Almost Done For This Year . . .
Today was our last full day here on the gate, and it was really pretty quiet. And cold.
Actually very cold. The temp finally inched its way up to about 42°, but didn’t even hold that for very long. And the 20 mph didn’t help out at all.
So while I started breaking things down outside (with frequent inside trips to warm up) Jan handled the gate by just coming out when a vehicle came though. And it certainly helped that we only had about 40 vehicles today.
A lot of people stopped off to say goodbye, and some with more “lovely parting gifts”, in this case a couple of beautiful ribeye steaks. How about a new tradition – Steak for Thanksgiving.
I picked up the truck from the repair shop about 3pm, and it cost about what I thought – a little over 4 gate days. The repair guy said the water pump was the original one, so not bad for a little over 208,000 miles. Our truck, a 2004 Dodge Dakota, had 101,000 miles on it when we bought it toward the end of 2007, so we’ve put another 107,000 on it in the last six years. And that doesn’t include the 60,000 miles that we’ve towed it behind the rig.
Once I got the truck home I could really start loading things up, and by about 7pm and after stopping for supper, pretty much everything was done except for taking the canopy down. And we’ll do that tomorrow morning.
The reason we didn’t finish it up tonight is that it started to SLEET! I’m sorry, but I didn’t come back to south Texas for the winter to have SLEET! With his propensity for bringing bad weather with him, I’d swear that Nick Russell was closer than Tucson.
We plan on heading over to the Gate Guard Services lot around 10 am tomorrow after our relief arrives. A blog reader, Jim Mossman, commented yesterday that he might be our relief. If so, we look forward to meeting them.
That’s about it for gate guarding this year. Next up, home to Houston for holidays with the kids and grandkids. YAY!
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Thought for the Day:
"I ask, Sir, what is the militia? It is the whole people. To disarm the people is the best and most effectual way to enslave them." – George Mason, who along with James Madison, is called the "Father of the United States Bill of Rights.
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