Gate Guarding – Day 1
We were awakened this morning about 7:45am and told we had a gate waiting for us.
We were given our hats, orange safety vests, login forms, clipboard, and a hand-drawn map to the gate. Jamie said our supervisor Larry would be waiting for us.
We were ready to roll a little before 9, with our first stop right across the street at the Exxon station to top off my tank with about 80 gallons of diesel for $4.10 a gallon. When I’m going to be parked for a while I always like to do it on a full tank to cut down on condensation and algae growth in the tank.
About 9:15 we were on the road heading to our gate. Our route took us on all two-lane roads from Whitsett southwest over to Fowlerton, about 45 miles away. But it was the last 8 miles of dirt road that was a problem.
It was so bad that I was only able to do 8-10 mph. And even then we had drawers come open that hadn’t come open in 5 years. It almost 45 minutes to finally get to the gate site, where our supervisor, Larry Ross, was waiting for us with our utility trailer just as promised.
It only took us about 10 minutes to get parked and set up. Larry pulled the generator trailer behind the rig and got us hooked up with AC power to the coach.
A little later Larry headed back to town to bring out our sewer trailer, while Jan was up and running on her new Gate Guarding career.
And we quickly had our first visitor, not a truck, but a friendly roadrunner. He walked back and forth right in front of us, just a couple of feet away.
Supposedly they’re really good about keeping snakes away. Jan hopes so.
The only downside to our location is we not only have no Internet service, we have absolutely no Verizon cell service at all. NONE.
In fact I had to drive to Cotulla, 35 miles away to get a good signal. Apparently AT&T works in this area, so I’ll have to see about getting a cheapie phone at Wal-Mart. But I’m still not sure what I’m going to do about Internet. I’ll have to work on it.
UPDATE:
We only had about 20 vehicles in and out yesterday, and the site was closed from 7:30pm to 6 am.
Nice!
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Thought for the Day:
Please understand that my respect for you is not at all diminished by my request that you bite me.
sdfg
