Monthly Archives: April 2022
An Onerous Task . . .
That turned out to be relatively easy.
Jan and I headed out for lunch about 12:30, after loading up the Jeep with a lot of winter stuff destined for the storeroom.
Lunch was at Yummy Yummy once again, our favorite local Chinese Buffet place.
We thought we’d lost it for a while when it closed down during the height of the virus stuff, and it was closed for almost 18 months. But when it finally reopened last September, we were there as soon as we heard it was back.
After Yummy’s we drove over to the big HEB on Hwy 96, hoping to get our weekly HEB visit out of the way.
Now being the day before Easter, we expected them to be busy, but not overflowing parking lot busy. So we came in one side and went out the other, without stopping.
Another day, I guess, but not tomorrow either. All HEB’s are closed on Easter.
Coming back toward Santa Fe, we got a closeup look at the new Amazon warehouse at the corner of Hwy 96 and FM1266. The gates were open, and it looked finished, but there was not a Prime truck in site.
With this one, and the one down on I-45 in La Marque, we now have two Amazon warehouses in our vicinity.
As it is right now, I ordered something at 2pm today, it was shipped at 4:15, and I got it at 8pm. If it gets much faster, I’ll be getting stuff before I even order it.
On our way back toward home we made a storeroom visit and dropped off two heaters, two large bags with our winter blankets, and my Rollator, which I haven’t used since Branson back in December. It’s nice to have that stuff out of the way. At least until next Fall.
The onerous task I mentioned was defrosting our freezer. And it turned out to be easier than I had hoped.
The last time our freezer was defrosted was in 2017 when a repair place in Louisiana turned off the rig’s 12 volt system to work on it, and did not turn it back on when they were finished. And without 12 volts, the gas function of the refrigerator doesn’t, well, refrigerate.
So we picked up a rig with a refrigerator with a lot of spoiled food in it.
But this time things worked out better.
We got a large Styrofoam Crawfish Cooler from HEB, as well as a couple of blocks of dry ice that they also sell.
At about 2 cu.ft. the cooler was large enough to hold everything from the freezer, with a dry ice block on the bottom. underneath the food, and another block on top. I also put a remote-read thermometer in there too.
At about -100°, the dry ice kept the food frozen solid for more than 24 hours. And by cold, I mean very cold.
Yes, that’s -38°. And it was down to –46 with the lid closed. A lot better than using bags of regular ice. And a lot less messy.
After we removed all the food, and turned the fridge off, we repeatedly heated up Corning Ware casserole dishes full of water in the microwave, placed them in the freezer and closed the door. After we did this 5 or 6 times, I was able to start using a plastic chisel to carefully help the defrosting along.
All told, the total job only took about 4 hours, with most of that just waiting for the hot water to speed things along.
Finishing up, I wiped everything down to dry it, and then then turned the fridge back on. At that point the fridge temp had only climbed up to 40°, not a problem.
Since the stuff in the cooler was staying nice and cold, we decided to let the freezer cool back down, so we waited until this morning to restock it.
Hopefully that’s done for another few years.
With Brandi and her family up in OK with Lowell’s parents, Jan and I are just doing lunch at Saltgrass for our Easter. I figured they might be pretty busy, so I made a reservation for 2pm.
Mmmm! Steak!
Thought For The Day:
TOMORROW: A mystical land where 99% of all human productivity, motivation and achievement is stored.
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”.
.
