Daily Archives: August 28, 2015
I Could Get Used To This . . .
Well, so much for ‘the gate will reopen at 8am’. Luckily Jan was already up and dressed when she heard the first truck rumble up about 6:55am, so she was outside in time. We were hoping for another ‘shutdown’ tonight, but unfortunately that didn’t happen.
We again had only 38 trucks through the gate today, and Jan had only one truck in between 6pm and 11pm tonight. And it tonight is like previous nights, I won’t have anyone until about 6am this morning.
I could get used to this.
But I’m sure things will speed up as soon as the actual fracking gets started. Which now could be a week or so, apparently. You just never know.
About 10:30 this morning I drove into Carthage for groceries and lunch. This is the first time we been this close to a town, or to a Wal-Mart anyway. With Carthage only 8 miles away, it makes a big difference in how long it takes to get done and get back.
For lunch I brought us back Whataburger, and also made a trash drop-off while I was there. Since they still don’t have trash trailer here at the site, I just took the the bag with me and asked the Whataburger manager if it would be OK to use their dumpster, and she said no problem.
I had their new Sweet & Spicy Bacon Burger which I really liked, especially once I ramped up the ‘Spicy’ part with some Moruga Scorpion chili powder. Jan had a double meat cheeseburger with Grilled Onions and really liked hers too. And I guess Whataburger is a favorite of the workers here too, since I’ve only seen them come back with Whataburger bags and not McDonald’s. And McDonalds is actually closer.
Jamie, our Gate Guard Services supervisor came by this afternoon to drop off our sewer trailer. We’ve just been using our rig tanks, but Jan will be happy now that she can do more laundry.
Jamie also dropped off a couple of pallets to span the small ditch in front of our canopy.
That’ll give us a walkway over the water in the ditch when it rains, and also makes it less steep for Jan when she’s going out to talk to the drivers.
But the big news today is that our canopy is now air conditioned. And it works great.
I saw the window unit in our son Chris’ garage not being used and ask if I could take it with us. Since I knew we could end up gate guarding in south Texas where it is a lot hotter, I had planned to install it in the coach driver’s window to help with the heat. But up here, with our temps staying the low 90’s, and our new larger 15K AC unit, it isn’t needed. In fact the AC’s are even cycling on and off, and not running all day.
So this afternoon I decided to try it out just sitting on the table, and it works great. I’m getting 72° air out the vent, and I’ve not had any trouble with the hot air exhaust interfering with the operation.
Of course it’s not going to cool down the whole canopy area, but it’s really nice to have that cold air blowing right on you.
More tales from the gate tomorrow.
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Thought for the Day:
“A thing moderately good is not so good as it ought to be. Moderation in temper is always a virtue; but moderation in principle is always a vice.” – Thomas Paine 1792
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