Our RV Adventures

I discovered something new last night. There’s obviously a cattle feed lot nearby. Normally our wind here comes from the south or southeast, but last night for a couple of hours it was coming from the north and the smell was very noticeable. Wherever it is, it’s not visible from the road, but since this site is actually a cattle ranch, it makes sense that there’s one around here somewhere.

About 1:30am as the Hell Fighters’ Kitchen guy was leaving, he dropped off another couple of nice dinners for us. Apparently they do an afternoon feed and a late night one so they can cover both shifts. And since the servings are so big, and Jan and I always split one, we’ll get two meals out of these. And Jan’s happy since she doesn’t have to cook. It also helps that the food is delicious.

Our Gate Guard service guy, Austin, stopped off this morning to install a longer piece of hose on our bell system. We have a pair of these Solar Powered Wireless Driveway Monitors that we use, but we’re only about 50 feet off the main highway and the entrance is so wide that these just won’t work here. So the longer hose goes all the way out to the edge of the pavement and give us maximum notice of an incoming vehicle. In other words, more time to wake up.

We are using this sensor on the roadway coming up to us leaving the site and they work great. I have one placed about a quarter mile away, which gives me even more time to wake up. The thing I like about these is that they utilized a magnetic sensor that detects large moving metal objects, so no false alarms.

Later in the morning I called the site support guy up in Pleasanton to see about getting some diesel for our generator. We were down to 2-3 days worth and I didn’t want to cut it any closer. This gate is different because we getting our diesel and water from the oil company and not from Gate Guard Services as in the past. I explained to him what we needed and he went off for a few minutes and came back and said to just grab the first diesel delivery guy that comes along and tell him what I needed. And lo and behold, just as I hung up the phone, the guy pulls in the gate. So about 10 minutes later we had a full 200 gallons of diesel in our tank. I love it when a plan comes together.

About noon we got the perfect amount of rain. Just enough to settle the dust, which was getting so bad that I was going to call the watering truck on Monday. Life is good.

Then about an hour later we got the not so perfect amount of rain. We now had standing puddles in the roadway, which on the caliche roadbed makes for a very slick surface. (slick as snot is the phrase usually used). But the sun came out. The puddles went away. And life was still pretty good.

But I changed into my Crocs anyway. And as it turned out it was good I did. I normally wear boots, but when the caliche turns to mud, it gets all up in the treads. Then when it dries it pretty much turns to concrete and has to be chipped away from the boot sole. A real mess. But the Crocs don’t have much of a tread and can be hosed off.

Then about 2:15 the bottom dropped out and life went to hell. It was monsoon time, with very high winds. And since we haven’t had time to put up the new replacement canopy, and the old one is structurally challenged due to the two broken struts, it was touch and go for a while whether or not I would a canopy left to return to Amazon. At one point I spent about 15 minutes just holding one of the legs down to keep it from flying away. Finally though, the wind died down, but it still rained for another 45 minutes or so before clearing up.

There was a lot of lightning during the storm, and with one of these light towers

right behind the canopy sticking up about 25 feet, and me holding on to the canopy’s metal frame, I was a little worried that I might end up my own personal lightning rod. But I guess I lucked out.

Finally everything settled down and cleared up, and life was pretty good again.

It looks like our upcoming cooler weather is what’s bring the rain. It only made to 87 here today, and now looks to just barely get into the 90’s for the next 10 days. But then they’ve lied to us before.

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Thought for the Day:

"If man were meant to be nude, he would have been born that way." – Oscar Wilde

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First off we want to wish our granddaughter Piper a Happy 20th Birthday. It’s hard to believe how fast she’s grown up, and how quickly she went from this,

to this beautiful young lady.

One thing we’re enjoying about this gate is the fact that we’re not close to the action. On two of our four gates last year we were within rock-throwing distance from the drill rig, with 3 big tractor trailer-sized diesel generators running 24 hours a day. The noise never stopped. And if the wind was blowing in the wrong direction, the smell of the drilling fluids could get pretty strong too. So this peace and quiet is very nice.

After my scare about losing my Droid phone yesterday, I spent a few minutes playing with the Where’s My Droid system. I was curious about how accurate the GPS location was. And the answer is that it is really, really accurate.

That is exactly where we are parked. Neat program.

Hopefully our cooler fall weather may have started. Our high today was only 90, and the 10 day forecast is for the low 90’s the rest of the time. We’ll see.

But with cooler weather comes the possibility of rain. In fact we had a small cloudburst this afternoon that lasted for about 2 minutes from a clear blue sky. Just out of nowhere and then it was gone. Strange.

When I talked about Jan making Chili, Four Ways last week, she said I was remiss in not mentioned her Pasta Boat.

She says it ‘s the best thing she’s found for cooking pasta in the microwave. And it comes out perfect every time. You can get it here.  Pasta Boat from Amazon

This afternoon about 4:45 there was a really big gust of wind and our generator just died. In hindsight I don’t think the two were connected, but it sure seemed so at the time.

I went back to try and restart it and found it completely dead. It would not turn over at all. I then put in a call to Austin, our support guy, but he was off for the weekend. So I called Jamie, our supervisor. And after telling him the problem, he said he’d be right over with a new battery and a new alternator. And about 15 minutes later Jamie and his wife showed up. And he was right.

Turned out the alternator had died and the generator kept running until the battery died. But what was a little strange is that after hooking up the new battery, the generator would crank but would not run. Somehow the fuel pump had cut out before the battery died completely and so the engine had run itself dry. And diesels don’t like to run out of fuel. They get air in the fuel lines and it can be hard to get them restarted.

But Jamie just loosened the fuel injector connections and cranked it until a little diesel started leaking out. Then after tightening it all back up, it started immediately. Shutting it down, Jamie changed out the alternator, and about 10 minutes later we were back up and running.

Turns out the Jamie had been in the middle of cooking dinner when I called and he dropped everything to get us fixed up. Now that’s service,

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Thought for the Day:

“If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as a Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, ‘Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.’” ~ Martin Luther King Jr.

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