We had one of our best months ever with costs of only $2380.44and revenue of $3500, resulting in a net cash flow of $1119.56. For details on the individual categories please see below.
Campground Fees – $0 because we are work kamping.
Groceries – We spent a little more than last month, mainly because I was pushing to finish some recipes to get the recipe book completed. Still under budget month spending $558 or$42 less than budget. I did spend a little on alcohol this month but that was all types of wine for cooking. (Suuuuuure. – Lee)
Dining Out – We spent the bulk of this on our anniversary dinner, but then we did really well and didn’t eat out at fast food places (except I had Burger King once) which kept us under budget by $46.
Entertainment – No days off and not much to do around here, so we only spent $65.63. That was going to the movies and Lee bought a video game online. (After owning and playing Call of Duty since 2003 (!!!) for some reason when I sat down to play it once again in all the down time, it wouldn’t run at all. So I bought it again. I figured since I have enjoyed it for hundreds and hundreds 0f hours, they were entitled to another $19.99 – Lee)
Cell/Internet – We went over by 3 Gig or $45 extra in January, which we ended up paying in February. We have now signed up on AT&T unlimited plan and our new bill should be substantially less, which we are VERY excited about. Since this is one of our highest budget items, that reduction in spending is going to be significant.
Memberships – We paid for another year of Work Kamper News , which we use all the time to find jobs and is a no-brainer for us. We also renewed our Xscapers membership for one more year. Aside from our one trip to the Rose Bowl, we haven’t gotten much benefit from this membership. This year I am committed to really finding out if this has value for us. I want to check out their Job Board and see what’s on there, because that could definitely be helpful.
Truck Fuel – We spent $125 which was well under budget. We made the trip into San Antonio and then Lee made a few more trips to nearby towns and one other trip to San Antonio as well.
Insurance – Our truck insurance went up $20 a month to $153. Since I really like Nationwide and they covered us with no issue when we had accidental fuel contamination I am really hesitant to leave them, but I hope these $20 a year changes are not going to be the norm. We didn’t owe RV insurance this month because we paid last month when they had a billing error.
Home Furnishings – I have nothing in the budget for this category since the changes Lee made to the desk are a business expense. From a cash flow perspective the materials costs around $150. I am not planning on skipping business items always (Work Kamper membership is one for example), but in this case I did decide to leave it out since it is directly related to Lee’s editing. Like I said, I don’t do that often and when I do I will try and mention it.
So it was another good month. Lee was able to move $700 into our operating income savings account, which was really nice.
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I’ve been chewing on something the last couple of days and I am going to take a deep breath and dive right in here. I try to write about these jobs in as objective a way as possible and still give people the flavor of my personal experience. I try to step back a little and look at things from other people’s perspectives and since folks may be using these accounts to decide whether or not to try a job I really try and not let my personal feelings outside of the time period itself impact what I write. I’ll be the first to admit I come no where close to succeeding on that and recent feedback about my “negativity” has made me even more gun shy. Unfortunately that has put me in a position to simply account what is happening and that’s OK if personally I am feeling fine about things, but not so great when I am struggling. This job in particular is even more complicated by the fact that some people do this year round. Unlike other seasonal positions we have done, there are lots of people who gate guard most of the year and only take a couple of months off. Their perspective is of course very, very different and trying to describe this experience and keep in mind people do this full time has been extremely challenging.
Because gate guarding for a few months in the winter versus gate guarding year round would be a totally different thing. We often say we can do anything for short periods of time as long as it helps us get farther down the road, and to some extent that is true. So we judge positions in that context and lots of things that would be unpalatable for us in a full time job become of lesser importance. In this case I have been trying to straddle the fence between these two realities and just don’t feel like I am doing a very good job. Yes, the pure facts of the position relate to either group, but the emotions that come along with staying in one place for so long are very different. Staying away from the emotions is certainly safer…harder to upset people when you are just reporting the facts, but that’s really not what I do. So I am going to delve back into the emotions, at least for this post, and please understand I do it from the position of someone who was looking for short-term seasonal work.
The problem for me is, for the first time, this is position could actually work long-term. There is plenty of work out there, we are spending very little, and even putting some money in the bank, and the work itself is reasonable. Plus, there is the added bonus of minimal supervision which is something Lee really cares about. (I do not work or play well with others, especially if the others include management of any description. – Lee) And that’s important because Lee and I aren’t in lockstep over what we want this life to look like for us, never have been. Just because you decide as a couple to become full-time RVers, doesn’t mean that you are in complete agreement on what that looks like day to day. To the contrary, it’s more common that couples need to find some middle ground. The other positions we have done never really brought that up as an issue, because we both knew they were for a limited amount of time. But here we are, faced with a position we could theoretically do indefinitely, and I have to evaluate it from that perspective.
And, for me, there is so much about this job that I don’t like when I think about it from a long-term perspective. So here goes, and please keep in mind that for me the lifestyle was primarily about spending more time together and doing cool stuff together. Having a job with less stress was a distant third to the first two things, but I know for many people that ranks much higher and if that is your primary goal, this work could definitely be a good fit for you. So here’s what I don’t like, and again this is me and only looking at this long-term.
It’s 24/7. I hate never having a day off. I don’t care if the work is pretty slow or easy to do, I hate the feeling of never being off. Cumulatively it’s wearing me down and I just can’t see that changing for me. (I don’t mind it so much, because I know that eventually we’ll be done. If we were to do it for a longer period of time, I would ask about arranging a relief team to give us a week long break in the middle. – Lee)
I don’t like never being able to go anywhere. It’s not even not being able to do things together, there is little I can do myself. I really only have a few hours a day where I am “off” and there is nothing close by that I want to do. (I agree with this. Going to the grocery store is our excitement. – Lee)
Not crazy about the location. Being on the end of a dusty farm road in the middle of nowhere was novel at first, but long term that would wear me down. Yes, there is some beauty in the sunsets and the birds, but most of the time it is unrelenting truck traffic, clouds of dust, and of course the ever present sameness of our view of our gate. Keep in mind my number 2 reason for full timing was to see beautiful places and as someone who largely judges her life by the pictures she has taken this definitely doesn’t meet my requirements. (I beg to differ. Take a look at the awesome shots I took of the roadrunner. And this morning I got some great pics of vultures tearing up some roadkill. Seriously though, she’s right. Although I like remoteness, we can’t stargaze because of the floodlights, we can’t enjoy the peace and quiet, because of the nonstop generator and traffic noise, and we can’t walk around naked, because we don’t look that good naked. – Lee) If you are looking at this position as short-term and temporary, no big deal, but when you start to evaluate it as a long-term position it is. And yes, you get to move gates every couple of months, but from what I have seen they all pretty much look like this. I like to be a person who can find beauty in small things, but there are limits to what even my imagination can accomplish in this barren of a landscape. (Ya gotta look closer at that roadkill. Lots of color. – Lee)
Lastly, it’s kind of lonely. You would think that it would perfectly fit my number one goal because Lee and I are together all of the time, but we really aren’t emotionally together. (Seriously. We’re together ALL. THE. TIME. – Lee) We don’t sleep in the same bed, our intimate moments are few and far between, and usually one of us is inside and the other is outside throughout the day. We spent years existing in the same space and being isolated from each other, and I can definitely see how this could become a similar situation. After all, physical proximity is no guarantee of anything. It’s the moments we have created together that had made this lifestyle so special for us the last couple of years, and for the reasons above those moments have been few and far between in the last 47 days.
OK…well, I feel better. It always helps me when I find a way to express my feelings. The main thing to understand here is this job could either be short-term or long-term and depending on what you personally are looking for it might be a good gig. Lee, for example, definitely could see himself doing this for longer stretches of time and I am absolutely not ruling it out for the future. But I am really looking forward to when this stint will be done and we can get back on the road and that in and of itself is a telling statement. It depends on what you consider “on the road.” We have friends, for example, who were staying with family and are stuck in their pasture and can’t get out due to flooding. Technically they are on the road, but they can’t wait to get back out there. Some people consider being in the RV “on the road” regardless of where you are, others need to be actually moving, and still others think of it as something in between. It’s extremely personal and just because people’s opinions on this differ doesn’t mean they are disrespecting someone else’s choices. There is no one true way to full-time, just the way you choose to do it and that usually evolves for people over time. All I can say is right now, in this moment, for me, I am ready to move on and that’s not going to happen. (Like anything else, I think this would be better the second time around. Knowing what to expect makes almost anything easier. I suspect this is why people have more than one child. I also think that while we always say if we can’t stand something, we can leave, but until we do that, we haven’t done it. And I think it isn’t real, and so it’s not a real comfort. Sooner or later it’s going to happen, and when we realize that the world doesn’t come to an end, we’ll feel less trapped when we’re unhappy, and that will prevent being mildly unhappy from turning into very unhappy. – Lee)
It’s OK. I want to finish out our assignment and see this through until it finishes (or April 1st) whichever comes first. Because it’s temporary, and I can do anything for short periods, and I know we are headed to Vegas for a week, and then to beautiful Oregon for the entire summer. The thought of picking up another assignment or extending is not a pleasant one though. It’s just not. Doesn’t mean I would never do this again. Doesn’t mean I didn’t like the job or am ungrateful for the opportunity. Just means I am done doing this for right now. And that should be OK as long as it is OK with Lee. (If this assignment were to end today, I don’t know if I would want to take another one to get us to April 1st or not. On the one hand, we would get a nice long break, but on the other hand, in my head, the time from January 1 to April 1 was all about hunkering down and not spending money and trying to set as much as possible aside. The weather is nice, we have hookups, and we’re not doing too badly. But then again, we’re going to be working from May until September, and then from from late October through December, so maybe a little vacation wouldn’t be a bad idea. – Lee)
Because at the end of the day the only two people we need to make happy are ourselves. It’s important we don’t lose sight of that, because it is the number one reason we chose to do this in the first place. Oh and here’s Lee Vulture/Roadkill pictures. If this sort of thing grosses you out, you probably want to skip down to Day 49.
