I read all your articles in the Have Trowel, Will Travel series and found them very insightful and entertaining. Being a field technician sounds like an exciting job, but I was hoping to get some specific advice from a real professional.
In one of your articles you said that one can't make a living entirely off field work. If a tech is traveling all the time, where else would they make the rest of their money to support themselves? Any suggestions?
The life of a field technician is not without rewards, and there is no reason you can't make a day-to-day living as you are going along. Although the pay is not great, in many projects (and most of the larger ones), each field technician gets per diem---in other words, the company pays for your hotel room and meals. The problem is: what do you do with your stuff? If they need to be away for a good part of the year, many field techs I've known don't keep a permanent address (apart from a family member or friend as a mail drop). Keeping an apartment someplace that's empty save for your stuff is a little expensive and tricky, although people have done it. I remember once I came home from a three-month field trip to find my apartment had flooded while I was gone, and there was a thick layer of mold 3 feet high at the base of all the walls. A nice storage locker, that's the ticket.
