coalbed methane. They wanna frack. They wanna borrow $5,000,000

and frack a well and run the shit out of it for two years and then watch it drop off precipitously. Coalbethane is honest work. That's honest living. That's why people don't want it? That's why they don't want it. It just produces. Does it produce a lot? No. It just produces.

That rock emits methane. That's what coal does, and you can take it out, and you can do something with it. It's just honest work. It ain't much, but it's a living kinda thing.

That's coal bed methane. So he was very concerned about making sure that this compressor started up, and I sent you this video. You know? So what you do to start the compressor up is you turn on the conventional well. You turn that gas on.

It goes to the start side of the compressor, and you start the compressor up, and now it's just feeding off of this conventional gas. It's just getting going. And what you do then is once it gets a vacuum onto the coal mine, then you start to feather on the coal mine gas. And now it's running on methane

and the conventional gas. Once you get it going for a while, then you feather off the conventional gas, and it's running purely on the methane that it's sucking out of the coal mine. It's a self feeding device.

Then you go ahead and release the gas that it's sucking out, and you send it off into the world. In this case, we're sending it off to be dried and regulated down and ran into generators. So Mark is like, you're gonna be there on Mondays.

I'm I'm there all day, twelve, fourteen hours a day, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and after work on Tuesday through Friday. And Mark's like, you're gonna be there on Monday? I said, yep. He's like, I'm coming up. We're gonna start that compressor up. I was like, okay. Whatever you want, buddy. Never Mark said something. I'm like, okay.

Whatever you wanna do. Let's go. Because I was close. Because I had built out the valve bank and figured out a way to get it back into the compressor side and and got all that tuned, and and the vent was in there. So whatever gas came out of the compressor, we could vent it since they hadn't started any of the generators up yet.

Didn't quite know how that was gonna go. And the look on Mark's face when that thing started

up was just the best. I have it on video. I'm I'm not gonna share it, but it's I'll never forget it. Just like a kid. You know? He started it up in kinda like a wry little grin on his face and nodded his head a few times, like, yeah. Yeah. This thing works.

And you know the gas is good and that it works because the compressor is running. It's running off of the gas that it gets out. As a matter of fact, over that year or so of time that the well was shut in, it actually built up pressure. Over the past ten, fifteen years, it had been negative pressure down there.

But that's how healthy this coal mine is, is that it actually built up its own pressure. Nice. Over that time. Yeah. So there's plenty of years

of gas to come out of there. I think that, you know, for whatever I have achieved during this time, I think the look on Mark's face when that compressor started up is probably, like, the moment that I'll cherish the most. And second to that was when we got our first generator started.

Like, the look on Dylan's face, that sense of satisfaction, like, fucking, hey. We did it. Well, that's all like mental ship stuff. Isn't it? It's like

passing down knowledge and whether it's the Sasquatch or whether it's Mark or what, whoever it is, like passing knowledge or you onto Dylan, your guy who's working there. That's a special moment because the mentor

is seeing that click, that time where it's like Yeah. Oh, okay. You got this. Like, you're gonna carry the torch on this place for Mhmm. However long now. It's cool. Yeah. I hope Mark has the same memories, you know, about whatever the look on my face was when we got this or that started.

You know, there was a time where he even said to me, he's like, boy, I wish I would have met you fifteen years ago. I just would have gave you this place because he tried. He tried to give it to someone else, and the guy squandered the opportunity. He went and bought a tractor.

He went and took out loans into the business, got himself an Escalade Silly. Let the well fill up with water and had to get it swabbed out. He was given this it was still on pipeline at that fucking time. I have the invoices. A fucking thing would make $25,000

in a month in the wintertime Fuck. When gas prices were good, and the fucking guy squandered it. That is amazing to me, being handed an opportunity and just being I guess it's that whole, like, short term thinking, never being happy enough with anything. Like, oh, yeah.

I mean, I've got this and it's making really good money, but, you know, I need an Escalade and I need this. And it's like, no. No. No. That's not the route to happiness. It's get yourself free. That's the way to be happy.

Yeah. Well, I got it now. Yeah. It's off a pipeline, but I'll carry on that legacy. Now there's still plenty of hurdles to get over. You know?

