Our RV Adventures

Going On . . .Ghostbusters!

Well, not quite Ghostbuster strange, but still strange.

About 4am this morning, the three different vehicle alarms all slowly started working. And by the time I left at 5:30 they were all working with no problems. And they continued working all day and into this evening.

I did confirm last night that the sensor part of the Mighty Mules is working.

If you take the cover off the head, there is a red LED that flashes when a vehicle is sensed going by. And that is happening.

But the signal is not getting to the receiver inside the shack. Which takes me right back to the idea that some sort of interference is happening in this area.

I’m not sure there’s really anything that I can do about it, but it does explain a lot.

Well, the rig didn’t get moved today either, but tomorrow for sure. Yeah, right. The move was called on account of having lunch in Cuero.

We headed into town about 11:45, but before lunch we made a stop at Donut Palace for some more of their great pastries and breakfast croissants. I take one of their Bacon, Egg, and Cheese croissants into work every night and it makes a delicious meal. Then I’ll have half of one of their Cinnamon Twists about midnight with some coffee to keep me going the rest of the night.

Lunch today was Maya Mexican again, with this time having beef, chicken, and shrimp fajitas. But accidently. We actually ordered the same Fajitas Regias that we ordered last time, with beef, chicken, and grilled sausage. But something was lost in translation and we got the shrimp instead. But it was still good and we have leftovers to boot.

After lunch we drove over to the HEB to get gas for the truck. I don’t know exactly why, but the HEB here is consistently 10 cents a gallon cheaper than any station in town, even the Wal-Mart right down the street. Then after topping off the tank, and get the discounted carwash, we headed back to the rig, just in time for me to be able to get in a couple of hours more sleep before I leave for work about 4:45pm.

As far as the rig move, the scheduled rain has been pushed back to Sunday now, and the longer we go without rain the dryer the ground gets, but we’ll probably still give it a try tomorrow.

Maybe.

Movie theater popcorn costs more per ounce than Filet Mignon. But they won’t let you eat Filet Mignon in the theater.

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Two weeks from tonight we’ll be parked back at the Colorado River Thousand Trails park in Columbus.

We’ll be there for two weeks, mainly getting our doctor stuff out of the way for the year. But we have a lot of other things we want to do and people we want to see before we leave for Tucson sometime around the 10th of March.

That is, if I’m not still stuck in the mud here. I didn’t get a chance to try moving the rig forward today, so it’s put off until tomorrow. I haven’t been sleeping well the last couple of days so I just didn’t feel like doing it today. Luckily it looks like the forecasted showers will hold off another day too.

In fact today I was so discombobulated that I left the rig this afternoon without my phone, my watch, and my wedding ring. So I keep rubbing my ring finger where it’s missing from.

I’m also missing my phone because at least I could usually get email and text, even if I can’t make phone calls. I say usually, because sometimes I get nothing for an hour or so, and then email and text are back.

And my 3G aircard is useless here. Right now it’s showing that I’m connected to a 3G signal and I have Internet access, but I can get absolutely no data of any kind through it.

However two miles south of here I show 4 bars of 4G with phone calls, data, and text. And my aircard works great. And 5 miles west of here on the actual frack pad, everything also works great.

I’m starting to wonder if there’s some sort of interference in this immediate area that’s causing the problem. I’m thinking along these lines because 3 different wireless vehicle alarm systems are also flakey, including our normally very reliable Mighty Mules. They will work fine for a while and then just quit for hours and then start up again, very similar to the phone problems.

This is one case that really makes me miss the old-fashion gas station bells that Gate Guard Services uses. They pretty much just work.

There is a large production facility across the street from us with a lot storage tanks and trailer office buildings. And there are also several 100 foot or so radio towers back behind the site, with microwave dishes on them.

And although none of the dishes point directly in our direction, a mis-tuned or leaky amplifier could be blanketing our area with enough RF radiation to overload local receivers, no matter what the frequency. If I had a spectrum analyzer I could try and track it down, but no such luck.

Anyway that’s my theory and I’m sticking with it.

When I came back in to the gate this afternoon to relieve Jan, I also had to apologize to her. When she came in at 5:30 this morning she was visibly shaken and upset. When I ask her why, she said it was so foggy that she couldn’t see the road most of the time and it scared her to death.

I told her that she should have just driven slow and easy and she’d be OK.

But when I headed back to the rig on the same path a few minutes later, I ended up ‘visibly shaken’ too, and probably scared ‘half’ to death.

You just could not see the road. But it was not from the fog directly, but due to the condition of the road. Along about 10 of the 16 miles trip, there are no road markings at all. Not center line, no edge strips, no nothing. Just asphalt.

And with the fog, there was no way to really tell where the road edge stopped and the shoulder (and the ditch) started. In some cases the only way to tell was the ride got rougher when your wheel went on the shoulder.

It took me over 50 minutes to make the normal 20 minute trip.

Sorry, sweetheart.

On final note, Jan has another admirer on the gate. A little after 6pm a guy was leaving in a company truck that I didn’t recognize, so I assume he was from the new workover rig that came in yesterday.

He asked me what happened to the cute blonde that was here earlier?

I said I sent her home, and he questioned, “She’s your wife?”

I said, “Yep, for almost 50 years now.”

“Damn, you rob the cradle?”

I said, “Nope. It was kind of the other way around.”

“So she was, what, 12 when you married her?”

And then before I could say anything, he said, “Hell, are you from Alabama?”

Before I could tell him Yes, he drove off.

I’m gonna have to keep a closer eye on that girl.

Thought for the Day:

In the 1940’s, Dr. William Sewell built an artificial heart using parts from an Erector Set.

And I thought I was doing pretty good to build a 3 foot tall Ferris Wheel.

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