Our RV Adventures

Well, it’s Halloween tonight, including here at the gate. Actually I started giving out candy right after midnight. Jan said it was funny to watch the big, burly truck drivers squealing over free candy just like little kids.

And we even decorated.

Mister just stares at the spider and growls real low, but he’s not afraid of the pumpkin. In fact, he decided he could take it out, and he did. After sitting on the table and looking at it for a few minutes, he made a flying leap about three feet up and three feet out, sunk his claws into it and rode it down.

The pumpkin is made of corduroy and stuffed with foam and he had no trouble breaking the string. It’s hard to imagine a cat this big can jump that high and that far, but he did. Then he just sat on the ground with it between his front paws and looked at it like he was expecting the pumpkin to make a run for it so he could chase it. But after a while he just left it laying there and jumped up on the table and went back to sleep. Mission Accomplished.

Today was grocery shopping day at the Wal-Mart in Pleasanton. As you probably remember from a couple of blogs ago, there was a computer screw-up with Jan’s prescriptions and I ended up not actually paying for them when I checked out. I told the pharmacist that I would settle up with them when I came in today. I offered to give them a credit card number right then, but she said when I came in would be fine.

Well, after paying for my prescription today I went over to the pharmacist’s window to take care of Jan’s bill, only to find out there was no longer a bill to take care of. He laughed and said the computer at the home office was yelling at them twice a day wanting to know why the prescriptions were gone from inventory, but not showing as paid in the system. The pharmacist said he took care of it and don’t worry about it. I mentioned that I had offered them a credit card number over the phone, and he said there was no way to enter that into the system. He said consider it an early Christmas present. So Merry Christmas to me.

The McDonald’s in Pleasant needs to be burnt to the ground so they can just start from scratch with a whole new building and crew. And it’s not just once, it’s every time I go there.

Whenever I get groceries in Pleasanton, I always bring back lunch, either from McDonald’s or from Sonic, or sometimes a split order like today. Stopping first at McD’s, I ordered a Iced Caramel Latte for Jan, 4 Pumpkin Pies as desserts later in the week, and three of the Apple Slice Packets for me. And it took 26! minutes from the time I placed my order until I walked out the door. I saw two groups walk out because they couldn’t get waited on.

In contrast, at the Sonic down the road, I ordered a Chili Cheese Dog and an order of Ched’r Poppers for Jan, and two Corn Dogs and a 44oz Coke Zero for me. And it took 6! minutes ’til the girl had the order at my truck. Now that’s service.

This evening (Thursday) one of the big tanker trucks didn’t turn wide enough and broke our gate.

He ran up over it and smashed the side of it flat and also tore down some of the fencing. He talked with his company and said they’ll have someone out Friday morning to see about fixing it.

Wrapping up, it now looks like we may not be here quite as long as we thought. Yesterday the new company man told Jan he thought we would only be needed for another week and a half to two weeks, when they’ll be finished up at the frack site. The only question is how this will work for the other two pads that have tankers coming in all day and night carrying out crude. Supposedly they will lock the gate (well, not now until they fix it) and every truck will have to unlock it and then lock it behind them, going and coming. Don’t know how that’s going to go over.

Anyway, it’s possible we’ll be off this gate as much as two weeks before we planned to leave, and it’s probably not worth it to move to another gate for just two weeks. And I’m not sure if Jamie at GGS would want to anyway. So if we do leave early we’ll probably head up to either the Lake Medina or the Colorado River Thousand Trails park until we’re supposed to be back at Galveston Bay RV Resort on the 24th of November.

But, as always, we’ll see how it goes.

Thought for the Day:

In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is Freedom, in water there is bacteria. — Benjamin Franklin.

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or maybe our boom busted?

Well, our big gate traffic increase due to another round of ‘coiled tubing’ never materialized. In fact we had 7 less vehicles today (Tuesday) than we did on Monday.

But the fact that about 5pm a bunch of guys came in with a Wireline rig might mean they’ve got even more problems than I first thought. Wireline is a cable dropped into the well, and used for a number of different things, but none of them usually good at this point in a well’s life cycle. Normally it is used used to lower equipment or measurement devices into the well to check on conditions and look for problems.

So we’re still waiting to here what the problem is.

Yesterday a van full of pipeline workers came thru the gate and an one of the guys made a comment about Mister, who was asleep on the table beside Jan. Now normally we don’t log them in or out so they never have to stop, but this time they slowed down and one of them said "A cat that size would make a good batch of cat gumbo". Jan, of course, wasn’t too happy about this and I guess it showed on her face. Later in the afternoon when I was on the gate, the now-empty van came back by and the driver said that he thought they’d made Jan mad.

Jan had told me what they said, so I looked down at Mister who was still asleep on the table and said,"He may look fat and slow, but he’s really just big and fast. And his favorite thing is to chase dogs three times his size, so if anyone’s bleeding into the gumbo, it probably won’t be him."

"And as far as making my wife mad, you don’t wanna to do that. If you do, she’s gonna be stopping ya’ll every time you come through the gate, and she’s gonna wanna to get everyone’s name, and she’s gonna wanna see everyone’s photo ID. It might take you 10 or 15 minutes to get cleared through every time." Now since these vans come through here 10 or more times a day, and since they’ve usually got as many as 15 workers on board, this could put a real crimp in their work schedule.

The guy kinda gulped and said, "I’ll pass it on".

I’m expecting the candy and flowers to start arriving any time now.

I’ve made another addition to the menus at the top of the page. I now have a tab with basic information about gate guarding, how we got started and what you can expect.

I’ve also added a new item to my “What Were They Thinking?” file. Why didn’t I ever have teachers like this in college?

In addition I’ve added a couple of more recipes to Jan’s Favorites. The first one is another ‘gate’ recipe, i.e. simple, quick, and delicious. It’s Habanero Chile Cheese Mac. You won’t believe how good this is.

The second one is her famous Sausage Balls. We often get together with a big group of friends for Thanksgiving and the first thing everyone wants to know is if Jan is bringing her Sausage Balls.

Enjoy.

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Thought for the Day:

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard. – H. L. Mencken

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