Right now, I have one generator running. It was two last night. I left my mic and everything at the well from from whenever the hell it is last time we recorded. I'm just gonna run there first thing in the morning. I get there about 05:45

this morning, and it's, you know, just some noise there. The compressor's loud and the generator's loud. But I'm telling you, you get, like, 200 feet away from this place,

you don't really notice it. The wind's blowing. You don't really hear anything. It's pretty incredible. The noise was my second concern from what am I gonna do with this excess gas pushing it back into the suction side of the compressor. Noise was my second anxiety ridden worry this whole build.

And, noise is pretty good, but I'm noticing that the noise isn't quite as loud as it should be. And there's a generator down. The one that I had that was mine that was had been running for the past ten days is down. I'll get it back up, but it's a slog. It's a grind, and I didn't expect it to be anything else.

So no surprises. We always have a saying here. I say everything is always broke. Something in your life gonna be broke. Even you? It's yeah. That's especially me right now.

You know? And what a great time. Almost the day that I got that generator started was, like, the lowest hash price in recent memory, like, $36.

It's okay. It's alright. This is the life. This is the grind. But the amount of grind that I mean, obviously, we've covered some of it there, but the amount of grind that has gone into this is massive. And also, it's all been like a learning experience.

And I think that's something that people can hopefully take away from this is anything that is worth doing is generally pretty tough to get done. Nothing's a walk in the park. Nothing's just, like, turnkey easy if it's worth doing. To do all of that and learn as you go

creating something because it's all been pieced together and you're kind of engineering things like, oh, maybe this will work and you're testing it and trying it. And Mhmm. It's like having the energy and

the belief in yourself to take a jump, to take a leap that couldn't go horribly wrong if you fuck it up. I thought I was a crippled, tired old man.

Well, you are, but, you know, you're still putting in the effort. I mean, it might take you twice as much work to move something than someone strong and fit and young like me. I've been working with a 23 year old all summer running his ass fucking rag. Ask him how old go ahead. Ask Dylan how old and tired I am. He'll tell you.

But my point is that shouldn't be afraid to take a leap and jump into something. And the fact that you didn't have any experience

in this field didn't matter. Like, yeah, it might take you longer than someone who's done it for a long time, but you get it done. I think that can be applied to whatever business you're doing, whether it's mining or anything else or anything in life. Pretty much, you can work things out if you work hard enough. And Mhmm.

There's the excuse of, oh, well, I've got kids, so I'm tired. It's like, yeah. Half the world does. Then there's the excuse of, oh, will I have a Fiat job as well? And then it's like, yeah. Yeah. It's gonna be fucking hard because

you're gonna do the Fiat job, then you're gonna do this, and then you're gonna go and record podcasts with some fucking retard as well. You're gonna do all of that layer on top, and then you're gonna get home, and then you're gonna look after the kids. So it's a fucking slog,

but look how far you've come in year and a half. I bought it last October. It's been one year of build. I mean, there's the whole build up to that point of trying to find an on grid site and all this stuff. But as far as, like, specific to the gas well, a year and a month ago. To me, this isn't

anything amazing. Do you know what I mean? I think probably most people are capable of something like this. It doesn't have to be gas well wood. I would say no. It's a tricky one. I think most people are capable of more than they know, but unless you've had the hard knocks and, like, extreme pressures

and unless you've got a fire in your belly, no. Because people would go and try something off. The average person that I speak to and have done over my lifetime talks and has more ideas than they

actually do the work. I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna start this business. I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna do that. I'm going to. I'm going to. And everything's always in the future. It's like, cool. What have you done today? It's like, well, you know, I mean, I'd like post on Twitter and, like, play PlayStation. It's like, okay.

That's very different. And so I'm not saying that those people don't have the ability. There are complete fucking retails and complete waste of space, but most people have much more ability than they believe they have. It's just that they never try.

Yeah. I think that's what it where I wanted to go with that. Yeah.

But it's hard, and that's the thing. It's, like, it's hard, and then the more that you do, the easier it gets. Much the same as, like, weight training. If the hardest thing you've done is do a couple of sets in the gym, you're gonna be fucking sore the next day and for the next three or four days.

