Our RV Adventures

It was right there, just over the horizon, all those nice temps in the low 80’s and high 60’s, right there on the forecast, just a week off. And then they all went away. Just ‘POOF!, and they were gone, leaving leaving us with both temps and humidity in the 90’s.

Right now at almost midnight, it’s still 80 degrees and 90% humidity. This is not what I signed up for in the middle of September. I don’t like this.

Fix it!

A few days ago I put out a request on the Facebook Gate Guard Blogs for a relief guard for Sept. 28th, for about 10 hours, with no luck so far, so I thought I’d try here.

This September 28th will be our 49th Wedding Anniversary, and in the last 4 years of gate guarding we’ve always had it off, either with a relief guard, or been just lucky and the rig was moving so we had the day off.

But so far this year, nothing. I asked Jamie, our Gate Guard Services supervisor if he knew of anyone, and he said No. In fact he said that right now Jan and I are the ‘lone survivors’ here in east Texas, the only gate he has.

So I’m still looking and hoping.

I’ve got a couple of Amazon orders coming in tomorrow, so hopefully  the whole address thing will still work with our PO carrier. She said she’d be on the lookout for orders with our name and address, so we’ll see.

I’ve also got a couple of more Amazon orders coming on Tuesday, but with a better address. Originally when I set up the address for here on Amazon, I tried to use:

Greg White
19413 Street Name
c/o RV at Drill Site
Hearne, TX  77859

But Amazon wouldn’t let me do it. It would take the street address, but if I put anything else, even a period in the 2nd address line, it would flag the 1st line as ‘Bad Address’. And if I tried to change the name from Greg White to Greg White – RV at Drill Site, it would also flag the 1st address line as bad. In fact, if I just tried to change the name to Gregory White, it would flag the 1st address line as bad.

I even tried deleting the address completely, and then logging out of Amazon and back in, again with no luck. But if I put the same street address in BOTH address lines, it liked that just fine.

WTH?

I had already  sent in the first order with just the single street address, but decided to try again before I sent in the second one. So this time I ended up in an online chat with ‘Roshni’ at Amazon, who was able to enter the correct address for me with no problem. When I ask her if she knew why she could enter it and I couldn’t, she said I must have been doing it wrong.

WELL! I guess she told me.

I never had any trouble entering the OTHER 76 addresses in my Amazon account, just this one. But it’s my fault.

One of the things that in this first order is a second remote for our new Samsung TV, so that Jan has one on her side at the sofa, and I have one at my computer desk. Normally the only thing the TV remote gets used for is to change the source from HDMI-1, the DirecTV DVR, to HDMI-2 which is the feed from the desktop computer. That way we can both see things on the computer on the TV screen when I want to show Jan a cute moose video.

In addition to my peevishness about the small size of the new remote, I’m not really happy with the volume level that the TV puts out. It maxes out at 100, as shown on the screen, and 100 is where we have to set it for comfortable hearing. But we find a lot of variation in the volume level of shows we DVR and play back, and sometimes we would have to crank the volume up to hear them comfortably. And our old RCA TV had plenty of extra volume to do this. The Samsung, not so much.

It may be that I have to add a sound bar, or the like to boost the volume. We’ll see.

Today was a little busier than yesterday’s 23 vehicles, with 34 coming through the gate. Still not bad. But strangely enough, you don’t want it too slow. Or at least I don’t.

There were a couple of times on last year’s gate up by Carthage, TX, when although there were crew working at the rig, nobody came or left during a shift, and this was a day shift. Makes you feel kind of useless that you sat outside all day for nothing. Then you start wanting someone to come through the gate just to break the boredom.

Of course then you think back to two years ago when we were doing 500 vehicles a day, and a little boredom sounds awfully nice.

Today for dinner, we had leftover Blue Moon BBQ, still delicious, and because I had gotten us 1/4 wedge of Cowboy Country to add to today’s leftovers,

after I was done I still had two slices of pork loin and two slices of brisket leftover for a nice thick sandwich tomorrow.

So leftover leftovers. YUMMM!

Thought for the Day:

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It’s been a S L O W day today, our slowest full day so far.

In fact we only had 23 vehicles come through the gate today, not even a full page of 24. So very nice.

Jamie, our GGS supervisor/service guy came by about 8:30 this morning to do the oil/filter change on our generator and top off our diesel. He didn’t bring water with him, but said we still had 250 gallons, so half a tank.

I was already in bed when he got here, and I vaguely remember him shutting off the generator because the white noise machine we use went off. Then a while later I woke up HOT. It seemed like a good bit of time had gone by, and I could hear the generator running, so what the heck?

Checking up front, we had no power there either. So I stuck my head out the door and ask Jan if Jamie was still here working on the generator and still had the circuit breaker off. She said No, and that he left a good while ago.

