Our RV Adventures

In case you missed it, I posted yesterday’s blog a couple of hours ago, so I’m now caught up. Be sure and scroll down to read yesterday’s blog.

I was up about 7 this morning so we could have coffee before I tracked down the Gate Guard Services people.

About 7:55 I walked over to the office and found Jamie, the local supervisor, outside in his truck. After talking for a few minutes he directed me into the office to talk with Lori. Lori gave me the phone number of Patty at the main office in Corpus Christi.

Coming back to the rig, I then called Patty . . . and got Lori again. She laughed and said she forgot to tell me that until the Corpus office opens at 9, all calls are routed to the office here at Whitsett.

When we got here yesterday, Terry, the guy who got us settled in, said things had changed and we would have to drive the 90 miles down to Corpus Christi to complete our paperwork and fingerprint cards, and take our Level II Security Guard Test. I was hoping to be able to do that today once we talked to Patty. But that did not work out.

Lori called me about 8:30 and said Patty had told her to go ahead and give us the paperwork to fill out and fingerprint cards to bring with us. She also said that the Corpus office was closing at noon for Good Friday, and they were now handling new hires on Tuesday and Thursday.

So we were in a holding pattern until Tuesday.

I wanted to do what we could to expedite things, and when I ask Lori if we could go ahead and get our fingerprint cards done up here, she said the only place around was over at the Sheriff’s Department in Floresville, about 45 miles northeast of here.

So, after calling the Sheriff’s Office to double-check, Jan and I headed out about 2pm, first to Floresville, and then into San Antonio for dinner and some shopping.

The fingerprint cards only took about 15 minutes and then we were on our way. As far as Floresville, I’m not sure what was going on, but they seemed to be having their own diesel gas war there. Most stations in the San Antonio area have diesel for $4.05 to $4.10, or even $4.15, with a few places at $3.99,

But the HEB station in Floresville was selling diesel for $3.55, and the Wal-Mart had it for $3.57. WOW!

They even had semi trucks in line. As far as I’m concerned though, the 90 mile round trip would probably eat up any savings on the price.

Bummer!

For dinner we wanted to eat at the Magic Time Machine on the north 410 Loop. It’s probably been 30 years since we’ve eaten here, and we were glad to find it still open. We’ve also eaten at the one in Dallas, and the one that used to be in Austin before it closed.

The concept is kind of unique. The wait staff are dressed up as characters from movies, television, and literature.

The place is a warren of little nooks and crannies, a maze of alcoves, hidden rooms, and cul-de-sacs. You can very quickly end up going in circles.

In fact it’s easy to get lost, and almost impossible to find the restrooms without help. But when you ask a waiter or waitress for help, they grab you by the hand and lead you back and forth through the restaurant, loudly announcing that this is the Potty Train and anyone else that needs to go, can hop on board. Sometimes you’ll see an string of 5 or 6 people, all holding hands, being lead to the restrooms.

So it’s a good idea to “go before you go”, so to speak.

And of course, they don’t have a salad bar, they have a “salad car”. A 1952 MG TC.  “Soup in the front, Salad in the back.”

We saw many characters, like Harry Potter, Indiana Jones, Alice in Wonderland, Tinkerbell, Pinocchio, Supergirl, Thor, and below, Ariel, the Littlest Mermaid.

We had the beautiful Diana Prince, who fights crime in her secret identity is Wonder Woman.

And Jan seems to have a real admirer in The Joker.

Personally I like the Jack Nicholson version better.

Our meal was really good, and well worth the trip. Hopefully we won’t wait another 30 years to visit again.

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Thought for the Day:

Things are more like they are now than they ever were before. – Dwight D. Eisenhower

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and a Big Milestone.

This is the blog post for Thursday, the 5th, that got eaten by the power outage last night. Landon is home and doing fine

Jan and I were up about 8:30 this morning, wondering what was going on with Landon’s hospitalization. Then a few minutes later we got an real, actual phone call. Don’t know why it worked this morning, but not last night.

Our daughter Brandi was on the way home from the hospital to freshen up and grab a little sleep. She said Landon was doing OK, but was still in ICU (which is normal at his age). They’ve got him on some steroids so he’s really restless and doesn’t like the IV he’s hooked up to.

Feeling relived, we left the RV park in Junction a little before 10. Our first stop was the McDonald’s that is part of the Valero Truck Stop where we made our phone call to Brandi last night. We wanted to grab a couple of breakfast sandwiches to eat on the road.

Luckily since it was a truck stop I had plenty of room to park right next door and run in. As the manager took my order, I juked about the fact the fact that if his drive-thru cover was a little higher, I could have just taken the RV through. He laughed and said that some people don’t care, and that this was his 3rd cover in two years.  Oops!

We were on the road and headed east on I-10 by 10:15.

We passed more fields of bluebonnets and this one of Indian Paintbrushes. Really beautiful country through here, in contrast to the stark beauty of Arizona and New Mexico.

We took Loop 410 south around San Antonio and headed out on I-37. And about 25 miles down the road, we reached our milestone.

We hit 50,000 miles of travel on our coach. Of course our coach had 62,511 miles on it when we bought it, so now we’ve passed 112,511 total miles on our coach, and it’s still going strong.

Right after this, our daughter Brandi called and said Landon was home and doing fine. She said they had already taken the IV out, and after they heard from the doctor that they could leave, she ask Landon if he was ready to go home. He nodded, grabbed his toy, and headed out the door and down the hall to the elevator. He was ready!

Our first stop was in the town of Pleasanton at the Wal-Mart so we could stock up on groceries for the upcoming New Chapter in our RV life.

We were heading for Whitsett, TX and the local headquarters of Gate Guard Services

For the next 5 months or so, we were going to be oilfield gate guards.

The job of gate guard consists of parking our RV at the entrance to an oil well drill site and checking in and out all visitors, deliveries, and employees.

In most cases it’s 24/7 job with Jan and I each working a 12 hours shift. We may be parked right outside a town, or miles out in the boonies. You never known until you get your site.

The company furnishes the site and all utilities. In most cases that’s done with a trailer containing a diesel generator, diesel fuel tank, and a water tank. Sometimes a sewage storage tank is also included. If not, they have someone come by once or twice a week and pump your waste tanks out.

The good part is the job pays $125 to $150 dollars a day.  Nice.

We pulled into the Gate Guard Services lot about 4:15, and after talking to an employee, were directed to a place to park and hook up to 50 amp power with water nearby if we need it.

There is a full hookup area on the other side of the lot that we should be able to move to on Monday when some of these people move out to their gates.

Later I walked around the lot looking at the utility trailers that will supply us with power, water, and sometimes sewer, at the jobsite.

And it looks like they’ve got a bunch of trailers ready to go,

with the parts for more ready to be assembled.

The people we needed to talk to had already left for the day, so we’ll have to catch them first thing tomorrow to see how we get started.

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Thought for the Day:

“To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first. And, whatever you hit, call it the target.” – Ashleigh Brilliant

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