I photo-shopped out the roadkill on this one. Fair warning the next pics have it
Big group
I couldn’t figure out what it was at first
But once I saw the tail I knew it was an opossum.
Day 48
Yesterday was one of the slowest days we have had so far with only 32 entrances/exits and none for me after 9pm. It was nice and we both enjoyed it. We also were looking forward to another slow day because folks had told us the fracking shouldn’t start until next week. But Sunday morning gravel trucks started coming. They are finishing building the road from the gate to the fracking pond/water well and Lee had 127 gravel trucks between 8am and 6:30pm. He went back to the system we used when we first started (leaving the gate open and using a tick sheet) so it wasn’t that bad, but it did require someone to sit outside most of the day. Thankfully the heat broke and it was very pleasant outside, if a little dusty from the gravel trucks. Once again we didn’t mind the trucks it was that we had no idea they were coming. Neither did the guys from the construction company because we talk to them every day and they never mentioned it. Apparently there is a master schedule but only a few people see it and even the construction company (who have been with us from the beginning) only are notified about their particular tasks.
As a project manager I find this pretty interesting, because it seems to be a well run project, with minimal downtime, but I was always a fan of everyone being on the same page for maximum efficiency. Still I can’t argue with the results and it is clear someone is at the helm of this thing. After I took my shower I spelled Lee and sat aside and read a book. Since I didn’t have to get up every time, it was fine. Lee printed and scanned the final documents for our taxes so we can email it and we are both glad that is done. Also I finished the rough draft of the recipe book (except one last recipe) and Lee spent a couple of hours proofing it for me. I have made shrimp stir fry twice in the last week and can’t quite get the sauce right. I am going to try one more time tomorrow (with pork) and then punt and try to make Chicken Marsala. It’s a little frustrating being this close and having the last recipe not be quite right. But what are you going to do. No sense cutting corners at this point.
The trucks completely stopped at 7:30pm so I should have another quiet night, which is great. I got the feeling more gravel trucks would be back tomorrow, so we will see how long it takes them to finish that road. It was a nice quiet night and would have been perfect for watching the Oscars but for some reason the only TV station we can’t get out here is ABC. Since we are getting close to the end of the month we are keeping a sharp eye on the data so I guess I’ll just have to pick up the best clips through social media. Finally, here is last week’s report. As you can see there was a huge difference between Monday and Sunday, hence the shift in the tone of the blog posts. It really goes to show the extreme variation of workload with this job.
Day 49
Today was another nice slow day and there were no gravel trucks so hooray!! We had a chance to watch the best bits of the Oscars, and WOW, what an ending! I am so glad I stayed off social media all day, though, because it was a huge surprise when I saw it. I have to say even though I am not a huge fan of Warren Beatty (too pretty for me) I felt bad for him, and thought he handled the situation about as well as could be expected considering the circumstances. My absolute favorite part was when they brought the tour bus people in. That was absolutely charming and I loved how the folks in the front row handled that. If you didn’t get to see the Oscars or don’t care much you should find a clip of that. I’ve never seen anything quite like it on TV and it was a great moment that really showed we are all just people, no matter what we do for a living.
Oh, and finally I got the stir fry recipe right. Hooray! So that’s my last recipe, and I spent the evening putting that in, doing one more look and then sending it out to the folks who contributed recipes for their review. If you sent me a recipe and it wasn’t in the book, no worries, I have printed all of the recipes people have sent me and will be working my way through them for the next recipe book. This time it will be much easier because I know the format and what I am looking for. Next I need to go back and go through the steps to publish, which I did some preliminary research on prior to starting to use this program. That was way back in June so I honestly can’t remember all the specifics. I’m just super excited to have it almost finished and overall I feel really good about it.
Stir-fry Success!!!
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Well, unfortunately we did not get the break we were hoping for. It started out great, as I didn’t have any trucks past 9:30pm last night, and was even able to fall asleep on the couch at 1:30am, which was nice because I needed some extra sleep. Unfortunately, the next day for Lee was not so good. It certainly wasn’t at the levels of the rig move, but he had plenty of trucks, and almost all big ones. Several tankers of them were going back and forth between us and the new location down the road and when I finally asked why was told they were moving drilling fluid from the tanks at this site to the new location down the road. OK then. And again, I know you probably get tired of me saying this, it isn’t so much about the volume but being mentally prepared. No one mentioned that step to us, and Lee really could have used a light day. And the heat didn’t help. It was full sun, 91° today, and it felt much more hot than that.
I had a nice conversation with my mom today and explained it like you knew guests were coming over to your house, but weren’t quite sure when they were coming. So there is a level of mental alertness required that makes you tired after awhile. At least that’s been how we feel, but then again we are never off. So for us I think the 24/7 nature of this gig continues to be the biggest problem. It’s not so much never having a day off, we have done that before, but not ever having time off, unless you are asleep, is just tough. And the effect is cumulative. People do this year round and that must take quite the mental adjustment. Others will only work a 12 hour shift, but we haven’t been seeing many of those. And I know I keep saying the same things over and over, but honestly these feelings keep catching me by surprise.
And I know what that is about…it’s not knowing what’s going to happen from day to day. It doesn’t really help asking people either, because almost everyone really understands their little piece of the process and not anything else. There are separate people and companies who specializes in the different stages and even the company man is mostly conversant with just the drilling process. It really is not so bad once we make the mental adjustment, but we keep having these blips where things are not so great and every time it is because we are surprised. I suppose we could just assume the worst every single day, but I think we would have a hard time getting through the assignment if that was the case.
Thankfully, the traffic died down after 7:30pm and I at least had some quite time. I totally left Lee alone between 4pm and 8pm and spent the time mainly outside so he could have some down time as well.
Day 45
Today has been much slower with most of the traffic being people who are lost and are going to the wrong gate. Their instructions say the rig was moved to “farther down the road” but they thing they need to enter our gate and travel farther into the ranch, not go down the county road to the next ranch. Understandable mistake, but requires walking out and asking the question almost every time. A few folks are coming here. Right now they are finishing a fracking pond which is essentially an 800′ x 600′ hole, 20′ deep, with a liner in it. This pond will provide water for the fracking process. Temperatures unexpectedly reached their highest for us today at 99 degrees. Lee was wearing a coat in the morning but by 2:00pm it was hot. It is a dry heat though (9% humidity) so if you stayed out of the sun it’s not too bad, but just a few minutes out in it is hot!! I spent the time working on taxes and Lee kept chugging through the videos. He started a few weeks ago where he left off several years ago, which was 1996, and he’s currently working on 2004, so that’s awesome. And last night I got 20 more recipes formatted so I am halfway done!
Plus before I woke up Lee finally got some pictures of our resident roadrunner. He hangs out back behind the generator and takes off as soon as he sees us, so Lee had been trying to get some shots for days. He finally cooperated though and they are really great.
Posing
Lee thinks they look like velociraptors when they run
Playing hide and seek with Lee
Standing at attention with one leg up
The back view with crest feathers up
And my absolute favorite!!
Day 46
Another pretty slow day. Lee had a group of three gravel trucks that came through throughout the day. The same three trucks would come in in a convoy, stay about 20 minutes, and then leave for about an hour. The nice thing about the convoy is that he nly had to open and close the gate the once each time. This gravel is part of the cleanup process and is used to “pretty up” the area around the drill. It’s also used to fill what they call “mouse holes”, which are the vertical holes they drill to connect the horizontal pipes that are below ground. By the time I took over at 12:30pm I was told it was the last truck, which was great because although it wasn’t nearly as hot as yesterday, the wind was back. And the wind had lots of grit in it, which is my least favorite. Up until this point the windy was usually dusty and powdery, but today it had little chunks of rocks which were hitting my legs. (If you’ve ever been on a beach in really heavy wind, that’s what it feels like. – Lee)
Lee went to the library and to Walmart and I worked on taxes. I spent some time yesterday getting the papers organized and printed, but today was all about filling out the workbook. I use a company called Travel Tax which specializes in mobile workers. Because they do quite a bit of work for traveling nurses they are familiar with the tax codes in every state. They are also familiar with small business deductions and since they are a small company they are reasonably priced and very nice. The way it works is you go to their website, download their extensive workbook, fill it in and email it to them. Then they set up an appointment with you and it takes about an hour to review over the phone. I had a free consultation in 2014, used them in 2015, and I am using them again this year. I’ve been very happy with the results, although because they are a small company, communication back and forth can take a little while.
