Daily Archives: April 15, 2022
Ten Years Ago Today . . .
We began our Gate Guarding Adventure.
For the next 5 years we were on a gate from 3 to 7 months a year, working both down in south Texas and up in east Texas near Huntsville and Bryan-College Station.
April 5, 2012
A New Chapter . . .
and a Big Milestone.
Jan and I were up about 8:30 this morning, wondering what was going on with Landon’s hospitalization. Then a few minutes later we got an real, actual phone call. Don’t know why it worked this morning, but not last night.
Our daughter Brandi was on the way home from the hospital to freshen up and grab a little sleep. She said Landon was doing OK, but was still in ICU (which is normal at his age). They’ve got him on some steroids so he’s really restless and doesn’t like the IV he’s hooked up to.
Feeling relived, we left the RV park in Junction a little before 10. Our first stop was the McDonald’s that is part of the Valero Truck Stop where we made our phone call to Brandi last night. We wanted to grab a couple of breakfast sandwiches to eat on the road.
Luckily since it was a truck stop I had plenty of room to park right next door and run in. As the manager took my order, I juked about the fact the fact that if his drive-thru cover was a little higher, I could have just taken the RV through. He laughed and said that some people don’t care, and that this was his 3rd cover in two years. Oops!
We were on the road and headed east on I-10 by 10:15.
We passed more fields of bluebonnets and this one of Indian Paintbrushes. Really beautiful country through here, in contrast to the stark beauty of Arizona and New Mexico.
We took Loop 410 south around San Antonio and headed out on I-37. And about 25 miles down the road, we reached our milestone.
We hit 50,000 miles of travel on our coach. Of course our coach had 62,511 miles on it when we bought it, so now we’ve passed 112,511 total miles on our coach, and it’s still going strong.
Right after this, our daughter Brandi called and said Landon was home and doing fine. She said they had already taken the IV out, and after they heard from the doctor that they could leave, she ask Landon if he was ready to go home. He nodded, grabbed his toy, and headed out the door and down the hall to the elevator. He was ready!
Our first stop was in the town of Pleasanton at the Wal-Mart so we could stock up on groceries for the upcoming New Chapter in our RV life.
We were heading for Whitsett, TX and the local headquarters of Gate Guard Services
For the next 5 months or so, we were going to be oilfield gate guards.
The job of gate guard consists of parking our RV at the entrance to an oil well drill site and checking in and out all visitors, deliveries, and employees.
In most cases it’s 24/7 job with Jan and I each working a 12 hours shift. We may be parked right outside a town, or miles out in the boonies. You never known until you get your site.
The company furnishes the site and all utilities. In most cases that’s done with a trailer containing a diesel generator, diesel fuel tank, and a water tank. Sometimes a sewage storage tank is also included. If not, they have someone come by once or twice a week and pump your waste tanks out.
The good part is the job pays $125 to $150 dollars a day. Nice.
We pulled into the Gate Guard Services lot about 4:15, and after talking to an employee, were directed to a place to park and hook up to 50 amp power with water nearby if we need it.
There is a full hookup area on the other side of the lot that we should be able to move to on Monday when some of these people move out to their gates.
Later I walked around the lot looking at the utility trailers that will supply us with power, water, and sometimes sewer, at the jobsite.
And it looks like they’ve got a bunch of trailers ready to go,
with the parts for more ready to be assembled.
The people we needed to talk to had already left for the day, so we’ll have to catch them first thing tomorrow to see how we get started.
April 16, 2012
Gate Guarding – Day 1
We were awakened this morning about 7:45am and told we had a gate waiting for us.
We were given our hats, orange safety vests, login forms, clipboard, and a hand-drawn map to the gate. Jamie said our supervisor Larry would be waiting for us.
We were ready to roll a little before 9, with our first stop right across the street at the Exxon station to top off my tank with about 80 gallons of diesel for $4.10 a gallon. When I’m going to be parked for a while I always like to do it on a full tank to cut down on condensation and algae growth in the tank.
About 9:15 we were on the road heading to our gate. Our route took us on all two-lane roads from Whitsett southwest over to Fowlerton, about 45 miles away. But it was the last 8 miles of dirt road that was a problem.
It was so bad that I was only able to do 8-10 mph. And even then we had drawers come open that hadn’t come open in 5 years. It almost 45 minutes to finally get to the gate site, where our supervisor, Larry Ross, was waiting for us with our utility trailer just as promised.
It only took us about 10 minutes to get parked and set up. Larry pulled the generator trailer behind the rig and got us hooked up with AC power to the coach.
A little later Larry headed back to town to bring out our sewer trailer, while Jan was up and running on her new Gate Guarding career.
And we quickly had our first visitor, not a truck, but a friendly roadrunner. He walked back and forth right in front of us, just a couple of feet away.
Supposedly they’re really good about keeping snakes away. Jan hopes so.
And then a little bit later he came by carrying lunch.
The only downside to our location is we not only have no Internet service, we have absolutely no Verizon cell service at all. NONE.
In fact I had to drive to Cotulla, 35 miles away to get a good signal. Apparently AT&T works in this area, so I’ll have to see about getting a cheapie phone at Wal-Mart. But I’m still not sure what I’m going to do about Internet. I’ll have to work on it.
UPDATE:
We only had about 20 vehicles in and out yesterday, and the site was closed from 7:30pm to 6 am.
Nice!
So Far, So Good . . .
Monday, April 16th
I was up at 5:30 and opened the gate at 5:45 just to be sure that I was ready to go for the first visitor. We’re really lucky that our first gate job is effectively only a 12hr gate, from about 6am to 6pm.
Jan was up about 7, and after puttering in the rig for a while, came out about 8 and we just enjoyed the view. We’ve got roadrunners, quail, doves, and a lot of other birds that we can’t identity yet, but Jan has her Petersen’s guide book and is working on it.
Finally, about 12:30pm I headed over to Pearsall, TX, to the closest Wal-Mart to pick up some things, but it turns out that it’s not a SuperCenter, so I had to go to HEB for the groceries.
I was looking for a cheapy AT&T cellphone but no luck. The only place in town that sold cell phones was a Tax Preparation office ?? that was closed.
Bummer!
We still don’t have cell or Internet service out here, which is the only downside to the job site.
I finally got back at 5, and after putting things away, I pulled out our Weber Q Grill to do hot dogs. It’s been awhile since we used it, so I was afraid we might be out of propane, but the bottle ran out just as the dogs were done, so it was all good.
More propane goes on the list.
The last truck out left about 6:30, so I locked the gate and we were done for the day.
We only had about 22 vehicles come through today, which was nice.
Thought For The Day:
I am not crazy. I prefer the term “Mentally hilarious”.
.
