Our RV Adventures

Or so we’re told.

They said they’ll start tomorrow, but we’ll see. They’ve already prepositioned 20 loads of sand, so when the next sand trucks start coming in, we’ll know they’re off and running.

And on a good note, we’ve been told that they will only be bringing in 20 sand trucks a day, ten at a time. Last year it was not unusual to get 20 an HOUR. And not for just one hour either. But hour after hour. So this is really good news.

From yesterday’s 64 vehicles coming in, today it jumped to 135. But a lot of that was fracking equipment coming in to stay, so it may settle down a bit once they actually get started. One of the things that will tend to keep the count up is that there’s no housing here, so the crews all come and go at the shift changes.

We saw a familiar face today when our Gate Guard Services guy came by to top us off with diesel and change the oil and filter in the generator. It was Todd, who’s just come back to work with GGS a few days ago. Todd has been one of our services guys several times over the last few years, and in fact he was the one that brought in our replacements when we left our gate in North Zulch last November.

Good to have him back.

This is what I have on the thermostat back in the bedroom.

The switch I added let’s me manually change the fan speed from high to low. Normally this is down automatically, with the fan running on high on AC, and low when you’re set to heat.

But right after we bought the coach, I replaced the old round analog thermostats with these digital ones, which have worked great for the last 8 years. I put in the switch because Jan was worried about how loud the AC fan would be since it was located right over our bed. But as it turns out, it wasn’t a problem, and it just stays on high.

But I now want to add the same mod to the front thermostat. Our new Coleman 15K AC unit has a much stronger (and louder) fan so I would like decrease the noise a bit when we’re both watching TV. Plus with the increased BTU’s of the new unit, coupled with the better fan, the unit really doesn’t run as long as it should.

You’ve probably heard that having too big an AC unit in a house not a good idea. The reason for this is that in high humidity areas, like Texas, cooling is only part of what makes you comfortable. You also need to remove the moisture from the air. This is why you see water running down the side of your rig in humid areas.

Earlier this summer when we were in Prescott, AZ, the AC would run, but there was no water coming off the roof, because we only had about 10% humidity. But in Texas it’s a different story.

So when your AC system is too big, it cools down the air so fast, that it doesn’t run long enough to take the necessary moisture out. This means that you can end up with that cold. clammy feeling. So by being able to manually adjust the fan speed, I can reduce the cooling and increase the moisture removal.

Tomorrow’s grocery day for me, and then Jan’s once again talking about going into Carthage to get her hair done. But we’ll see.

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Thought for the Day:

“The more you sweat in peace, the less you bleed in war” – General Norman Schwartzkopf

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I headed into Carthage a little after 11am to pick up one of Jan’s prescriptions that wasn’t ready last week, and once again I had problems with the Wal-Mart pharmacy.

Last time they gave me a problem getting my GoodRx discount applied to a couple of our prescriptions. This time they suddenly decided that Jan’s thyroid medicine, which is on Wal-Mart’s $4/$10 prescription list, was going to be $52 this time, instead of the normal $10.

When I asked why, I was told that this was from a new manufacturer, and cost more. Seeing a stack of $4/$10 prescription lists at the end of the counter, I showed them the $10 price, and said that there was no mention of different manufacturers.

Next they said that the lists were printed up sometime ago and were just out of date. So pulling out my phone, I pulled up the list on Wal-Mart’s website and showed them the same price.

Then we were back to the ‘different manufacturer’ meme. Only when I mentioned that this might be a good time to call the store manager, did they finally give up and give me the ‘$10 for 90 days’ price.

I really hope this doesn’t become the norm, but since it’s happened here and only here, twice, maybe it’s just this pharmacy.

I hope.

Before leaving Wal-Mart, I stopped off to get gas. But I had mixed emotions about the price. At $2.02 it was down another 3 cents from last week, and about 15 cents since we got here. As far as the ‘mixed emotions’ go, remember the old joke about mixed emotions being watching your mother-in-law drive over a cliff in your new Cadillac.

Well, that’s how I feel about falling gas prices. Yeah, it’s nice when you’re at the pump, but not so nice when you and other guards are looking for gates amid the falling oil prices.

Maybe there’s a happy medium somewhere in there.

Around 2pm the clouds rolled in and brought about 20 minutes of the perfect rain. At least for us.

It was light, but steady, with no wind blowing it under the canopy. But the best thing about it was that it was just the perfect amount to settle all the dust that’s being kicked up by the big trucks coming in.

One thing nice about the roads up here is that they’re gravel/dirt and not caliche like in south Texas, so they don’t go from rock hard to ‘slicker ‘n snot’ at the first few rain drops.

As far as the frack here, it looks like more prep work tomorrow, with the frack starting on Friday, and lasting about a month. But we’ll see. It seems like they always run long, which is great for us.

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Thought for the Day:

Is this any way to handle a secret identity?

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