The big thing I did yesterday was categorize all of our expenses. We have our video business, RV repair business, consulting business, and I just added Camper Chronicles. All four of those are under the parent company of Open Road. I could file a separate Schedule C for each one, but since the dollar amounts are so low I group it under one for tax purposes, but I do have it broken out on my Income and Expense Statement. We use Quicken so it’s pretty easy at the end of the year to run a statement as long as all of the items are categorized correctly. My goal (aside from making money) is to show progression with the company overall. I never want to be in a position where the IRS calls my business a “hobby” and fights the deductions. So I was pleased that this year we had $13,212 in income and $4972 in expenses for a profit of $8,240. We made more than that, of course. Both Alaska and the Beet Harvest were jobs where taxes were taken out and I had three months of severance from my corporate job that carried over into 2016. But for this year it was enough to show growth. 2017 will again be a mix of 1099 jobs and W-2 jobs so we just need to make sure that enough of the work is 1099. Since gate guarding falls into that category that’s a good way to start off the year, although our other two jobs; camp hosting and Amazon will both have taxes taken out. We will have to see how much side work we pick up this year.
And let me be super clear here. I am in no way a tax expert. I am not even 100% sure I am headed in the right direction here, but it feels right, and to a certain extent I am relying on the tax advice of my accountant to help me stay out of trouble. In 2018, this will all change as I am absolutely planning on doing some consulting, but for right now we will just have to see how it all plays out. Overall the day was going well. I got the workbook done and then I saw a truck pulled across from our RV. Since it wasn’t facing the gate but someone got out I put my head out the window and said “Can I help you?” The guy, whose back was to me, then peed on the ground. He was facing away from me, but wow, was I mad. He then got into his truck and left. I desperately wanted to ask him his address with the thought I could return the favor and go pee in front of his house, but cooler heads prevailed and I went back inside. Lee was still gone and obviously the guy was rude. Craziness, especially since because there is plenty of place along this road to pull off AND there is a port-a-John right down the road at the entrance to the neighbor ranch where he was headed. Lee didn’t think it was that big of a deal when he got home because he was facing away from me. Men!
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I grew up in a small town in Ohio and I thought before we started this journey that I understood what growing up in a small town was. What I meant by that though was living in a small suburb that had ready access to a larger city. What I didn’t understand was what rural America was like. Since we went on the road two years ago we have seen many rural towns. The fortunate ones are located near a tourist attraction and draw big crowds and their dollars to the area. Others have some local industry that keeps the town going and it is clear that investments have been made in local infrastructure. Then there are those towns that have small populations, aren’t near much of anything and are pretty far from a major cities. I have spent a month or more in towns like Luck Wisconsin, Susanville California, and Glenallen Alaska but none of those prepared me for Dilley Texas.
Luck, Wisconsin
Susanville, California
Glennallen, Alaska
Glennallen, Alaska was the closest to this experience, but I chalked it up to being in Alaska and the extreme remoteness of the environment and the unique culture of the people who lived there. Likewise the Native American reservations we had stayed close to had cultural and historical reasons for what we saw. Again, I thought not representative of average rural America. And please don’t get me wrong, I am not picking on Dilley, Texas because they are certainly not alone. We have passed through many of these small towns on our travels, but they were a blink on our travels and we didn’t really see what living near one would be like. After being here for over a month though, I realized I was wrong about many things.
Now I believe that those small towns we have breezed through have enough in common that they are representative of Rural America. So let’s look at it. The towns usually have post offices, police stations, and some sort of fire department. They also often have..
Schools
Ball fields
and football stadiums
They also have a local super market with limited selection and high prices
Churches
A library (the corvette shows some people have money in town)
And usually even at least one car dealership
It seems like there is always at least one dollar store
a car wash
A local medical center
And some kind of feed store. ( I love those because they have really cool stuff in them)
Most of the businesses are struggling in these small towns but a few manage to hang on and even as you see going out of business signs you will also see signs for new store openings. And despite that there is always some sort of town center that shows identity and civic pride.
Local flower store
This one is going out of business
But this gym just opened up
The Wolves are the mascot of the local high school
The town “square” has a fire truck
And a watermelon statue showing how much the local area produced
Just seeing the main streets though doesn’t really show you much about a town though, and going through the side streets shows you what is really going on. When we are pulling the trailer we rarely leave the main roads, but when we are staying in a place we have more time to explore. Dilley has a few nice houses.
Along with a couple apartment complexes and some house that are moderate but obviously well cared for.
What’s different in Dilley from other places we have stayed (except perhaps Glennallen) is there is also so much of this.
The only drug store in town which is going out of business this month. The next closest one is 25 minutes away.
The local haircut place
The EMT “headquarters”
And the local daycare
And so many of these types of houses.
Multiple residents on the same lot is something we see pretty frequently
And please don’t get me wrong I in no way mean any disrespect, but it does make me think about how different a persons life would be who grew up in one of these small rural towns versus someone who grew up in a suburb or a major city. There is obviously a major division in this country right now and there are lots and lots of people who live like this all over this country. I really didn’t understand that before we went on the road, but we have seen so many rural towns especially in the south and out west and I feel like I somewhat get it now. And please understand I am not a social scientist. I am just a person who has thoughts about these sorts of things and I thought it was past time I wrote about it. So with the hope of in no way offending anyone, here I go.
Seeing places like this makes me think about how environment changes people. There has been quite a bit of research on the affects that growing up in inner city projects had on our young people, but what about growing up in one of these small towns. I wonder how achievable does the American Dream feel to folks who are raised this way. What is it like to be faced with such a stark contrast between the have and have nots on a daily basis? Does this type of environment lead to extremes of either extreme self-reliance or extreme dependency? What does it do to a town over time when it’s best and brightest usually have to move away to find opportunity? And I often wonder for the Millennials at least if the internet is an equalizer.
Sure these folks can get in their cars and drive to San Antonio which is a couple of hours away, but how often do they really do that. When I was a kid we went in Columbus somewhat frequently for shopping or events. If you live in a big city you have access to public transportation and museums and libraries. Not that inner city kids would necessarily go. There are invisible barriers that are just as strong as physical ones, but out here these kids rely 100% on grownups to get them to other places. And I can tell you from experience living out here on a budget you think long and hard before you spend the gas money to make those trips.
So lets assume that kids rarely get to go into the cities. That means day after day they are filled with these images. Lots of people say “I grew up poor but didn’t know it”, but I grew up poor and knew it. I literally lived on the wrong side of the railroad tracks between the ages of 1 and 5. Even when we moved to the right side of the tracks we were still in the poorer sections of our small tow. The difference was I went to school with kids and had family who lived in a more middle class environment. The houses were small, but they were usually neat as a pin and the inside and outsides were treated with care. I got to see the other side and as my parents pursued the American Dream we progressively moved into nicer apartment housing. I was 13 when we bought our first home and still remember what a big deal that was and since it was in a nice middle class neighborhood I never lived in a home like one of these. I knew houses like this existed of course, but they were tucked away on side streets and few and far between.
In these rural towns many of these homes are front a center. There is no “bad section” of town, but rather a few pockets of houses that are more well cared for. I don’t remember anyone having fences when I was growing up, but here almost every house seems to have a fence, and the Beware of Dog and No Trespassing signs send a clear message to keep away. I don’t know specifically what kind of impact all of that has on a person, but I do believe it has some impact, it certainly does on us. The picture in our mind of this country was lots of beautiful national parks interspersed with quaint little towns. Certainly we have seen some of that, but much, much more of places like Dilley Texas. There is more trash than we though there would be, more poverty. and as I said before more division between the haves and the have nots. And the “Dilley, Texas experience” is so far away from places like New York City, Chicago, or Boston that it might as well be on another planet.
Or maybe not. When you look a little closer people still love their kids, they definitely love sports, and there was plenty of evidence that people’s cars matter to them. These folks have to eat, sleep, pay taxes, go to the grocery store, and get hair cut. The surroundings are just different. Does it really matter if you go to a small Baptist church versus a huge mega church, at its core maybe not. Do the same general desires drive people to hang out with friends at the local bar versus going to some fancy night club, I think so. Are our similarities greater than our differences, I hope so. Two years ago my answer to that would have be an unequivocal yes. After seeing what we have seen I am not so sure of that anymore. I will say though that one thing that we see everywhere we go that gives me hope is the American Flag. It may mean slightly different things to different people, but it stands for something we can all believe in.
Although the crazy high levels of traffic stopped around 6:40pm there continued to be what I consider medium heavy regular levels of traffic. And around 9pm the storm came in. There was wind, rain, thunder, and lightning and pretty quickly I opened half the gate and watched from inside. Personally I draw the line on opening a metal gate when there is lightning, but I did make a note of opening the gate and why and the time period impacted on our daily log. Anyway, I brought as much stuff inside as I could and left the rest under our awning. Thankfully the wind was coming from the backside of the rig, so there was a little bit of wind protection. It had been humid all night, but I was still surprised by how fast the storm came. It ended up being one of the worst storms we’ve been in so far and when the couple of trucks came I just popped out my head and waved them through.
