Our RV Adventures

I talked to my friend Nick Russell this evening and he’s out of the hospital and doing . . .  well, not fine, but he’s out of the hospital, anyway. He said he still doesn’t feel all that great, but he’s better.

He will be posting a short blog later tonight so head on over and check it out. Not right now, of course. Finish reading my blog first.
Glad you’re back home, Nick.

Well, after being told that they were finishing up the Flowback & Testing tomorrow (Thursday) and then we’d be down for 4 or 5 days before the Workover rig moved in, it all changed.

About 6am this morning, the Workover rig crew started streaming in. And our vehicle count went from about 35 a day to 60 vehicles today. Relatively a big jump, but still not real busy.

I went in to go to bed at 7am, and when I came back out about 11:30, the workover rig was up and a lot of the setup crew had started leaving.

About then I headed into Carthage to pick up lunch at Sonic. Jan wanted, as usual, one of their Regular Chile Cheese Coney’s, and I went with my usual, the New York Dog, but this time I asked for raw onions and not grilled like I got last time. I thought that maybe it was a mistake, but when I checked their website, Yep, they now put grilled onions on it.

In the past when I’ve gotten one it’s always had raw onions, and I don’t know why they changed. I’ve had New York Dogs IN New York, and never came witht the onions grilled. The raw ones provide the perfect little bit of crunch to go with the sauerkraut and the spicy mustard.

I will say this is one of the busiest Sonic’s I’ve seen, especially for a small town. They have a total of 36 stalls, and I had to drive all the way around to find an open one. And that 36 includes 6 new ones that they recently added off to the side. I’m assuming they’re new due to the cleanness of the concrete pad.

But even as busy as they were, they still got me my order faster than either Whataburger or Chicken Express, and I didn’t have to tell them 3 times, “No!  I don’t want any lettuce.” In fact, from the time the speaker clicked off after taking my order, it was 5 and a half minutes until the car hop was at my window.

Now that’s fast.

After lunch I got out my Sear’s 150 psi Air Compressor to top off all my tires, the rig and the truck.

PORTER-CABLE 150 PSI Air Compressor

I  bought mind from Sears, but they no longer sell them. They were apparently made for Sears by Porter-Cable, who now sells them under their own name. The only difference seems to be that my Sears’ one is red.

For the first year of our RV life, I aired up the coach tires by dragging out a 75’ air hose and plugging it into the coach air compressor connector. Then I would to start up the rig engine to get the job done. A real pain in the rear.

I don’t know about most other rigs, but we have an air connection in the front bay under the driver’s seat. It’s so that if the rig is being towed wheels down, the tow driver can hook his tow truck air system into the our rig’s to release the air brakes. There’s also one back in the engine compartment.

I knew that  our tires would all be low because the last time they were aired up was in Prescott, AZ back in July, and the temps were running between 95 and 100°.

But now it was in the 40’s last night and the 50’s today, and every tire was 10 to 15 psi low, the difference being whether the tire was in the direct sun or not.

But rather than the usual 20 minutes it normally takes to air up all ten tires, it took off and on all afternoon. Because I could only be hunched over for so long before my back started screaming, and then it would take about 30 seconds before I could stand all the way up straight again.

I didn’t realize that getting old would be so painful.

Anyway, the reason I had to hunch over was so that I could hold the air chuck on the tire valve while I was adding air. And the reason I had to HOLD the air chuck on the valve was because my locking air chuck, the one on my Power Tank Tire Inflator decided that today was the day to quit working.

After 8 years, now it quits?

About the same time I bought the air compressor, I also purchased this Power Tank Heavy Duty Tire Inflator system.

And like the air compressor, it’s also been a real workhorse. Just lock the chuck on the valve stem, stand up, and add air by squeezing lever. Then when you release it, you can read the pressure on the very accurate gauge. Easy Peezy.

And quick. And no hunching over.

But now the locking air chuck on the inflator just would not lock. Hence the ‘hunching over’. If I’d known this this morning I could have picked one up in Carthage.

