Our RV Adventures

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It just gets better and better. Today our 10 hour gate, nee our 12 hour gate, became our 8 hour gate, with the Company Man the last one out at around 2:30.

Now exactly why couldn’t they have started this months ago, instead of our last few days on the gate?

In fact, between when I came out about 1pm, and when the CM left, I only had two vehicles come in. All the rest of the traffic was just heading out. But this worked out good for me, since it gave me plenty of time to work on my ‘Leaving the Gate’ list.

After our storm damage this past Tuesday when the squall line with 50 – 60mph gusts came through, it left us with this,

I was able to pop the frame back into shape, although now reinforced with some tie-wraps.

At first I had thought about just going ahead and taking the canopy down for this year and doing without it for our last few days, sitting out in the hot sun with no shade quickly disabused us of that idea. So I came up with this.

Rather than try to patch together the old main canopy, I just put the small tarp back up, along with the solar screens. That will work fine for our last few days, and won’t be as involved in taking down.

Ok, so I’m a little hypocritical. Today being Friday, and apparently officially now Whataburger day for us, I drove into Carthage to pick up lunch. Now all the other 10 times or so we’ve gotten food from here, it’s always been the same thing.

For Jan:

#6 Whataburger Jr. With Cheese – Large Combo

With only:
Ketchup
Mustard
Tomatoes
Grilled Onions
And For Me:

#6 Whataburger Jr. With Cheese

With only:
Bacon
Tomatoes
Pickles
Raw Onions
Mayo on both buns

Large Drink

And it would have been the same order for me again, except for the fact that the guy in front of me was picking up 6 Grilled Chicken Cranberry-Apple Salads to go. And I got an instant craving to graze on one.

As it turns out, it was as good as it looks.

I think one reason for that was the fact that I watched them make the salad. Not just the Grilled Chicken part, but the salad itself. Most fast food places assemble the salads ahead of time, if you’re lucky, that morning, or if you’re not, the day or night before. But they put together this one right then, so it was really fresh.

You have a choice of a number of different dressings, including a couple of vinaigrettes, but I went with the Jalapeno Ranch.

So yeah, after I chastised someone for ordering a Chicken Fajita Taco at Whataburger, I get a salad there, possibly an even bigger blasphemy. But what can I say, I succumbed to temptation, and strayed from the path of burger righteousness.

mea culpa, mea culpa,
mea máxima culpa

But at least I didn’t have to keep telling cashier, “No, I don’t want any lettuce.”

While we’re on the subject of food, I wanted to post a photo of the delicious Prime Rib I had last night at Longhorn Grille.

Thursday night is Prime Rib Night, which is served as a complete meal, including a piece of their great Strawberry Cheesecake, which we split. A really great meal.

We’ll miss this place.

While we were eating lunch, we had something come through our gate that we haven’t seen this year.

A load of drill pipe for the workover rig. Just one truckload, apparently.

I remember our first year gate guarding in south Texas, we might get 20 loads of pipe in at a time, lined up all way out to the highway. Because of limited space on the pad, we could only let 4 trucks go in at a time. Then when they unloaded, one at a time, and came back out, 4 more could go in.

Well, some of the drivers would get impatient and try to break ranks, or just drive by all the other trucks and come to the front of the line.

But they didn’t figure on my Jan, standing in the middle of the road, hands on her hips, mad as hell, yelling at them to get back in line and wait their turn like everyone else.

Now there was no way for them to turn around, so they’d have to slowly back all the way up along the long line of other trucks, with the drivers pointing and laughing at them, for being run off by a girl.

The rest of the afternoon was spent putting away everything that we wouldn’t really need again before we leave here on Sunday. I went ahead and topped off the big 500 gallon water tank for our replacements, and then disconnected and stowed away all our hoses, leaving us running on rig water for the next couple of days. Tomorrow I’ll go ahead and dump the waste tanks, disconnect us from the sewer system and put away that hose too.

Since we’re not expecting any wind for the next couple of days, I went ahead and dumped the water out the buckets we use to help hold down the canopy, and then rinsed and stowed them away too.

My goal is to get everything finished up tomorrow so that Sunday morning we’ll only need to unhook shore power and pull off onto the side road. This will allow our replacements to just pull into our spot and hook up.

At that point we’ll be able to just hook up the toad and we’ll be ready to roll.

At least that’s the plan. But you know what they say about plans.

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Thought for the Day:

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