Our RV Adventures

It’s been kind of hot the last few days, so we thought it would be nice to have some cooler weather.

And we got it. Along with about 3 inches of rain, and it seems like about 6 inches of mud.

But it is cooler, and will be only in the low to mid 80’s for the next few days. And in fact, right now at 1:30 am, with the wind chill, it’s downright cold.

But it did get cooler.

Jan had a girl’s day out this afternoon. She and one of the gate guard wives down the road drove over to Pleasanton for an afternoon of shopping. Except for our trip from our old gate to this one almost two weeks ago, this is the first time she’s been out and about. They ate at a really good Chinese buffet called Yummy, and even brought me some home. And yes, it was yummy.

One thing Jan brought us back from Wal-Mart were some real rain ponchos. The ones we’ve been using for the last few days are transparent blue with ‘Maid of the Mist” on them in large while letters. We got them in 2009 when we visited Niagara Falls and rode the famous boats.

But I’m not sure the new ones Jan got will be any less conspicuous since they’re fire engine red.

I finally broke down and ordered a Kindle Fire the other day, and it should be in at the office tomorrow, so I’ll drive over and pick it up. It’s always fun playing with a new toy.

I also ordered a new Lucite grab bar handle from Fleetwood for our coach. They get brittle after a while from the UV rays, and ours broke a couple of weeks ago. It still lights up so I’ll just have to replace the bar itself.

I guess the rig resolved their drill bit problem. After being stuck at about 11,500 feet for three days, they were at 12,400 last night and almost 14,000 tonight. And watching the rig from here, they seem to be making steady progress.

They certainly have a lot of interesting bugs around here. One of them are these large (about 3 inches long) grasshopper/locusts?. There are also a lot of smaller green grasshoppers that are everywhere.

When Mister’s outside, he’ll go over and sniff them, but that’s about it.

That about covers it for the last few days. I’ll give you a Kindle Fire review after I have a chance to play with it for a few days.

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Thought for the Day:

Be yourself. But if that’s not to people’s liking, bow out gracefully and find new people.

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Last night was certainly a two’fer. We had a Supermoon, and a little later, a super storm.

A Supermoon is when a full moon coincides with the closest approach the Moon makes to the Earth on its elliptical orbit. It’s about 12% larger and brighter on average. Here’s a comparison photo from the Net.

The photo Jan took looked like this.

But the real fun came later, around 4am when a line of very strong thunderstorms unexpectedly rolled through the area. They came as a complete surprise since nothing was forecast and, in fact I had checked the weather radar a little earlier and nothing showed up then either.

My first clue was the pitter-patter of a light rain on the canopy. Then within about 5 minutes the bottom fell out. However the real problem was not really the rain, but the high winds, VERY high winds, probably in excess of 50 mph.

I’m pretty certain about this because the rig shuts down when the wind exceeds 45 mph, and after the alarm sounded and everyone cleared off, the winds continued to increase. There were lightning strikes all around, and one very close by behind us. But the rig itself never got hit.

Just to be on the safe side, I finally moved the truck and tied the canopy frame off to it.

Even after the rain subsided the winds stayed pretty high all morning. I didn’t realize when I bought this canopy that it doesn’t have a roof vent on the cover so it tends to lift and bounce around a lot. We do have 6 kitty litter buckets filled with water for about 200 pounds of weight to help keep things grounded. So far it’s worked out.

The rig drill bit was at 11,518 night before last, and still only at about 11,600 tonight. They been having a lot of bit problems as well as other things too so they’re behind schedule. That works out well for us since it means we won’t have to move as soon.

Speaking of moving or not, there’s a new pad cleared right down the road from us, looking like this.

The fenced-in area in the center is where the derrick will go, and then the pad will look like this.

If we’re lucky we might just be able to move to this new site down the road. We’ll see.

I got these rig night shots the other morning. It really has its own beauty.

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And this rear shot shows the ramp that’s used to raise the drill pipe and casings up to the rig. You can see the pipe stacked in rows at the base of the rig.

Yesterday I went in to Kenedy, about 10 miles away and picked us up dinner from Polak’s Sawsage Farm Resturant. (yes that’s the way it’s spelled). A place that looks like this has to be good.

Several of the rig workers had recommended the place and they were right. Although not real busy when I was there on Saturday, during the week the parking lot is full and vehicles are parked out along the highway.

Kind of unusual for a BBQ place (they also have steaks and seafood), they only have beef brisket and sausage (well, sawsage, anyway). No ribs or pork. And their sides include Hot German Potato Salad, and Kraut, along with the usual. Even better, they make all their own bread, and even their desserts, like Turtle Cheesecake and Coconut Cream Pie.

Jan had the Chopped Beef Stuffed Baked Potato and I had the Beef and Sawsage Plate with German Potato Salad, Kraut, and Pinto Beans. Very, very good.

Especially with Turtle Cheesecake and Chocolate Pie for dessert.

On a last note, I’ve seen a number of comments on other blogs and forums about the pay rate for gate guarding, and even a comment on our blog about how when you divided the $125 a day by 24 hours, it comes out to about $5.20 an hour pay.

Here’s how I answered that comment.

Yes, and we knew that going in.

But that’s not the way we chose to look at.  LOL.

We look at it as where else can we make $4000 per month actually working about 45 minutes a day (Approximately 90 vehicles a day at about 30 seconds each)?

The rest of time we talk, read, nap, listen to the radio, eat dinner, and enjoy the outdoors.

And every 8 days another $1000 goes in the bank.

That’s the way we choose to look at it.

And here’s another answer I gave.

Actually we make more here than do couples that work for Amazon over the holidays, and do a lot less work.

Amazon pays about $11/hour, so for 80 hours (2 people at 40 hours/week) that gives $880/week total.

For that same 7 days, we make $875 a week, and for a whole lot less work.

Amazon workers will tell you that they’re on their feet and on the go the whole time and come home pretty exhausted..

We sit outside, talk to each other, read, drink coffee, eat meals, and just enjoy the scenery and the wildlife.

Yesterday we had about 90 vehicles come through, and I went for 5 hours this morning (from midnight to 5am with no traffic.

And of course the company furnishes everything except food.

And even better, for the last few days we’ve only been getting about 60 vehicles a day.

So our workload is down to about 30 minutes a day.

Nice!

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Thought for the Day:

You can evade reality, but you can not evade the consequences of evading reality. – Ayn Rand

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