Monthly Archives: August 2015
Shut Down . . .
For Tonight.
A little after 7pm, an hour after I went to sleep, the night Company Man came by on his way out, telling Jan that they were shut down for the night, and would resume at 8am tomorrow morning. Too bad we didn’t know we were going to have the night off a little earlier.
It sure would be nice if they went to a twelve hour shift for a while.
One thing really nice about this gate, well, maybe this area, is the weather. And by weather I really mean the temperatures. Unlike south Texas, where it was 107° on one gate today, our high was 91, and the low last night was 63°. In fact it was cool enough, that because of the slight breeze, I came in and got a long sleeve shirt and a pull-over cap
The landowner came by a couple of days ago and said if we wanted, we could hook up to the water well that’s about 50 feet out in front of our rig.
It’s coming up from about 450 feet, it’s ice-cold, and tastes really good. And it’ll save Jamie from having to bring us water as well as diesel. The only problem is that I don’t have quite enough hose to reach it, so I’ll pick up another 50 foot one when I go into town, probably tomorrow.
Unlike several past gates, here we’re far enough away to not have to worry about noise and fumes.
We can see the site from here, but not hear it or smell it, which is really nice. We’ve been so close at other gates, including last year, that I could literally throw a rock and hit the rig.
As it stands right now, I’ll go into Carthage tomorrow to scope out the town, i.e. find the Wal-Mart, and pick up some supplies. I’ll probably also bring back lunch for us.
We still don’t know when the actual fracking will start. I don’t think they do either.
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Thought for the Day:
“There is considerable overlap between the intelligence of the smartest bears and the stupidest tourists.” – Yellowstone park ranger
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It Ain’t Pretty . . .
But it works.
Today was our first full day on this gate and it’s turning out to be a really nice one. We had a whole 38 trucks come through during the 24 hours, making for easy shifts for both of us.
Unlike a lot of gate guarding couples, Jan and I split up our shifts, rather than working two 12 hour shifts. Jan works from 7am to 1pm, I work 1pm to 6pm, then Jan works 6pm to 11pm. And I finish up the time by working 11pm to 7am,
When Jan comes on at 7am, she brings out breakfast, usually a breakfast sandwich or English muffin, and we eat together before I go in to sleep. Then I bring out coffee around 11:30am to have together. Around 1:30 or so, Jan hands me out a snack for lunch, normally bread and cheese, or maybe fruit.
Then when she comes out at 6pm to relieve me, she brings out supper and we eat together before I go in to sleep. Last night it was our leftovers from Little V’s Vietnamese Bistro last Saturday night, and it was Nachos tonight. But always something simple and easy.
As you can see from this schedule, I sleep about 4 hours, twice a day, which works fine for me. But your mileage may differ. I have no problem doing this for the entire time we gate guard. We know many couples that do the 12 and 12 thing, but this works great for us.
Last night I finished putting up the canopy frame and tied the tarp down on top. Blog readers who were with us last year might remember when a downburst during a thunderstorm shredded the fabric top of our 13’ x 13’ Coleman canopy. So for the rest of our time I put a tarp over the frame.
One problem with using the regular canopy top is that there is no way to quickly remove it in case high winds are on the way. But with the tarp I can easy pull it off after releasing the tie-downs. Much better than buy a new $80 canopy top from Coleman a couple of times a year.
Of course, it ain’t pretty, but it gets the job down.
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Thought for the Day:
“I prefer dangerous freedom over peaceful slavery.” – Thomas Jefferson, letter to James Madison, January 30, 1787
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