My day as a utility lineman

I've experienced power outages before, but I've never done the work needed to put the lights back on.

So when I got an email from Alliant Energy inviting me to 'experience what it takes to be an electric line worker and natural gas mechanic,” I signed up immediately.

It's not every day that you get to climb a utility pole, go up in a bucket truck, put out a natural gas fire or operate a digger truck. (The digger truck was my favorite part.)

It's a nice way for Alliant to get some warm and fuzzy news stories and an even better way for reporters to get out of the office for a day.

But another goal of the event was to give reporters a better idea of how much energy and physical activity goes into the job - a lot - as well as some of the dangers involved.

That way, the next time a storm hits, and I want to hassle a member of a utility's communications team about how many customers are without power and when power is expected to be restored, I can think back to the difficulty I had climbing that utility pole and cut them some slack.

For those of you who are wondering, I probably only got about four feet off the ground and had to muster up every ounce of strength I could to do so.

And I did this on a beautiful, sunny August day when the high was 77 degrees. Oh, and I got a brownie.

When things really get crazy, such as during June's storms when up to 50,000 people in the Cedar Rapids area lost power, utility linemen work up to 16 hours a day. And conditions aren't nearly as ideal.

It's no wonder linemen spend four years as apprentices, learning the necessary tasks. They also spend two weeks doing nothing but climbing that utility pole - something I don't envy.

Safety also was a big part of the day, with the linemen stressing the proper way to do things. This was another task I struggled with as I turned my back to the natural gas fire I had just put out. A big no-no. Apparently I'm not great at following directions.

In the end, the communications team achieved its goal because I left that day with an increased appreciation for the work these men and women do.

Alliant workers handle expensive equipment with ease while I jerked the bucket truck around. They patiently explained to us how to do a physically daunting task, and didn't laugh as we struggled to do so.

And when I commented to one lineman about how hard his job was, he very kindly told me that he couldn't do my job, either.