At one point I thought I should turn off the computer because we might lose power but then I remembered we were on a generator. I guess the generator could get struck by lightning but in that case our surge protector would hopefully save us. Lee managed to sleep through it. Surprising because we were shaking and the thunder and lightning cracks were pretty loud. He had a long day though and was pretty tired. Me too and for the first time in a while I didn’t do anything with the recipe book. Didn’t cook dinner or even work on the page proofing, just looked at some picture I had taken earlier in the day and watched some TV.
Around 11pm the lightning was pretty far off in the distance so I went ahead and shut the gate. I got a couple of trucks after that and switched to my hiking boots because things were a bit muddy. It continued to rain on and off a bit but nothing like before and thankfully traffic slowed way down as well. As of midnight we had gotten 203 trucks which is the busiest day we have had in a while. Still looking back over my records we have had days that were close to this busy in the past but they didn’t feel anything like this. Again I have to contribute that to being required to open and shut the gate every time, so if you decide to ever try this out I would absolutely ask that question. I know we will.
Another storm started up around midnight and this time I left the gate open until 3am. There was less wind, but lots of lightning and I just wasn’t willing to risk it. The rain finally stopped right around the time Lee woke up and I gratefully went to bed. He said he didn’t sleep well because of the wind and thunder, but I was out like a light. When I woke up at 11:30am, I saw it was sunny outside but the ground was pretty soggy. I asked Lee how his morning had gone and so far he had done 120 trucks. He was in much better spirits though because he had solved a couple of problems. By opening the gate door inward, trucks were able to make the turn much easier and since many license plates are totally covered with mud he learned we can search on the truck number (for the semi’s at least). He was actually trying to wipe off license plates when one truck driver passed that piece of information along and it makes things so much easier. Wish we would have known that little tidbit from the beginning.
He also had some excitement during the morning when a truck trailer carrying one of the modular offices got stuck in the mud. For the 30 minutes it was stuck he was directing traffic in, and directing traffic down to the ranch next door and managed to keep things going. Finally they sent down a tractor to pull the guy out, but Lee seemed pretty pleased by how he handled that..as well he should. My first question? Did you take any pictures? His answer yes of course, I live my life for your blog. There may have been some sarcasm in that, but hey, I got both pictures and this little video. As you can see that had to make really wide turns to avoid the mud puddle and one didn’t make it.
By the time I was covering for lunch it wasn’t that bad, but around the gate are was still pretty slippery. I changed into my hiking shoes and made sure I stepped VERY carefully when crossing the gate. One of the downsides to opening the gate inward is you have to cross the grate to grab it to close it again, but since it helps the truck drivers from having to do a three-point turn it is definitely the right thing to do.
One interesting thing that happened while I was covering for Lee was one of my favorite guys stopped and said he couldn’t believe they were making us log trucks in and out on rig move day. We said we weren’t told any differently, but the real problem was opening and shutting the gate. He started to say, “Well the ranch owner…” but I immediately said nope, not the ranch owner but a VP at the oil company. Our ranch owner doesn’t care during the daytime, but this is coming from the executive level. The look on his face was interesting, so here is my interpretation. I think, and this is totally speculation, that these mandates happen on occasion but many foremen ignore them or selectively suspend those rules. I think our original company man would have done just that if he was still here, but our new company man (who is much younger) is a stickler for the rules. I don’t blame him for that, by the way, he has a job to do and I know from personal experience sometimes it’s safer to just follow the rules as written. That being said, it does show how much your relationship with the company man can impact the job conditions. We don’t have a bad relationship with him, but it’s nowhere near the level of communication we built with the original person we were dealing with. In any event it’s just a couple more days and it’s definitely bearable at this point. It helps quite a bit that the weather is reasonable and it’s not super windy!
I took over for Lee at 3pm and from 3pm -6:15pm I had 62 trucks. That’s roughly 20 an hour and the pace was pretty intense. It was ok when 3-4 would come through at the same time, but mostly it was a truck, close the gate, sit down, and then another truck. Tiring. I don’t know how Lee did it for 7 hours straight today before I woke up. Around 6:30pm one of the bosses told me that they hoped they would be finished with the rig move around noon tomorrow. Since we will be on our third day of a supposedly 1-1/2 day job that’s kind of a bummer, but it was nice to get some news. And most of the guys were really nice today. Several stopped and said hi, and one brought me an ice cream cone from Dairy Queen which was incredibly sweet. And I think those guys definitely had the worst of it. Their trucks would come back from the round trip just covered in mud, at least over here it has been somewhat dry. For the first time in a long time Lee and I actually got into a small argument of sorts today. I think we are both just tired and needed to go to separate corners for a while…it happens.
Around 7:30pm a huge group of 9 trucks came out all together and headed to the other site, and after that traffic did slow down. I am really hoping for a super slow night and Lee went to bed at 8pm. Too tired to even try to watch Walking Dead. It’s weird how tired this can make you. Even though it’s not physically demanding, the need to be “on alert” constantly and the up/down and in/out of the rig does add up on a busy day. My shoulders are pretty stiff, so I am going to break out the heating pad and soak some of it up. As of 8:30pm we did 234 trucks, which is plenty. Since this is a new work week those complete numbers will be on next week’s report, but for right now here are the numbers from last week.
Day 43
I woke up and the rig move was almost done. We had also gotten our water and a new sensor set which seems to false less often. Plus it comes with a light flashing only feature which is awesome because that noise really gets on my nerves sometimes. By 1pm the last move trucks had left and the only folks on site are the well guys who are pretty awesome. We are hearing it might be as long as a week of cleanup until the fracking begins, which would be awesome as we are both excited about having a little break. Anyways, here are the numbers from the last few days.
Sunday – 219 Entrances/Exits
Monday – 249 Entrances/Exits
Tuesday – 63 Entrances/Exits
Total – 531 Entrances and Exits
That’s a lot of trucks. The timing is pretty great because in order to finish the recipe book I really need some time. Lee went to the library to upload some videos this morning so after writing this I am going to really focus. What’s left? I need to finish one more recipe, and I am committed to getting a good shrimp stir-fry recipe! I have probably made 8 different recipes so far and none of them are quite right, so I found an authentic Chinese cookbook at a second-hand store and I am going to try to use those sauce recipes and then tweak them for ingredients people can actually get. Wish me luck!
I also need to get some pictures of the kitchen and that means it needs a good cleaning!! Since the dust accumulation is pretty crazy at this point (layer of dust on the toaster for heavens sakes) that alone could take a while. No photoshop tricks because I want to show what an actual used RV kitchen looks like. That being said I am going to show it clean. And yes Lee before you make a comment sometimes it is super clean. Usually when we have people over, but hey that counts! It’s true I am a messy cook and the more complicated the recipe the messier I am. It’s part of my creative process so don’t judge 🙂
And finally I need to proof read all 80 recipe pages. That’s going to be a chore as each page needs reviewed and the layouts need adjusted. The template does come with a standard layout but the recipes all have different amounts of ingredients and steps so each page layout needs tweaked so it is centered on the page. Not really my idea of fun, but it needs to be done so I might as well get to it. Something like that would be very difficult for me to do with constant interruptions so I am really looking forward to some long stretches between cars. So I have the new desktop rolled out and the monitor pulled forward. I am going to get into the zone while Lee is gone!
I had just settled in and was formatting the first recipe when I got a text from our neighbor down the road. There is an uncontrolled fire about 14 miles southwest of where we are. I texted Lee who said he saw the smoke when he went into town but thankfully it is on the other side of the interstate. It’s pretty windy today though and things have dried out pretty quick so it’s good for all of us to keep an eye on. That’s one of my favorite parts about this gate guarding community is folks look out for each other. After that though I settled in and tried to learn the interface. It does a lot of things which is good and bad, because you have options but you have to handle it very delicately. It took me about 2 hours to format the first 10 recipes but a chunk of that was learning curve. Hopefully that will be a little quicker as I go along.
And Lee and I had a great night. We watched two-hour long TV shows and only had to get up once during each. Way better than the 6 times the other night. And we sat aside a little bit and watched the bats. I’ve been meaning to mention this but keep forgetting about it because I can’t take pictures but at night we have several bats that fly all around our RV and eat some pretty big moths that are attracted to the spotlights. Normally this would freak me out, but because the lights are above us and the bats stay above the roof of the RV and we can see them swooping but they never come close. They are really fast and acrobatic, and it’s become some of our entertainment to watch them for a while. So I start my days with vultures and end with bats and am finding beauty in both. Texas is definitely having an impact on me!