But the more that you do and the more that you add on and the more weights that you put onto your plate, the more you're capable of. And then that's the physical side of you goes, oh, yeah. Okay. Like, my body's capable of this. But the mental side is you're much in this camp than I am as well.

Is whatever the problem is, especially in the physical world, when you've carried so much weight for so long,

if it's like, oh my god. I need to replace the roof in my house. You're like, yeah. I can probably do that. Yeah. Yeah. I'll work that out. Like, yeah. I've done hard shit, so I know I can do hard shit. Yeah. And that's the difference from someone who never turned something from a dream into

at least try and fail. And then, you know, well, I failed, but, like, this bit went good, and I learned this thing. And so I think that can be the message. Just try

Mhmm. And try really fucking hard and keep trying, and it will eventually happen. Because this story had many, many turns where you thought the thing was gonna happen, and it all falls apart, and you're

like, oh, fucking hell. Like, I'd maybe this just isn't for me. Like, the but I'm gonna keep trying. Like, why does nothing work and da da da. And then you look up to people like Aaron who's, like,

advising you and saying, look. You can do this, mate. Like, you can do this. Look. I've done it. You can do it. Here's some advice and many others who have been there. And I kind of feel like now that's a role that you're gonna play going forward is Sure.

If people are listening to this and they're like, oh, you know, I'm trying to do this thing, and I don't know what to do. They can look to you for guidance. You're like, look. I fucking did it. You can do it too. It's letting people down that kept me going. Like, I literally couldn't do that. You've been so instrumental in all this.

I I can't let Max down. I can't let Mark down. I can't let Dylan and Brent down. I can't let Aaron down or base. I can't look baseload in the face after he'd every day, you got this Johnny d? You doing it Johnny d?

Get it Johnny d? The people who I truly care about believing that this is gonna work. I would never be able to look Sarah and the girls in the eyes to say that I just gave up. It's a hurdle every fucking day. It's been a hurdle every day.

Every day. So this looks fucking surmountable. What am I gonna do? I got this drip in a creek, and now I don't have pressure down there anymore. And the drip is leaking, and this is probably where the where captain was leaking out. And I gotta dig out this freaking giant huge hole of thick freaking

mud and remove all this stuff and, well, just get in there and dig. Got to it. Yeah. Just dig. That's all. Next day, just dig. Just dig a hole. Just put this together. Just connect from here to here. That's all you need to do today.

The filter separator tank, the pipe coming out, and the filter separator, and how I wanted to route all this pipe. It took me four hours to move, I'm telling you,

an eighth of an inch to try to get this union, this hammer union to line up on this freaking filter separator. I got my tractor on there, and I get it chained, and I'm, like, pulling this pipe that's coming out of the ground back because I just need to move it a freaking quarter of an inch.

Then most of the time, it's just me there by myself. I mean, I have I have Dylan and I got Brent and Cecil that come. But Dylan's only there one day a week. Brent and Cecil come kinda whatever because of their crazy lives, and they've got a whole another job at the gas company that they work for. You know?

And it was just I have to just do this one little bit. I I can't go home and say, what did you get done today? I tried to do this. No. I have to go home and have a story to tell, and I got this done. Look here. Look at this picture. There were just been too many people to let down. And even now, like, things fucking suck.

I can't get these generators going. I'm not making any fucking money. They suck, but I have to go. It's Thanksgiving today. I gotta go and get that generator back up and running. Mhmm. Because I can't let my family down. I can't let my friends down. I can't let myself down. I can't let Mark down. It just keeps you going. That's it.

I think sometimes you can get hard on yourself like, oh, this generator is down and I'm not making the money yet and blah, blah, blah. But in a year you've gone from zero experience, never on a gas. Well, not have the investment in this thing. Having what anyone else would look at and say, no fucking time to even think about doing this

to the state that you are now, which is you disassembled all the large machinery. You've got things in place. You've got things running. You've done all this massive amount of engineering, moving the generators in. You've overcome so many huge hurdles that the hurdles that were in front of you, there are hurdles, obviously,

and you're not making the money yet. But I think you are a long way along the path. You're at a stage where if someone said to me, well, I believed in you anyway, but if someone said to me, like, what's the odds here? I'm, like, very strong.

