Our RV Adventures

Today being BCS grocery day, I was out the door and on my way by 10:30, to make the 45 minute drive to the Wal-Mart. Or at least the closest one to us, anyway.

The first thing I noticed is that just a little over a mile down the road from us they’re building a new pad. And as I was later to find out,, this could be our new home. They’ve really made a lot of progress because when I was by here just a week ago there was no sign of a pad being built. But apparently this is where our rig will move next.

Once I was at the Wal-Mart, I picked up a couple of prescriptions for Jan and I and then started on my list. I’ve now been to this Wal-Mart enough times to pretty much know where everything is so it didn’t take too long. The only thing I was looking for that I didn’t find was a cheap plastic mailbox.

I’ve seen them at other Wal-Marts, but apparently not here. If I had more time today I’d check out a Home Depot or Lowe’s, but that’ll have to be another trip, another day.

And besides, I’m not exactly sure how and where I would mount it anyway. On both sides of the entry road there is no real shoulder. About 6” from the pavement the ground just rolls off into a steep ditch about 5 feet deep. And if I put it there, the mailbox itself would actually be sticking out in the roadway. Probably not a good idea,  unless I mounted it sideways I guess.

The only real option I’ve got would be to mount it on one of the fence posts by the cattle guard entrance. Which mean the carrier would have to pull off the road and into the entrance way to access the box. I know in other places I’ve seen rows of mailboxes lined up along the side road just off the highway, but I know from experience what one Post Office allows may be completely different than another one.

Of course the funny thing about all this is that it really doesn’t matter where the box is since they’ll never be putting anything in the mailbox anyway, since all of our packages will be too big for the box, and supposedly they’ll have to drive the 50 feet inside the gate and hand the package to one of us.

So I guess before I buy a mailbox I need to talk with the Postmaster at the Hearne PO and try to find out how this is going to work. Or if indeed, it can work.

Getting back to today, leaving Wal-Mart, I headed over the nearest Chicken Express to pick up our lunch, 2 – 4 piece chicken tender boxes with a side of Fried Okra, large drinks, and an apple pie for me and a cherry pie for Jan.

Getting back to the rig about 30 minutes later, we quickly discovered something – Fried Okra doesn’t travel well. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t as good as usual. Rather than being hot and crispy, it was more lukewarm and chewy. And this, even after I put it in an insulated bag for the trip home.

I guess we should have expected it, since we found the same thing last week with our Whataburger fries. They ended up cold and somewhat chewy too.

I guess we got spoiled last year at our gate outside Carthage, TX when the trip from restaurant to rig was only about 10 minutes, not 30 to 45 like now.

So next time it’s corn on the cob as my side. Don’t know about Jan.

Before I relieved Jan at 11pm tonight I unpacked my Wilson Cellphone Booster setup and then went down to the truck and pulled out 3 of my 5 foot antenna pole sections. I have 4 for a total of 20 feet just in case, but I’ve never needed that much.

But we’ll see.

According to The Weather Channel, by  the end of next week, we still should be looking at high temps in the low 80’s and lows in the high 60’s. Hope it holds true because we’re really looking forward to it.

Thought for the Day:

Coincidences happen if you work hard enough to make them happen.

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First off, Jan and I want to wish a Happy 23rd Birthday to our beautiful granddaughter Piper.

Unfortunately the other night at another party she fell and broke her left arm. . . again. This is the same arm she broke in a ATV accident two years ago.

Ouch! That hurts just to look at.

But she still got to celebrate anyway.

And these are a couple of my favorite photos of her. She has this Mona Lisa face thing going on with those eyes just looking right through you.

The rig spent most of the day drilling through some really hard rock which made it sound like if you put rocks and tin cans in a washing machine and turned it on High. I have never heard a drill rig sound like that. It was hard to even talk over. But now it’s not nearly as bad, but louder than normal.