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We found out yesterday (from our neighbor at the ranch next door) that our drilling rig will be leaving here Sunday and Monday. When I asked what came next, I was told that for us it would be the fracking stage. We have seen an increase in new traffic over the last few days. Lots of salespeople, lots of new vehicles to put into the system, but for whatever reason we both seem to be settling into the new traffic program. I think it’s just a big shock when you jump from 70 trucks a day to 120, and since there is never any notice, it’s hard to be mentally prepared for it. But then the higher volume becomes the new norm and you simply adjust your behavior accordingly. For me that involves reading more books and staying outside more. For some reason I get more annoyed when I am doing something electronic and definitely it’s worse when you have to go from inside to outside. The temperature is absolutely cooperating with this as well, as the wind has died down and temps are in the 60’s and 70’s.
I was also pretty entertained by lots of bird activity across the street. Lee said he saw an ATV over there so maybe they dropped some more carcasses but there were some turkey vultures going nuts in that area. They were a bit camera shy, but I did get a couple of good pics and it was a nice thing to look at while I was waiting on trucks. I know people have a bias against certain carrion eaters, but when they were flying I thought they were quite beautiful. Took around 100 pictures so I did get a few good shots and my first ever of a turkey vulture. I always love getting new birds. Plus you gotta love digital cameras. I am old enough to remember film, when you just couldn’t afford to take that many shots.
Loved the beautiful white wings
Before you judge mentally remove the red head and replace with a white fuzzy head. Not that dissimilar from the pictures we took of bald eagles this summer.
Really beautiful in flight
I walked over and grabbed a couple of shots when they were on the ground
But they quickly moved into the trees when they saw me. This one was making a really pretty cooing noise
This Crested Caracara was pushed further back from the gate area.
Like I said quite a bit going on. I saw the Turkey Vultures, Crested Caracara, and a couple Harris Hawks in the same general area. The Turkey Vultures definitely had the size advantage so they were claiming the closest trees, but the others were hovering close by. And yes it is kind of gross, but they do perform an essential function. I personally appreciate it because the rotting flesh smell is almost totally gone from over there. So whatever they are doing it is working.
It’s funny I said we were getting used to the busier pace because of course as soon as I said that things slowed way down. Lee ran a report and I only had 4 trucks between 9pm and 4am last night. It does feel a bit like the calm before the storm though, so I’m interested to see what tomorrow will bring. Since they are moving the rig to the ranch next door we are not sure what that will do to our end date. Lee and I put together a rough travel plan today that will take us from here to Vegas to Oregon to Indiana, Columbus, Keene, and then to South Carolina. There is lots of ambiguity in the schedule, which would have driven me nuts in the past, but it isn’t bothering me at all now. If we have extra time we know where we want to spend it, and if not then that’s OK too.
Quick Update: I am glad we started planning because I talked to the company man this evening and he said all three wells here are drilled. That’s how out of the loop I am, I thought they would be doing them start to finish sequentially. I guess it makes more sense to drill all three at the same time, so the next steps are a week for cleaning up, 1-1/2 weeks of fracking, then another 4-5 days cleanup then done. That puts us out earlier than expected, but those are also very rough estimates and anything could happen. On the one hand we could use the extra money if it goes long, but on the other hand we haven’t had any time off to speak of since last April. We could use a break. Willing to play it out however it works for us. Even if this one ends the ranch owner does have another ranch and they could send us to that location. Like I said, either way is fine but want to be prepared for any eventuality, which means taxes and recipe book are 100% the priority for the next three weeks.
Day 41
Well the busy is definitely here. Lee took over 100 trucks between 4am and noon when I woke up, and he looks a little harried. It’s not just that most are big trucks, but also that some are turning right to go to the ranch down the street and others are turning left. Plus it’s super dusty today and in the short time I was covering for him while he ate lunch, I got clouds of dust in the face several times. Most drivers try to slow down as they near the gate, which helps, but some sort of slam on the breaks right before the gate and of course a cloud of dust ensues. We are hearing rain tomorrow, which I am on the fence about because it would help with the dust but not sure I want to try this out if it’s a mud ball. Maybe we will get lucky and just get enough rain to help with the dust but not enough for mud.
I offered to give Lee extra time for lunch, but he was committed to barreling through, so I decided to leave for a bit. There is a small food place that has inexpensive sandwiches down at the local truck stop that everyone says is really good so wanted to try that out. (Turns out they close at 2pm on Sundays and I just missed it so I got Burger King instead). Plus I wanted to get some pictures of Dilley and since we need bread and I have to go to town anyway I thought why not now. I made great progress on the recipe book last night and finished the Income/ Expense section of the taxes so I am going to give myself a little treat. It’s funny though when being in a place is open ended you tend not to do things because there is always another day. As soon as you know things might end soon there is a flurry of activity. That is one of the downsides of staying in one place for too long, it can lead to complacency. When we are traveling more frequently we find we make the most of every day.
Picked up these yummy cupcakes for 50 cents a piece to support the local cheer leading group
When I came back Lee was even more cranky. He was up to 150 trucks and felt like he hadn’t had more than a few minutes between trucks all day. And before I go further, yes, we knew this was coming, but knowing a thing and being mentally prepared for it are two different things. We fully realize there are lots of ifs in this equation. If it was a twelve hour shift and we had some time off, if we were getting paid more money, if our need was greater and all factors that could change the way we feel. But right this second at least, it’s simply not worth it. Hopefully this is a blip and we can go back to a more sedate pace, but that’s not for sure. We definitely are committed to seeing this assignment through in any event and then making our evaluation, but for us at least there is a cumulative effect. I’m going to stop now and go relieve him early. It’s a little after 3pm and he usually ends at 4pm but I think he’s had enough. I’ll let you know how my night goes.
So it’s been an hour and it’s been super busy. Trucks every 3-5 minutes and I am covered in dust. I have been sitting out there trying to think about what this is so different than the first few days when the volume was about the same and I figured it out. Then we didn’t have to open or close the gate, or log trucks in, just count them. Most of these are in the database thankfully, but that takes more time. We had a water truck that was coming through throughout the day when they were building the road and that helped with the dust. Now not only are we getting our dust but also lots from the main road where the increased traffic going to the other gate. Also this time people are going both left and right and the folks turning right are making a really tight turn which has brought them very close to hitting the gate several times. And of course the gate. Early on it was open constantly so there was minimal getting up and down. Now we open and shut it between almost every truck (unless we see one on the road coming towards us) so for me it’s read a couple pages of my book, get up, get a face full of dust opening the gate, log them in/out while they are pulling through, shut the gate, sit down start reading and repeat.
Almost all big trucks taking equipment to the other ranch and then coming back empty
A few of these, not sure what they are for
The trucks had a tight turn to make that left
That cloud of dust comes right up to the date and gets me almost every time
On the plus side, they completely removed that loud pump and the hose so hopefully I will never have to listen to that again!! It was funny though because when the guy came to get the water hose, it was buried so deep across the road he had to pull out a hand saw and cut it. Cracked me up. Plus he was a cutie and very nice. Called me ma’am a lot. Alright I am going to leave this here, and get back outside. At 6:20pm they said they were done for the day!! Hallelujah. They will be back tomorrow though and we will see what that brings.
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Last night was nice and slow, which was good, because it got down to 40 degrees. It actually felt warmer than the night before though because the wind finally died down. After doing some recipe book work I watched some TV and finished up this mini-series I have been watching Leah Remini Scientology and the Aftermath. I only started watching this because I am a fan of hers and think she is a straight shooter, but I ended up being really impacted by what I saw. If you haven’t seen it, I definitely recommend it. Judge for yourself, but I think what they are doing is important. On the lighter side, I have also been watching an older show called Fringe. People had recommended it to me, so I decided to try it and now I am hooked. There are 5 seasons, so it’s a great way to kill some time in the early mornings. If you like science fiction set in a modern day setting, I really recommend this show as well.
Lee has been non-stop all day (well, with stops to open and close the gate) on one long compilation video of a diving trip we took with his parents and our kids to Anthony’s Key Resort in 2001. Most of the videos he’s been editing have minimal edits, just to remove stretches where nothing is happening, or particularly bad camera work, but he felt inspired by the diving video. So he took about 20 hours of underwater footage shot by himself and his step-dad, and made a highlights reel with Pirates of the Caribbean music as part of the sound track. When he’s doing commercial work he can’t use copyrighted material without getting legal clearances, but since this is only for family he can, and it adds some fun to all the underwater stuff, which didn’t have sound anyway. When he’s doing something creative he really gets in the zone and it’s like there is a bubble around him. That’s not the best scenario in such a small space, but I try to give him as much space as I can when he is feeling creative.
Watching the video made me remember the trip and I briefly mentioned I would like to go again. He looked at me kind of strangely and said “You can’t really plan a $5,000 vacation when you are only making $125 a day”. OK, good point. For a moment it bummed me out, but then I remembered that we rarely did things like that. We took some nice vacations with the kids (Grand Canyon, Washington DC, Prince Edward Island, and Honduras), but those were almost always in conjunction with parents or friends. The entire time we were married, as a couple we took one vacation to Prince Edward Island, twice scuba diving to Honduras, once to Florida,and twice to Vegas. Since we didn’t live near our family, we had to combine our vacations with our parents having the kids in another state so it was always pretty complicated. We took separate vacations a few times. I went to Hawaii with my mom and Lee did some traveling out west, but together there were relatively few instances. We saw more traveling for work and extending our schedules through some weekends, and both of us got to see some pretty cool stuff that way, but never together.