Very strong at this point. Yeah. Listen. If upstream data wants to donate a 400 kilowatt Hashot to me Guys, think about it. It could be a good story. We are in business. Like, everything is good. Everything is fine. Because Mhmm. Before the gas gets delivered, I have

totally worked out all of that stuff. So, hey, Upstream data, we're always looking for sponsors if you wanna Yeah. Cut me a really good deal. Let us know. We can document the process. We can get some video. We can do all sorts of stuff. I think you should really consider it. Yeah. I can do a 120 MCF a day of 920

BTU gas. So do the calculations. I assume it's gonna be about 400 kilowatts. Okay. Yeah. Take donations. Before we get off, I've got a thanks list. I don't know if this is cheesy or not, but Probably. But let's do it anyway. Well, we've got a pretty good platform, and this is gonna be my place to say thank you to a lot of people.

First of all, I'm gonna leave the two most important for first and last. Max, thank you for all all of the encouragement and help. And I don't know. Without that, seeing my message from the Messudel thing and saying, no. I'll talk to this guy's kinda weird.

And the years of friendship and all the phone calls and all the help and congratulations and I don't know. I guess I didn't realize how much you've been there for me for this whole thing without me telling the story and you going, oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I remember we were talking about it. I remember talking about it.

Like, yeah. I guess he's been there, like, every step of the way. I love you. You're you really are a brother to me. Love you too, mate. Well, we've always bounced our problems off each other. We have. Our aspirations

and our problems. So we're generally there through the bad bits and the good bits. So it goes both ways, mate. We got a lot further in life to go. KT, I don't have a personal friendship with KT, but as far as professionally, like, he's been there. I don't see a lot of this coming to fruition without KT. My core friend group, Chris, Aaron,

Base, Barn, Conrad, Alex, Brian, they've been there every fucking step of the way, heard every fucking complaint every morning often getting the you got it, Johnny d, From base? Thanks, guys. Chet, of course, you don't wanna let Chet down either. Mm-mm. He's got the the the kinda good military thing. Like, come on, man.

You know, you know, like, let this get you down. You're not you're not gonna you're gonna get past this. You're gonna do this. I, of course, thank Chet, the whole entire Pleb minor mafia.

Because a lot of times, I will post this stuff in in Pleb minor mafia, like, we're dealing with and everybody whether they say something or not and then they know they read it or they put an emoji up and that kinda keeps going. I can't let the the Pleb minor mafia down.

The mesh Dell, everybody in the mesh Dell, of course, love you guys. Appreciate you guys. Our two anchor sponsors, Linkcoin Mining and alteratech.io.

Thank you, guys. You've definitely been a big help. And, of course, our sponsors is not just bullshit. And And we've always said this. We don't just, like, stop recording and then, oh, I've got no relationship with it. I did what I was supposed to do. I had to give my thirty second ad read, and I said the promo code. No.

I mean, this is a real relationship. They're part of the crew. Yeah. They're part of the crew. So I checked Linkcoin on there every morning when I get up. Please god. Let this fucking let this shit still be running.

Go in the Linkcoin app on my phone. I check-in, see, what my hash rate was all night before I go to bed. Maybe I can sleep that night without any kind of anxiety.

Altertech, I have these well, you know, one container's got twist locks in there. One container's got the the regular PDU plugs, and I I know whatever I need that I I can always go to altertech.io

for any kind of cabling of parts, new miners. You know, once I start making money, then guess what? I'm gonna buy a new miner every now and again and up my hash rate and not have to spend the whole containers. You can just get one If you know you got a slot and it's basically I'm not gonna say it's free, but

you're not beating my electricity price. Anybody. Then I throw it on and and it's good profit. Guys have just sent me miners. I guess I'll just say their names. Jay and Tee. How's that? Mhmm. That's good. Two friends of the show, Jay and Tee,

have just sent me miners. My buddy, Jay, he's like, oh, got done with this machine. He was hosting. You can have it. So I get your shipping. Here's how much for shipping. Don't worry about it. T just sent me miners, like, what do I owe you? Yeah. Just give me beer, steak dinner.

