Our RV Adventures

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.

adsfadf

Today was Jan’s first day on a gate in a week or so. As it stands right now she’ll work today, Tuesday, and tomorrow, all on day shift.

But since I’m on night shift, that means that we’ve got to trade the truck back and forth. So when Jan came in this morning at 5:30am, I took the truck back home, until I came in at 5:30pm. Then Jan went home.

But what this all boils down to is that if Jan doesn’t work Thursday then she still has to come back to the gate and pick me up at 5:30am. Poor baby.

Tomorrow while I’m home during the day, I’m going to see if I’m stuck or not.

When we first got here a week and a half ago, I recounted how the owner of the first RV park we tried got mad because we left ruts in his grass sites. Well the park where we ended up also has grass sites, and since the ground was wet after all the rain we’ve had, we’ve sunk in some.

So tomorrow I’m going to put some large mats down in front of the rear duals and see if I can pull forward onto them. If so I should be OK until we leave on the 15th, even if we get more rain. If not, I’ll have to rethink the whole thing.

Of course it wouldn’t be the first time we’ve parked somewhere and then found ourselves stuck due to heavy rains before we left.

Back in 2008 we were at the fairgrounds in Sioux Falls, SD, and while it was dry when we got there, it rained for the last four days flooding the RV area. After trying to get unstuck myself I finally had to call our roadside assistance service to get me out. They send out a winch truck who was able to pull me forward about 30 feet until I was on the road. A real mess.

Two weeks from today is our last day on the gate. Then we’ll leave Cuero and make the 85 mile trip over to the Colorado River Thousand Trails in Columbus for two weeks so we can get our doctor stuff out of the way.

It’s going to be a busy time until we head west.

aadfadf