It wasn’t just the kid thing though. Vacations are expensive and when you only have a limited amount of time to take them, there is quite a bit of pressure to get them right. You lose a day to travel, then a frenzy of activity (Lee used to vacation like it was an Olympic sport), then travel day home and a day to recuperate. The only time I can ever remember really relaxing on a vacation was when my mom, sister, and I went on a cruise together. Don’t get me wrong, the other vacations were enjoyable experiences, but the combination of being a mom on vacation, working on vacations, and one notable case where Lee got a compression fracture to his back on vacation rarely added up to stress-free time.
And I think it’s important to mention that, because even in situations like these where we are experiencing a long stretch of time with nothing “fun” happening, we know this job will end. No, this lifestyle is not a vacation, but it has more pure “vacation moments” than my old life ever had. Part of that of course is we have changed. It’s just us now, which makes it easier and neither of us feel that we have to cram every experience into every moment. This was a major change for Lee in particular and certainly didn’t happen overnight, but after 2+ years on the road we can definitely savor the moments. If nothing else, watching these videos he’s making has helped me remember that. I never had much of a poker face and watching these videos reminds me of how things used to be. That’s important, because I (like most people) tend to romanticize the past and it’s easy just to remember the highlight reel. That doesn’t mean I don’t want to go back and scuba dive again. I would love to go especially now that we have changed our mindset on how we explore the world. (My parents used to go Anthony’s Keyat least once a year, for probably twenty years, and we went with them three times. Once with the kids, again without the kids, and that second time was when I fractured my back. Buy me a slice of pie and ask me about it, it’s a great story. Anthony’s Key is really one of the best kept diving secrets in the world, and I’d love to go back again, especially with my parents. It’s not as much as $5,000, the prices are actually pretty reasonable, considering it’s all inclusive and includes a TON of diving. Actually, now that I’m writing this I see on their website that for 2017 they’re offering a two-for-one promotion that includes the room, three meals a day (their food is spectacular, and plentiful), 3 dives a day for the week, 2 night dives, all for $1400 per couple. And you can get a direct flight to Roatan out of Miami for about $600. Hmmmm. I might not be in a big hurry to spend $5000 on a vacation, but I would definitely spend $2500 for a week at Anthony’s Key. Anyway, if you dive, this is the place to go, hands down. If you don’t dive, research it carefully. It’s a very nice place, but it caters to divers, so you might be bored. If you do go, please tell them Lee & Tracy said “Hi!” – Lee)
Traffic has been pretty steady and I did ask one of the regular drivers what phase we are in. They are still drilling, and the big trucks are either bringing in drill bits or taking away the dirt and oil mixture they are uncovering. Frakking is the next phase, and we are not there yet, but we are seeing more salespeople coming in and out so maybe that will be soon. The pump out for our tank was a day late this week (they had a truck break down) so it required some conservation towards the end as both the portable tank and our grey tank was full. I opened the grey tank once he started sucking the stuff out so we were totally empty. He asked me how many extra gallons I had put in, which I think was kind of silly since they were late, but what are you going to do? He also mentioned that the guy at his last stop had come out of his RV and started yelling at him because he had parked to close to his antenna. Honestly this guys job is crappy enough (no pun intended) I don’t think he deserves to get yelled at.
Things did slow down a little so we finally tried to watch Walking Dead tonight, but unfortunately I had to get up for trucks 6 times in the 42 minutes of the show. One of the problems with scheduling something is you really never know when traffic will come, and tonight unfortunately the time we selected was somewhat busy. I still enjoyed the show, but it definitely detracts from the experience and although I know that’s the job it’s still a bummer. I also worked on the recipe book and discovered quite a bit about fonts. I am using a program called Book Wright and it has been very helpful because it shows errors as you are putting together your book. I vaguely knew that different tupes of fonts were better for ebooks than printed books but I did not know some fonts are copyrighted and others were not. The list you are given shows all available fonts and unfortunately I chose Garamond for the recipe names and then found out tonight that is a copyrighted font. Go figure. So I went through and changed the font on all the titles. Kind of a pain, but better than paying royalties on a font. And I chose Arvo in case you are interested which seemed easy to read yet slightly whimsical. Font selection is definitely more art than a science. Where is Brick from The Middle when you need him???
Day 39
Before I start on today I wanted to mention there had been a lot of discussion in the community about a very cheap rural data plan with AT&T. Lee and I discussed it but when he called this morning they had already closed the loophole. Apparently AT&T sent a memo out and only people with a home address in one of a few select rural zip codes is now eligible. A couple people we know got in on the deal before it was too late and since that would have saved us $200 a month we are a bit bummed. Still, I really think it’s for the best. Personally I am not a huge fan of these back door deals because you never know when they will be yanked and since we are grandfathered in on a plan at least we know we are in good shape. That’s just us though. Lots of people successfully get creative in that area, and good for them. It’s just never worked out well for us in the past. I am holding out hope that continued pressure from the Millennials will solve this problem once and for all. Verizon has taken a step in that direction and given time I think the market pressure will resolve the issue. In the meantime we will just keep doing what we are doing.
OK, back to the day. I woke up a little depressed this morning. I start to get “hitch itch” whenever we are in a place for this length of time and sometime it bums me out. So I had a cup of coffee and sat down to read our blog comments and what I saw really changed my morning. First, we heard from a couple we had met at the last RV-Dreams rally we attended. Bert and Kat have been on the road for the last 8 months and just posted their financials to date. They have done a fantastic job of controlling costs and they have volunteered in 15 of the last 17 states they have been in. Volunteering on the road is something most people want to do, but it can be complicated, so I was really interested to see that. Plus they are a great couple and I was so happy to hear from them and have a way to follow what they are doing. If you want to check out their financial summary check here.
Then I read from Don about a recent post by Wheeling It comparing 10 couples. That sounded interesting so I went and checked it out. Nina did an excellent job of breaking everything down and showing comparisons between long time full-timers and there is quite a bit of variation, which I think is a realistic view. There are so many factors that go into an individual budget it’s not surprising that the numbers vary so much. Anyway, I was interested, and if you are in research mode I definitely recommend you check it out. You can see it here.
OK cool. The coffee was kicking in, I was enjoying myself, and then I got a comment from “Silver” which said, “It is time that you quit acting like a couple of kids that don’t get there way.” My mental response, which occurred in rapid succession, was the following:
Wow…alrighty then
There may be some truth in that
Screw you
That all happened in milliseconds, so now that I had had a little time to think it through let me break it down a little.
I am really lucky that almost all of my comments are positive. Seriously, I have only had a handful that were on the rough side and usually even those come from a place where the person is trying to help. But since I was barely awake and had little coffee I was not mentally prepared for this one. Stung a little.
Which led me to thinking there was some truth in it. And to be fair there probably is. I am self aware enough to realize that words only have power when they strike a nerve, so obviously a nerve was struck. So I thought about it a little. First off, you have to take the “kids” part our of it, I mean seriously I am 50 years old, but because we are younger than many people in the lifestyle we do get that sometimes. Since it’s almost always from a good place I try to ignore that mostly, plus it isn’t the worst thing in the world to be a kid. The second part about not getting our own way…well that is true. This is absolutely not what we envisioned when we started this. In some ways it is better, in others it is worse, but sitting here at this dusty gate day after day was certainly not our dream picture when we first started out. I suppose that some people get into this lifestyle with a very realistic picture of what they are getting into, but we were new to all of it and just didn’t know what we didn’t know. There was also a certain amount of self-delusion as well in the beginning. I will only speak for us, but I think a certain amount of that is necessary to make a change this big.
Which leads me to the screw you. First off, when folks make comments like this it would be nice to have some idea of who they are. If you are going to offer judgement on my life then I need to know something about you to put that judgement into context. Without that knowledge I am sort of forced to review the comment in a vacuum and it’s hard not to just dismiss the negative out of hand. But I really try not to do that, because I believe wisdom comes from unexpected places, so I try to at least think about it. So the screw you in this case is really based on the statement in conjunction with our situation. And as these comments become more frequent as we pick up more readers, it’s probably about time I go on record how I feel about comments like this.
We voluntarily changed our lives. We weren’t in dire financial straits and this isn’t the result of a series of bad decisions. We chose to do it then and every day we stay on the road continues to be a choice. I started writing about it mainly because I wanted to pay it forward, and since the best responses have come from my most honest blog posts that’s where I try to live. It’s not always easy, and balancing between being honest and being too negative is tough. Mainly because what I am interested in exploring usually involves some conflict, either internal or external. That being said I love that this feels like a conversation. I love that people reach out to me, publicly or privately, I can’t even tell you how much that means to me. Even though the medium is the internet it feels much more personal than that to me. So here is what I would say to Silver if they said something like this to me in person. “You do know that I don’t get paid for this right? I made $369 last year, and so far this year I have made $99. As much as I appreciate the support, balance that against the hundreds of hours I spend and obviously this is a labor of love. You might say since I am am putting it out there, you get to judge. That’s fair and part of the reason I do this. You get to judge how something like this would impact your life. Think about what you would do in a similar situation. What you shouldn’t do is judge me.”
