NOW

SCHOOL

GRADE

GILSONITE

URANIUM

BOTTOM

−0 ft

          ROCKY AUDENRIED
          MOAB, UTAH · 38°34′N 109°33′W
        

SURFACE · 0 FT

I started at the bottom. Literally.

Medical Laboratory Technician. Before that a carpenter, before that an underground miner. Sixteen years in three careers, in roughly this order: rock, wood, blood.

SCROLL DOWN TO GO BACK

2020 — PRESENT

Where I am now

I run samples at Moab Regional Hospital — the same town, a different kind of dark room. School turned out to be the thing I actually loved, so I never really stopped: an associate's in medical lab science, then a bachelor's in public health, and now whatever I can teach myself after shift.

Most of that has turned into software. I build systems for my family and for the lab, and I homeschool my son — which is really where Flokus Academy came from.

01 / CLINICAL

MLT, Moab Regional Hospital

Chemistry, hematology, coag, micro, blood bank. Small hospital, so you touch all of it.

02 / BUILDING

Flokus Academy

A learning-management system I wrote for homeschooling my son. Plus cybersecurity and lab tooling I keep closer to the vest.

03 / STILL AT IT

Learning as much as possible

AI, systems, whatever the next thing is. Twenty years of jobs taught me the tool matters less than being willing to pick it up.

Working through school

DATUM LINE · 2014 — 2023

          ’14’15’16’17’18’19’20’21’22’23
        

HOGAN CONSTRUCTION · CARPENTER

MOAB CONSTRUCTION · CARPENTER

MOAB REGIONAL HOSPITAL · MLT

A.S. MEDICAL LAB SCIENCE

B.S. PUBLIC HEALTH

Nothing here is a clean handoff. I swung a hammer while I took prerequisites, and I finished the bachelor's two years into the lab job. The overlap is the point — every stripe above was paid for by the one before it.

GRADE LEVEL · 2014 — 2020

Six years above ground, mostly in a hole

I came off the mines with money saved and took some time to just live. Then I had kids, and time off stops being a thing you can afford. Carpentry was the answer: framing, concrete, trenching, running equipment. Six years between two Moab outfits.

It's honest work and I was good at it, but I could see the whole rest of my life from up there and I wanted a different view. Somewhere in the middle of it I decided on medicine and signed up for classes.

HOGAN CONSTRUCTIONFEB 2014 — JAN 2017

MOAB CONSTRUCTION INCJAN 2017 — JAN 2020

CARPENTER · EQUIPMENT OPERATOR6 YRS

Rocky in a trench with a rotary hammer, excavator bucket overhead — CHASING ROCK OUT OF A FOOTING TRENCH · MOAB

COLLAR · GOING DOWN

Before any of that, I worked where the light doesn't reach.

GILSONITE · VERNAL, UTAH

MAY 2012 — FEB 2014 · 1 YR 10 MOS

American Gilsonite, and a vein you follow straight down

Rocky after a shift underground, face black with gilsonite dust — END OF SHIFT. THE DUST GETS EVERYWHERE.

When uranium slowed down I moved north to Vernal and went to work for American Gilsonite. Gilsonite is a solid hydrocarbon that runs in near-vertical veins, so the mine is a straight shaft and a set of drifts chasing something two feet wide.

Everything about it is black — the ore, the air, your face at the end of the day. I ran a jackleg, mucked, and learned that a crew underground is closer than most families.

Gilsonite surface plant and ore silos at dusk, seen from the shop door — SURFACE PLANT FROM THE SHOP DOOR

URANIUM · HITE, SOUTHERN UTAH

SEP 2009 — APR 2012 · 2 YRS 8 MOS

First job out of high school, 1,000 feet in

Mining runs in my family, so when I graduated I went straight to Relias Resources out past Hite Marina — red rock, no cell service, and a hole in the ground you drive an hour to reach.

Eighteen years old, learning to read ground, set steel, load a round and walk away from it. Two and a half years of that will tell you exactly what kind of person you are.

Rocky in a hardhat and lamp during his first week uranium mining — FIRST WEEK UNDERGROUND · 2009

Portrait in a white hardhat with a carbide-style lamp and goggles — LAMP, GOGGLES, HARDHAT

A loaded face underground, blasting caps and lead wire lit by a lamp — A ROUND LOADED AND WIRED, READY TO SHOOT

SHAFT BOTTOM

This is where it started.

A jackleg leaned against the rib, waiting for the next round. Everything I do now — the lab bench, the code, teaching my kid — I learned how to do down here first: show up, look at the ground honestly, and drill the next hole.

Then you ride the cage back up.

A jackleg drill leaning against the rock wall at the bottom of the shaft — MY JACKLEG, AGAINST THE RIB

HOIST TO SURFACE