Fuck. Motherfucker has a lot of steaks, but okay. My parents, my dad's been alright. But my mom, you know, since the beginning of this, she's like, you got this. You can do this. I love you, John's mom. I I believe in you. You're the best. Yeah. She's been good. Jim Stout. Jim, that's the land man. My buddy, Mike Marsula.

Brent, dude, I appreciate you. You're just a fucking crazy ass West Virginia hillbilly

working motherfucker. You know, just like a the thing about Brent, Brent was exactly who I needed. God sent me that guy because I'd be like, Brent, this fucking thing's broken. You know? I don't know where we're gonna fucking do. And Brent's like, oh, we got it, man.

We'll get it. Yeah. You need that. Yeah. Brent's just like he just goes and does. Dylan just appreciate all the work that you've put in this summer. You know, like, Dylan personally cares.

We wanna get soap for the containers that aren't mine. I want somebody available to log in to their own stuff. So Dylan's like, oh, I'll just make a VPN. Not a VPN. VLAN, virtual LAN. I think that's the name. I don't know. Dylan does it. He's like,

I'll just yeah. I'll just create that. They'll be able to log in in their machines soon. He thinks about the well when he's not coming and working for me. Really appreciate that, Brent and Cecil. Dylan, without those guys. Of course, Mark Lidecker,

I just think the world of you, man. Just an amazing person. You're the geezer that I wanna be someday. Yeah. From the bits I've heard, I would love to meet him one day. Sounds like a proper bloke.

When I grow up, I wanna be Mark Lidecker someday. And, of course, my lovely wife, Sarah, this has been just as much of a struggle for her

as it has been for me. She knows that John's not there to take the kids here or there or to wash them or to put the clothes in a dryer while she's running around or do the dishes or make this meal. It's just been, you're not gonna be here, and that's cool, and we got it, and you do your thing. She takes the weight. That's good marriage.

That's a proper wife. That's someone who is there to encourage you and also pick up the weight that you otherwise can't lift. Trying to do this without having a wife like Sarah is just not possible. No way. You're not doing it. Possible.

No fucking way. Dinner's on the table when I get home. It's in the kitchen. It's wrapped up. And I was getting home 10:00 at night. Got 02:00 in the morning one time. It worked decent. You you know,

twenty hours straight. There's the food when I get home. There's the warm bed. There's the clean house. Here's the other thing. Guys and anybody married and wives,

you don't bitch up a fucking storm either when you get home. You don't go, oh, I've had it so hard, and then it becomes this pissing contest. Well, I've had it so hard too. The kids did this and this.

How was your day? This is tough, but I got it done. Me too. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Partnership is a proper team. The pissing contest is silly one as well because it's like, oh, the kids are so fucking hard. Oh, hard work is like, yeah. Kids are really actually fucking tiring and annoying. They're great, but they are fucking tiring.

Yeah. But so is everything else that we gotta do. And so that's something that is, yeah, a massive you see it so often that they're the marriages that don't last. They're the relationships that don't last. It's like Yeah.

You just carry the way. You do the thing. You can talk about the problems, but it's not healthy to try and compare. No. Jesus has been great. We figured it out. We worked it out. And the kids have been great too. You know, our oldest is okay. Sometimes I'm gonna have to be the one to take over the household.

I'm gonna have to make sure my little sisters are in check. I'm gonna have to make sure that the laundry's done and the the clothes are done. So the kids stepped up too. And also in the sense that they're not saying, why aren't you ever home, daddy? I didn't get any of those guilt trips and bullshit. They knew. We told them.

They knew what this is about. This is about our family. This is about building something greater for our family. It's really about resiliency too. Like, we could just wallow in mediocrity.