But hey, I get it. I’ve been guilty of it many times myself. I’ve been mean spirited and felt superior. I have looked at others’ bad choices or bad luck and thought “I would never have done that”. We are all human and we all fall prey to it. What I rarely do is communicate those emotions to the people I am feeling them about. It has happened on occasion and every time I do I regret it. I regret it because it says so much more about me than them. I regret it because there is ALWAYS some piece of information that I am not privy to that changes my perspective. I regret it because I consider myself a Christian and that behavior is the antithesis of my Christian principles. Mostly I regret it because it doesn’t help the person at all. It puts them in a position where their only response is to say “Screw you”, and rightly so. If your intention was to have me think about something or to talk about something, you might want to find a better way to communicate that. If you are just throwing stones, then I would really like to see the glass house you are living in. And for the record, saying it through the internet doesn’t change any of that. All that being said I will say Silver that this is not all about you. I’ve been sitting on this mini-rant for a while and unfortunately your comment brought it out of me. I am sure you are a perfectly nice person and your heart was in the right place. And I do appreciate your reading and caring enough about what I wrote to try and say something about it. Take care.
(I’ll go ahead and throw my perspective in here as well, since I am one of the kids in question. The whole point of the blog is to maybe help someone out there who is where we were when we first started thinking making this decision. For both of us, a blog like this one would have helped us avoid some moments of weapons-grade crazy.
I mostly agree with everything Trace has said, although I think she’s letting it bother her more than it should. My immediate reaction to comments like that is usually annoyance, and is usually followed quickly with wondering if maybe I’m taking it the wrong way. It’s impossible to tell with crazy internet people, isn’t it? But in this particular case my first thought was “Who the hell likes NOT getting their way???” Don’t most of us like to have things the way we want them? Why on earth would anyone be OK with not getting their way. assuming they have a choice? Didn’t I read somewhere once that I was endowed by my Creator with the right to pursue happiness? Am I to assume that Silver, and his/her ilk are suggesting that I should resign myself to a life of misery and despair and not to seek to improve my lot in life? If so, I’m pretty suspicious of that mentality. After all, what does it matter to them? I’m a lot happier than people think, even though I’m almost always dissatisfied by everything, because (and here’s what I think the secret to happiness is) just about anything anyone ever came up with anywhere at any time was due to a level of dissatisfaction high enough that they decided to do something. Silver might consider that the next time he/she is outside when it starts to rain and reaches for an umbrella. Also, be nice to my wife or I’ll bop you right on the nose, unless you’re a female, in which case I shall make disparaging comments about your shoes. – Lee)
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Thanks for everyone who reached out. I am feeling OK. My knee is still a little sore, but not too bad so I’m good to go. Thankfully it was pretty slow last night because it stayed windy, but I do have to shut the gate at night, and I was of course extra careful. I had a wonderful conversation with my oldest daughter, and we talked about the home movie videos she’s been watching. I think it is a real gift to be able to see so much of your childhood. I wish we had movies from when I was a kid, but there are only a couple short ones that I know of. Anyway, Kyrston reads the blog and mentioned how much we talk about the gate. It’s true. The gate is somewhat omnipresent in our lives, because we look at it all the time, deal with it all the time, It’s our view and our work
I can definitely see how the gate could take on a personality in a situation like this. I mean you might either love your gate or hate your gate. In our case that hasn’t really happened yet, but I am 100% sure that I will be able to picture this gate for the rest of my life. I’ve spent enough time looking at it. Now that I have set all that up, of course I am going to talk more about the gate!! I was sitting here writing the blog when Lee came in and told me the company man that our account manager had called last night just drove through. We don’t see a lot of this particular guy so I asked Lee if he had said anything about the gate being opened, since it was once again very windy and Lee had opened it about an hour before. Lee said he didn’t say anything, but I watched for his truck to come back out because I wanted to try something.
There is a technique for conflict resolution that I have used very successfully in the past and that is to personalize an issue. This doesn’t work for lots of people, mainly because they don’t like to show weakness, but I never had much of an issue with that. When I saw the truck on its way out, I walked outside and started with apologizing for needing to keep it open on windy days. I said I didn’t want to be an exception, but was not physically strong enough to manhandle the gate in high winds and the accident I had yesterday had really scared me. That last thing, if nothing else, seemed to register with him and he asked if I was OK, and I said I was, but I also made it clear I felt I had been lucky. Then I mentioned that the construction company was supposed to solve the problem but got pulled for another job, and we weren’t sure when it would be completed, but I really felt that would solve the problem. He drove off without saying anything and I walked inside thinking “Well, at least I tried”. Less than one hour later the construction company was onsite with a welder and some rods. In less than 30 minutes they had the two drop rods in place and problem solved.
These guys had welding equipment and pipe cutting tools right on the truck
The rod “handle” swings over and can rest on a hole in the gate to keep it in the up position
Finally found the sweet spot of where to put them, and now the wind never pushes them
So there you have it, and hopefully this is my last blog post about the structure of the gate!! I did want to talk a little bit though about the blog, and it’s current format. In general, I am not all that crazy about having to do a post every day, but since we are trying to really capture the spirit of working here, skipping days doesn’t seem like the right way to approach it. Showing what happens every day shows progression, and I think that will be especially useful because this was a brand new gate, and things change as we enter new phases. I do worry that it will be too tedious though, and I am looking forward to getting back to posting based on experiences rather than days. Lee, who thinks I worry too much about this stuff, made a good point though when we were talking about it this morning, and quoted a Facebook post he saw.
He has a good point. Lots of blogs, mine included, sometimes read like a highlight reel. There’s nothing wrong with that, indeed it’s much more fun to write about the highlights and leave the more mundane out of the picture. We did that most of the first year on the road and I largely used that format in Alaska. The problem is it presents a somewhat skewed idea of what this lifestyle can really be like for some people, and even I fall prey to looking at other people’s blog posts or Facebook pictures and feeling incredibly jealous of their life. The reality of course is they still have to clean, make dinner, hitch/unhitch, do laundry, and all of the other myriad of tasks that make up a life.
So I am trying to strike a balance; show the relevant detail without sharing what I consider trivialities. For example, I had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch today. Now if there was something interesting about the peanut butter, like I made it in my Instant Pot, I might share that, but otherwise, honestly, who cares? Sharing too much trivia I think we lose the experience just as much as if we only talk about the highlights. I am looking for something in between. And that’s always been much easier when lots of things are happening. Either way, this blog has always been (for me) a good indicator of how much balance we have in our lives.
Day 37
It was cold and windy last night, dropping down into the low 50’s. Luckily traffic is still pretty light so mostly I was inside nice and toasty. Oh, and I forgot to share last week’s tracking sheet. (I could hear people clamoring for it. You damn near had a pitchfork-and-torch wielding mob on your hands. Close call. – Lee) As you can see, traffic was very low for almost every day except one, but the spread of trucks is still over most of the hours of the shift. When there are only a few trucks an hour though you still have lots of downtime, which makes the low hourly rate more palatable. Oh, and I also forgot to mention yesterday that one of the guys who works here gave me what was left of his Pizza Hut pizza. 6 slices of pepperoni and mushroom (my favorite) and it was a really sweet gesture and appreciated. I’ve been wanting Pizza Hut for a while, but we already spent our eating out money on the anniversary dinner, so this was a nice little gift.
After I woke up I went to the grocery store and got everything I would need to finish my last few remaining recipes for my recipe book. I have two new ones left, and one more to remake to get the picture, and I am pretty excited about that. Then I need to check all the formatting, spell check, order them, and figure out how to publish. The last bit will be some work in and of itself, but I am happy to be close to moving towards those last steps.
Lee on the other hand has been deep in editing and working around a much higher truck volume the last couple of days. We are pretty sure we have entered a new phase because there are lots of new types of trucks that need put into the database. At one point he had a convoy of 10 flatbed semis, each with about fifty 50′ long drill bits on them, but for safety he just waved them through. All that traffic was making us both a little cranky. Several of the new drivers didn’t want to wait to be put in the system and were trying to creep through the gate. Finally I got tired of that so I stopped opening the gate until I had their license plates in the system. I do find it interesting though that these experienced drivers would try that. All I hear from the gate guard community is how anal they are about gathering information, but these guys all kept trying to blow right through. If everyone was stopping people every time you would think they wouldn’t even try. We’ve been through this a couple of times with new people though, and once they are in the system and see how we handle the gate things usually get back to normal, but transitions are always a bit stressful.
I was also cooking while running the gate in the evening and the starting and stopping was driving me nuts. This is absolutely the wrong attitude for this job, so I had to keep reminding myself that trucks weren’t interrupting me, but I was doing something in the slow times. It’s largely a state of mind, but it matters, at least for us. Plus after 35 days with no full day off I think we are both a little weary. The job isn’t physically demanding but you are sort of always “on” unless you are sleeping, even when it’s the other person’s shift. Well, actually, if one person is sitting outside you can mentally tune it out, but when we are both inside you are both kind of on alert. It’s tiring. And it’s the little things. Like we love The Walking Dead and want to watch the newest episode without interruption, but unless we watch it separately that can’t happen. Or that I would really like to go see my friend Cori who is two hours away, but there isn’t enough time for me to get there and back during my 4 hour awake-but-not-working time period. Most things we can do, but those few we can’t sometimes bother us.