Oh well. It’s done and another thing checked off my ‘Leaving The Gate’ list.

So far tonight, it’s beginning to look like we may be back to a 12 hour gate again for a while. At least we were tonight.

The last vehicle out was the Company Man, who left a little after 6pm. Unfortunately he didn’t stop and tell Jan they were done for the day. So poor thing, she sat outside until about 8pm before giving up and coming inside.

The pad is completely dark with no activity at all. Our logs show five vehicles still in, but those are probably just big rigs with equipment (pumps, filters, separators, etc.) that will stay here the entire time.

So if this schedule holds for tomorrow night, Jan and I may get another night on the town in Carthage.

Hope so.

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Thought for the Day:

A committee is a life form with six or more legs and no brain. — Lazarus Long

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We Will Rebuild !

It’s only a scratch. A few tie-wraps and some Gorilla Tap and that’ll buff right out.

Well, we almost made it.

For each of last three years we’ve gate guarded, we’ve lost a canopy sometime during the year.

Year 1

Year 2

Couldn’t find a photo

Year 3

But this year, since we only have 5 days left for this year, I thought we had managed to dodge a bullet.

WRONG!

Although running a little late, Mother Nature finally caught up with us this morning. After riding out the high wind gusts all night, (according to the Weather Channel, 45 to 55mph) I finally gave up and went inside. I had been watching the heavy squall line running southwest to northeast west of us. But it was also sliding sideways in our direction. And as it did, the wind gusts increased even more.

So I moved all the electronics and other stuff into the rig and the truck, and then garbage-bagged the heaters, and anything else not waterproof. Then about 5:30 I retreated inside the rig to ride it out.

At that time I wasn’t really worried about the canopy since it had braved the high winds all night, but I didn’t want to be out there when it was raining sideways. I had even added a couple of extra tie-downs using 220# rope, one to the tow bar attachment on front of the truck, and the other to the hitch on the rear of the RV. I figured if the rig and the truck didn’t stay in place, I wasn’t going to worry about the canopy.

About 6 am the bottom fell out with a loud WHOOMP! All at once it was coming down so hard that I could just barely see the truck 10 feet away. We even had some hail for the first few minutes. The wind gusts were now rocking and rolling the rig back and forth with no let up. I finally went to bed about 6:30, with the canopy still holding its own.

Even in the storm we were still getting the water tankers coming in and out. Jan would waved them in from the door, and try to get their tag numbers on the way out. But usually it was just tanker at 8:05, tanker out at 8:25.

Jan said the canopy went down somewhere between 7 and 7:30, and a little bit later we lost the floodlights and the bell alarm as water got into some of the connections and popped the GFCI on the generator.

I was back up about 11 and we were going through lulls as the bands of rain passed over us. About this time a truck that I didn’t recognize pulled up so I ran outside since it was only drizzling at the time. Found out that it was the advance guy for the workover rig that’s coming in tomorrow.

Well that was a surprise since flowback wasn’t supposed to be finished up until Thursday or Friday. But it looks like they’re getting an early start. Told the guy they picked a hell of a day for it. He agreed and said that driving over from Longview he had trouble just seeing the road in front of him.

The storm had pretty much died out by 5pm so I went outside to survey the damage and try to figure out what happened. And it quickly became obvious what caused the canopy to go down.

All four of the 12” metal had been pulled sideways out of the now soggy ground, leaving only the 220# test rope holding the canopy against the wind. And at some point it had snapped like a strand of spaghetti. I figure it must have been a big gust that did it, since a steady wind of enough strength to do that would completely shredded the tarp, and it was still pretty much intact.

I also found the ground littered with these connectors.

These are what holds the cross braces of the canopy frame together. In some cases the bolt snapped, but in a couple of others it looks like the bolt threads were just stripped out.

Wow! That was some wind.

That’s about it for today. We’re working out of the truck for tonight, and tomorrow I’ll see if I can pop the canopy back into place.

We’ll see.

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Thought for the Day:

“Stupidity has a certain charm – ignorance does not.” – Frank Zappa

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