I could just go to fucking work. Mhmm. I could just literally go to work and work forty, fifty hours a week, and I make a good living there, and we could be just fine. But I know that's not gonna build over into generational wealth. I know that's not gonna build over in a true resiliency

in the face of the civilizational collapse. This is the shit that you need to do to really make your family resilient, and they got that. Yeah. Again, that's rare, and that's obviously a testament to how you brought your children up. They understand

that you're doing your job, your role as a father is, like, provide. Yeah. Protect. Be there. It's not, oh, I wanna go to the water park this weekend. It's like, listen. No. I'll be cool. But, you know, I'm grinding. I'm working. I think it's also different. I went to, like, a proper rich school when I was a kid. Woolworth Academy.

Not the whole way through, but for some of it. I was always, like, the poorest kid. Yeah. It's like like Hogwarts, basically. And some of the kids there, like, had this resentment for their parents because they're in boarding school. They don't ever get to see them. They're in a different country.

They're like, they've got fucking loads of money and all that. But I think the difference there is you're trying to get out of I wouldn't call it mediocrity, but you're trying to do better for your family. And everything that you're doing is for their protection and for building that resilience

and Mhmm. The quality time, that wholesome stuff. It's not well, daddy's already got six Ferraris, but he wants a seventh. Oh. You know? We've got a private plane, but he wants a helicopter as well. Right. Then even a child, even though they might not be able to verbalize fully what they are thinking,

they know that they already have more than they need. And so they know that what's being done is actually not for them because Yeah. They've already got everything. So I think there's, like, this they don't even fully realize it, but they realize that, actually,

daddy just prefers work and freedom than me. Over, yeah, over being around us. And that's when you could say, okay. Well, now you're becoming a workaholic. Yeah. Because you've already got it all. But me and you and most of the people that we spend time with

went so far from that situation. It's hopefully respected by the family. They're like, okay. This is the hustle. And that's a special thing. And I know you well enough that if you get to a stage where things go really, really well, it's like, okay. Now I spend more time with the family. Yeah. We do some cool shit. No doubt. No doubt.

And then we still went on our family vacation early in the summer. We still went to Lake Satoshi, and there were times where I was still there for swim meets and stuff like that. Did what I could do, but they all knew that this is the focus. This is the main focus, and they were cool.

And the whole community, I'm just throwing in extra thanks in terms of we talked about the Meshedale and the platinum mafia, but it's something that has grown and like Satoshi, it has grown

with ungovernable misfits, these group Yeah. Oh, yeah. From where it's like me and you and Chino and SolEx and Joel, and that's pretty much it. And then that mesh to Dell is, like, a few 100 people now. It is. Yeah. You know, across a couple of different groups. And it's also culturally within Bitcoin

made a mark. I feel it's like an important not just important group, but it's an important message of, like, how it operates. And the same with the Pled Minor mafia, like, having that group all inspiring each other and helping each other and

sending parts and sending machines and telling each other stories and giving each other plans and doing all this stuff. Like, that's a very, very solid group. And that's something that I'm very proud of what you and I have built in terms of, you know, another wheel that's constantly turning along

with fiat work and with building out the well and doing all the other stuff is, like, ungovernable misfits being part of this cultural important to me at new, like, this cultural thing, which is, like,

you're not just plebs. You're not just stacking sats and all the fucking gay plebslots Slots. Stuff out there. It's actually real connections and real work and Oh, yeah. A genuine, resilient

network where if you wanna learn how to build a gas well or you wanna learn how to plant a fruit garden, whether you want to learn basic trade skills, whether it's surviving the apocalypse, whatever it is, you've got this incredible group in there. That's extremely valuable thing that's grown with this. I couldn't agree more.

The community aspect of all this stuff, it's our greatest achievement. If we had achieved it or not like, I don't even know how you it's it's not an achievement. It's the greatest event to come to a realization is the community. Mhmm. Uniteeth in the communiteeth.

That's it. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it. Well, it's a good story. I hope that people are inspired by it. Go out and actually just do things, but actually do them. If you're looking at doing something similar, speak to John. I'll tell you not to do it. Yeah.

No. You do it. You do it. And if you're listening to this and you're thinking you need some encouragement or help or you've got the ability to mentor people and you're not already in the mesh to do, you're not already in the plug minor mafia,

you're not already involved in the things that we're doing, then reach out because there's room for more. Agree. Alright, mate. Well, I'm proud of you. I love you. My pleasure. And, let's keep going. Damn straight.