At this point I was think that maybe he forgot to turn the 50 amp breaker to the coach back on. Todd, our service guy at Carthage Gate last year did this. But Jan’s fan and stuff under the canopy run off the 30 amp breaker and the lights and bell run off the 20 amp, so hers were working.

Getting dressed and going outside I found the 50 amp breaker in the ON position, so what the heck?

Next I checked my Progressive EMS (Electrical Management System) and I found it was only showing power to L1 and nothing on L2. Going back and looking closer, I noticed that the right side of the breaker was just slightly lower than the left side, and when I wiggled the handle the left side was firm and the right one had a little play in it.

So, a bad breaker.

We had a breaker die completely last year, so nothing new.

The reason the Progressive EMS shut down power to the coach is that a low or no voltage condition on one line is considered a fault condition and it shuts down. We had the same thing happen on one of our first gates in 2012 when L2 on the generator dropped to 80 volts, so the EMS shut down to protect the AC’s from the low voltage.

In this case, with no voltage, I could have put the EMS in bypass mode which would have gotten half the coach working, or I could have plugged the coach in the 30 amp breaker, and then used my AC bypass line to run the 2nd AC from the 20 amp breaker.

So I had several backup options, but I wanted take a little time to play with the breaker to see if I could get it working. So unplugging the coach power cable, I used my voltmeter to monitor the voltage on the bad side and flicked the breaker off and on until I got a reading, pushing up hard on the right side.

It took about 10 tries, but when I finally had voltage, I plugged the coach back in with the breaker still hot. Not a good idea normally, but necessary under these circumstances. And a minute later, I heard the generator lug down a little as both AC’s came on at the same time. Success!

Then it was back to bed for another couple of hours. Later in the afternoon I called Jamie and told him what happened, and to bring a new breaker with him next time he comes by.

So that was the problem. The non-problem, that’s where you think you have a problem but you really don’t, showed up right after I got the new TV installed. Jan was no longer getting a signal back to her TV in the bedroom.

Now the TV upfront has nothing to do with her TV in back. Her signal comes from an S-Video and L-R audio output from the DirecTV DVR, both of which feed into a stand-alone RF modulator, and then the output of this feeds on Ch. 4 on the line going back to the bedroom TV.

Her TV showed no signal, just snow, so that pretty much eliminated the DVR as the problem, since if the modulator were working, I’d have a black screen, not snow. So either the RF modulator was bad, or the cable from the modulator, through the wall down the length of the coach, was bad. Not a good thought.

So to test this out, I got a 50 foot length of cable and ran it directly from the modulator , down the hall, to the bedroom TV. And now I had video.

Bummer!

I would use another word, but this is a family blog.

This means the cable was bad. And since I wasn’t going to be able to pull a new cable, and I don’t think Jan would like to keep the cable running down the hall, I went on Amazon to look at wireless AV transmitters. But something kept nagging away at me.

And then in one of those AHa! moments, I remember the rig’s original RF switcher. This was a little push-button box that let you change inputs and outputs between the two T’V’s, the rooftop TV antenna, and the VCR.

And then I also remembered that although I had bypassed all the front TV and VCR cables, the feed to the bedroom TV still went through the switcher.

So digging into the overhead cabinet where the switcher lived, I found the TV2 button in the wrong position. I guess I must have pushed against the DVR which pushed against the switcher when I was moving stuff around getting the new TV into position.

So that was how I fixed the non-problem. I just pushed the button. Sometimes it’s the easy stuff that’s hard.

One other thing I accomplished this afternoon was to program our DirecTV remotes so that they will control the new TV. It took longer than I expected because I had to go through about 20 5 digit codes before I found the right one.

As I mentioned yesterday, today was Blue Moon BBQ day, so I made the 1/4 mile trip down there about 12:45 to pick up lunch. And I won’t make that mistake again.

In the past I’ve always gone there about 11:30 and have always gotten my order in immediately, but today the place was packed and I was 6th in line, with some large orders in front of me. So it was about 20 minutes until I got my order taken.

I went later today, since I slept in a little longer due to my rude awakening from no AC’s working.

Jan got her favorite (well, her favorite besides the Nachos last week) Stuffed Baked Potato, while I again got the 3 meat plate, but with Pork Loin instead of Ribs. The Brisket and the Hot Sausage are delicious, but for me the Ribs are only good, not great.

They’re obviously parboiled before they’re put on the grill, or in the smoker. This way they have that ‘so tender, they fall off the bone’. And that’s what you get. With a slight tug, the meat just comes right off, leaving a nice smooth bone.

I don’t like that.

I like my rib meat with more texture, and with the meat sticking to the bone, so you have to gnaw it a little to get all the meat off. But that’s just me. Your mileage may differ.

We both had leftovers for tomorrow, and I also got a small Cowboy Cornbread to add to it, a Blue Moon two’fer. Nice. 

Thought for the Day:

As I said, sometimes it’s the easy stuff that’s hard.

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