Our RV Adventures

Well, compared to yesterday’s now-paltry 145, we had 207 vehicles through the gate today. The big jump was really due to two things: the number of semi’s bringing in loads of drill pipe, and the rig workers arriving in anticipation of drilling starting soon.

And they’re finally making some visible progress getting the rig up. Here’s what it looked like all day today.

And here’s what it looks like tonight.

Down in the Eagle Ford area, south of San Antonio, where we’ve gate guarded the last two years, the rig crew, made up of roustabouts, roughnecks, and other workers, work a 7 day, 12 hour shift, and then they’re off for 7 days. And I assume that’s what they do here.

They actually have two full crews, since the rig runs 24 hours a day. And that means they really have four full crews, to cover the entire work period. The crew lives in crew trailers, either on-site or nearby while they’re on-shift. This housing is furnished by the drilling company as part of their compensation.

And they’re compensated VERY well, too. We’ve seen guys start to work on a drilling crew, coming to work, riding with someone else. And then after working a few shifts, show up in a $50,000 dually diesel pickup truck. Of course we’ve run into other guys who are broke because they’re paying alimony and child support to 3 or 4 ex-wives. So it’s not all money in the bank.

The supervisory crew, company man, engineers, toolpusher, etc., also work 12 hour shifts, but for two weeks at a time. And they also live on-site.

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The weather’s not been bad. In fact I’ve haven’t even set up my misting system on the fan because it just hasn’t  been getting that hot, mostly in the low to mid 90’s. And it looks like by this Saturday, Fall may arrive, with temps forecast in the low to mid 80’s. Very nice.

But I’m not really sure how well my misting system would work here since the humidity is a lot higher here than in south Texas. But it doesn’t look like I’m going to have to worry about it.

There’s only two real problems with our gate here; Amazon and relief guards. Since the Gate Guard Services office here is 50 miles away, and does not have a secretary, or anyone else there to receive packages, that’s out.

I’ve thought about using a UPS store, or a FedEx store, but I never know how Amazon will ship things. So I’m still working on it.

As far as relief guards, Jan and I always try to take a day off every 3 or 4 weeks. Well, 10 hours anyway, from noon to 10 pm.This usually works out to one around the end of September, which corresponds with our Anniversary on September 28th, and one around the end of October, which corresponds with Jan’s Birthday on the 25th, and mine on the 5th, too.

But unlike the Eagle Ford area down near Whitsett, there is a paucity of relief guards in this area. A relief guard must be licensed just like we are, and must have their license with Gate Guard Services. And they also need to know how to run a gate, since they have to hit the ground running, so to speak.

Down in Whitsett, there were a number of ladies who did nothing but work relief gates, and stayed pretty booked. You had to get your reservation in if you wanted a certain date. They normally make $100 a day so there’s money to be made.

But up in this area, no so much. I guess GGS hasn’t been up here long enough for the relief guard thing to get going. Hopefully we’ll be able to work something out.

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Misleading Movie Reviews:

Can you figure out the movie?

1. Arriving in another country, a girl kills the first person she meets and then teams up with three strangers to kill again.

2. A robot malfunction ruins a pleasure cruise.

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Today is our Granddaughter Piper’s 21st birthday. It sure doesn’t seem like it’s been 21 years since she was born.

And she’s grown up to be such a beautiful young woman. And smart too.

See ya soon.

Today was a little busier than yesterday. We had 145 vehicles compared to 144 yesterday. So just a little.

So far this gate has pretty much been an 18 hour gate, but of course we man (woman) it 24 hours a day. It’s not unusual for me to have no vehicles come through between 11pm and 6 am. Or maybe just one, like tonight so far.

If I do get one during the night, it’s usually just a tanker coming in to haul out a load of crude from one of the production sites. Since there’s no pipeline connection here, all of the oil has to be hauled out by tanker. It’s takes them about 45 minutes to pick up the 8 to 9000 gallons of crude and be back on their way.

They brought a lot more of the new rig in today, including the 4 big pieces that make up the derrick itself. Sitting here and looking out, there’s just a wall of metal moving by. It’s amazing how big some of these pieces are that they move around.

The cattle guard that they cross over coming through our gate really sags under some of these big loads. I hope it survives this, because if it collapses it will bring all 6 sites here to a grinding halt.

One thing that’s interesting about this rig is the somewhat lackadaisical way they’re putting it up. When we followed a Marathon/H&P rig 2 years ago, it was a 36 hour turnaround.

It took them 18 hours to tear everything down, load it all onto a steady stream of trailers and haul it away. Then at the next site, they’d go from a empty pad to ready to drill in another 18 hours. It was just amazing to watch the choreography of the whole operation. As soon as they started the tear-down, we would moved to the next site and get set up. Then we would be off until they were ready to start drilling again. So we would get a couple of days off, but we still got paid. Nice!

But here, stuff has kind of come in over the last several days, with today being the first day they actually started putting things together. And then they quit at dark. Here’s yesterday.

 And here’s today.

One thing that was funny today was a big lowboy hauler that came through the gate carrying a big bulldozer and an enormous crane. I think the cattle guard almost cried when it crossed over.

But the funny part was about an hour later when the lowboy left he had a Tonka toy truck strapped down in place of the bulldozer and the crane, kind of like this one from the Internet. I wasn’t able to get a picture of mine as it went by.

Tomorrow, probably more of the same.

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Thought for the Day:

The only reason a great many American families don’t own an elephant is that they have never been offered an elephant for a dollar down and easy weekly payments. ~Mad Magazine

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