It’s been two weeks since we actually started drilling, so last night we got a new Company Man and a new Tool Pusher. We’re also getting new crew, but they change out every week, so this is our first time seeing some of these guys, but we’ll learn their names and faces pretty quickly

One thing different at this gate is that we can’t see the vehicles coming toward us like our other gates. We just hear the bell and then the vehicles suddenly appear around the back of the rig, meaning we can’t see their tag numbers. And their tag numbers are how we start to recognize the drivers.

Jan and I are both good about remembering numbers. So we know if we’ve seen a vehicle before, and if we have we just wave them through, only stopping ones we don’t recognize. Then we just we just get their login info from the last time they came in. Of course with Louisiana-tagged vehicles, we have to double check if we recognized the vehicle since they don’t have a front tag.

But since we can’t see the tags as they come in here, we have to stop everyone, at least until we’re sure we recognize them.

One thing unusual about this new Company Man is his rules on when he’ll see salespeople. Most CM’s only allow unsolicited sales calls on certain days. The previous CM only allowed them on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday, no other time. Other CM’s may  be Monday, Wednesday, or Tuesday, Thursday. But this new CM said to let them in any time. Makes our job a lot easier.

Because it can sometimes be tricky differentiating salespeople from workers. One clue is that the sales guys are usually in ‘civilian’ clothes, not the FRC (Flame  Retardant Clothing) coveralls that the workers wear. But then some salespeople wear FRC’s to fake you out. And some will just plain lie to you. Over the years, both Jan and I have gotten phone calls from the CM complaining that we let somebody in we shouldn’t have, but it’s always been that they lied to us.

Another clue is that they’re with a company that you don’t recognize as already being onsite, which means they’re looking for business.

And a dead giveaway is if they’re female. We have occasionally  had women coming in driving big rigs, (not this year so far) or women drivers delivering parts in a pickup truck, but normally if it’s a cute young lady driving an SUV, she’s in sales.

Picture Penny on Big Bang Theory doing pharmaceutical sales.

In the past, we have occasionally seen women geologists come through, but again they’re usually wearing FRC’s, so it’s easy to tell.

But all this picking and choosing salespeople coming through goes out the window if they say they’re here to get a ‘ticket’ signed. They get let in anytime.

A ‘ticket’ is basically a bill or invoice that needs to be signed by the CM so that it can then be submitted to the oil company so they can be paid.

But then we’ve been lied to about this in the past as well.

I’m always amazed at the many different people we have reading our blog. I’ve had a blog reader in Africa correct my identification of an animal we’d photographed at a wildlife park. Turned out it wasn’t me though. The sign on the enclosure was apparently wrong.  

And once I was talking about the Potatoe Patch restaurant north of Houston, and how they advertise ‘Throw’d Rolls’ like the famous Lambert’s Throw’d Rolls chain. I mentioned how Potatoe Patch doesn’t really throw them, but more like tosses them from a couple of feet away.

Turns out a blog reader used to be the insurance underwriter for Lambert’s, and she said that was probably because of lawsuits. She said you wouldn’t believe how many lawsuits they get due to people being hit with soft, fluffy rolls.

So I guess I shouldn’t be surprised how many current and retired postal workers we have reading the blog who chimed in on my recent Post Office woes.

Based on their input, I may  just buy a cheap mailbox and stick it out in front there and see how that works. Of course I’ve still got two other packages in the pipeline so I’m not sure what’s going to happened with those. I guess I’ll find out eventually.

I’ve now pretty much given up on using the pad Wi-Fi. I got the code for the new setup this morning, but as I feared, the signal strength is too low for me to stay connected and it keeps dropping out. So I guess in the next day or so, I’ll pull out my Wilson cell phone booster system and get it set up.

But it probably won’t be until Friday, since tomorrow is grocery day in BCS, as well as Chicken Express day coming home.

Hmmmmm! Fried Okra!

Thought for the Day:

An Oldie but Goodie.

“The avalanche has already started. It is too late for the pebbles to vote.” – Ambassador Kosh

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