Our RV Adventures

A week or so ago I mentioned that during our break we had visited the Buc-ee’s in New Braunfels, TX, the largest convenience store in the world. At 68,000 square feet, with 83 toilets and 60 gas pumps, it’s certainly Texas-sized.

Well, this afternoon our daughter-in-law Linda sent us a link to a story about the new biggest Buc-ee’s in the world, and it’s going to be right down the road from the RV park we stay at when we’re in the Houston area. Unfortunately it won’t open until Memorial Day 2013, so we won’t get to visit it until the following Thanksgiving when we’ll be back in the area. Can’t wait.

This past Tuesday morning something unusual happened here at our rig site. It got very quiet and very dark. The rig normally looks like this at night.

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However, about 4:45am it looked like this.

You know how that silence can be deafening? Well, that really held true here. Even the dark was deafening. The only thing lighting up the area was a couple of those portable light towers that have their own generators.

The big diesel generator (and by ‘big’ I mean the size of a semi trailer) that powers everything here at the site just up and quit. Just a big “WHUMP! and it was gone.

People came running out of buildings like ants at a picnic. For some reason there was also a lot of yelling and cussing going on. Over the next 20 minutes they’d tried to restart it a number of times with no luck. Finally someone found that a circuit breaker had popped on the power running the pump that feeds the engine from the big fuel tank. That’s the big blue tank just to the left of center in the above photo.

Resetting the breaker fixed the problem and a few minutes later they were back up and running. Well it was nice while it lasted.

On a somewhat related note I mentioned in an earlier blog that they would be drilling two separate holes here,

about 25 feet apart so they can do directional drilling in opposite directions. The amazing thing about this is that they actually drag the entire multi-hundred ton rig to the new hole on greased skid plates.

So this evening I ask the Company Man how long it would take. He said that from the time they shut down at the first hole and are back up and ready to drill at the second location is normally about 12-15 hours. That’s just amazing.

I’ve mentioned before that we normally have our big meal of the day in the evening, and just have a snack for lunch. One of the few exceptions to this is Tuesdays, which it’s Chile Rellenos day at Galindo’s in Charlotte.

At our old site, Galindo’s was only about 8 miles away, perfect for a quick lunch. But now from our new location, they’re about 40 miles away. Even for Chile Rellenos, a 80 mile round trip was a little much. But I decided to go ahead and get groceries in Pleasanton then instead of waiting until Friday, making it only an additional 15 miles. Very doable,

The meat-filled Chile Rellenos was as delicious as usual, and as often happens, dinner showed up too. I’ve mentioned before that it seems like every time we have a big lunch, a catering truck shows up with a big dinner.

And about 4:15 one showed up. And a few minutes later the smell of steaks on a grill wafted across the site. And by 5:30 we were chowing down on a delicious meal of steak, seasoned mashed potatoes, green beans, salad, and a root beer float for dessert.

The salad is actually on the steak. It covered the entire area. And as usual, it was really good. And we were really full. But it was worth it.

Wrapping up, I thought I’d tell you about a neat Android app I found recently. Called CamScanner, it turns your phone into a scanner. Just take a photo using the program and it turns it into a PDF document. It will even do it with photos already on your phone. Pretty neat.

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Thought for the Day:

“The first rule to intelligent tinkering is to save all the parts”. – Paul R. Ehrlich.

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