Towards the end of the day during a rare slow period we did have a nice moment, when Lee noticed a hawk sitting right on the right side our gate closest to the rig. (See? You thought she was all done talking about the gate. She lied. – Lee) He very slowly opened the door and I got to take several pictures before it flew away. First time I have seen one that close here and he posed for me very nicely. It was really cool since he was so close to the rig and we both really enjoyed that moment. (There’s also a GIANT roadrunner that lives behind the rig in the “woods” and I see him at least twice a day bopping around the generator. But as soon as he sees me he takes off, and he is FAST. I’m going to try to sit in the truck some time in the next few days and use it as a blind and see if I can get some shots. – Lee)
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Today was another slow day, and I asked one of the regulars why, and he said it was because they were laying some kind of pipe. These guys tell me stuff, but I still jhave no idea what they are talking about, and since they always seem like they are in a hurry I am hesitant to ask more. Whatever the cause it’s been a nice break, and it was so slow we even saw a flock of huge turkeys cross the road in front of us and fly over the 8 foot fence. I knew they could fly, but not that they could go that high and so gracefully. It’s a bummer my camera was inside because it would have been a really cool picture.
Since it’s slow and I don’t have much else to share I am going to have Lee answer a question from a reader. Darryl asks, “You and Lee have been in the RV long enough to give a “GOOD” feed back on how is the RV holding up? Are your walls 3″ thick or less, is it worth having a generator on board, has the RV experienced delamination ETC… Thanks”
I think it’s holding up pretty well. All RVs have issues, some bigger than others, and some sooner than others, but mostly I think the trick is to be gentle with them. They’re not made of tough stuff, mostly. The walls on our rig are 2″thick. I definitely think it’s worth having a generator. We don’t use it much, but when we do, we’re glad we have it. No delamination or issues with decals, although there are a few very small cracks in the outer skin where there’s stress. They aren’t growing, they’re just where there was too much flex for the skin. You can’t really see them unless you’re looking hard, and I’ve just sealed them up with silicon so moisture can’t get in and cause problems. Eventually when we pass through Indiana I want to have the manufacturer take a look at it and give me their opinion on what caused it and if it can be repaired reasonably. I’m not sure what the “etc” is for, so feel free to ask more questions, if you have them. – Lee
The one nice thing the company provides is motion sensors. Some companies expect you to have your own (and pay for the batteries), but those were included in our setup kit. We have been having problems with one of the sensors though, and are anxiously awaiting a new model they ordered for us. Motion sensors really are key when you are working out of your rig otherwise you have to sit outside most of the time or always position yourself near a window. With the motion sensors we are able to move around and then get outside quickly when we hear the chime go off. Personally I don’t like to keep people waiting any longer than I have to, but I am also not prepared to sit outside all night, every night so the chimes are a nice compromise. Hopefully the new one will do an even better job, because for some reason the one facing the exit falses a ton in the daytime, and sometimes doesn’t go off at all at night. In a couple rare cases people have actually had to get out of the truck and open the gate themselves and even though they never say anything I always feel bad about that. It is our only job, after all.
Lee went to the library right after lunch to see if he could take advantage of their free wifi and upload some of the videos. He has finished about 30 of them ranging from 10 minutes to 60 minutes in length and uploading those would really take a chunk our of our bandwidth. Since he wants to share them with friends and family in chronological order we can’t even upload the smaller files, although if this library solution doesn’t work we may end up needing to do that. Uploading them to You Tube is a pretty great solution, but early on we ran into some moral questions about what t share, and how. Ultimately Lee decided to make most of them private and send invitations to the relevant people for each one. The difficulty with this though is folks have to have a You Tube account, or a gmail address to make that work, and not everyone has that, especially the older people. So in those cases we might make them public but “unlisted”, but need to make sure no one is shown in a particularly unflattering light.
I know people sort of take that for granted nowadays and adjust their behavior accordingly, but in “olden times” video cameras were relatively new and I don’t think people really thought about how they might look in the future. Plus people have gotten divorced or have died, so some of the material can be sensitive. Lee takes all that pretty seriously and has reached out to several people personally and asked them if they wanted to see them. In most cases the answer has been a resounding yes, but as they are uploaded and we expand to a larger audience that may not be the case. And if those folks don’t want to see them, they definitely aren’t going to want them shared with the whole world. I know to some people this may all sound kind of crazy and you might be thinking “just throw them out there and let the chips fall”, but that’s really not Lee’s style. Despite all outward appearances to the contrary, he is a caring person and sensitive to people’s right to privacy. (Not true. People are the worst. I hate people. – Lee) It’s probably all those years running a public access TV station, but these issue are ones he has dealt with in both his personal and professional life. Plus he is doing this to provide people with joy, not to upset anyone, so it’s a fine line.
What he won’t do though is start cutting difference versions of events to suit different different groups. First off that would be a ton more work, and secondly I think he definitely feels like it is what it is. He has removed a couple of really stupid things, like someone complaining about their wife in the background, but mainly he just lets it go. And it’s good we talked about this in advance because he is just now texting me from the library and the speeds are “blazing fast.” Hooray for libraries!!! Fast internet is one of the few things I really miss (along with bathtubs). While Lee was gone I caught up on my blog reading. I tend to read my blogs in batches, which is bad because I get behind on what people are doing, but I need dedicated quiet time to really enjoy those posts. I can Facebook and play games and be interrupted repeatedly, but when I read posts I really like as few interruptions as possible. Many of our friends are seeing each other in either Florida or Quartzsite, which is nice to see, but a bit of a bummer because it’s always nice to see people. That’s OK though, because we are seeing people in Vegas and then again in Oregon this summer.
So, it’s a blustery, overcast day, but the temps are in the 80’s and I am wearing shorts. Since our friends in New England got 12″ of snow over the weekend, and then are expecting another 12-20″, once again I feel grateful. Plus, no rattlesnakes, yet!! Oh and I am sorry about talking about everything except gate guarding, but there really isn’t much to say. We open the gate, we log the vehicle, we wave, we shut the gate. Lots of that, over and over. I promise when things do occur that are unusual to talk about them, but most days it’s been nice and boring. Which for us, right now, is a good thing! Along with getting caught up on blogs, I also scrubbed the bathroom. Not my favorite job, especially with the claustrophobia, but definitely needs to be done. When you are watching your water usage, you kind of need to plan this out, or at least I do because I use lots of water.
I had just finished cleaning the bathroom and was writing the above when a truck came.
The knee is a little swollen but doing ok. The dust marks show where the leg hit
I did drop a note to our Account Manager and explained the wind was blowing so hard the gate was still being pushed despite our temporary solutions. She was really glad I was OK and said she would let them know. She called the oil company and told them what happened and got permission for us to leave the gate open when it’s really windy like this…hooray!!! The company is looking for 100% compliance, which I get, but she countered with safety issues and common sense prevailed. Thank heavens!! We really do work for a good company that really seems to care about us. That’s really nice. And as of this writing I am feeling OK. My knee is a little stiff but not swollen much, and the stinging of the scrape was lessened by some Advil. And, for the record, universe, nothing is boring, everything is exciting, and we have lots going on here lol !!!
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We had a really good day today. The weather was really nice again, and the traffic was very light, pretty common for the weekends. The guys who have been working on the water well are actually one ranch down this weekend, so that made traffic even lighter. So lots of downtime, and the perfect time for Lee to finish a big project he’s been working on as soon as I woke up. While I was asleep though he finally manged to capture a picture of the road runner who has been hanging out in the scrub area behind us. Since I worry about snakes back there we are thrilled to have him, but he’s a bit camera-shy. He’s a pretty big guy though, as large as a young chicken.
It’s hanging out back by the generator
Lee got this shot before it scampered away. (They’re very fast. They also do not respond to “Meep Meep”, in spite of what cartoons would have you believe. – Lee)
Once I was up and showered and Lee had lunch he started working on finishing a project. As much as we love our front living room desk, it’s been a bit of a pain point that you sort of have to hunch over it. (When we selected our rig, we knew we would make some changes. As built, the front living room has two equal slides out across from each other. In each one is a foldaway queen size air bed, which in folded up, is a medieval torture device disguised as what could loosely be described as a “couch”. Here is a photo taken at the RV show where we first saw it. – Lee)
We knew when decided to buy it that we would be either ordering it without the right hand couch, or removing that couch, in order to put in a desk, because we knew that we would need an actual desk to work at, instead of the makeshift desk areas that full timers often have. Little did we know that that was going to be a much bigger problem. If you look at the right hand couch, where the couch meets the floor what you can’t see is that the slideout bottom is not level with the floor. It’s actually up about 6 or 7 inches. That’s much better illustrated in this picture taken when our rig arrived, without the couch. – Lee
I won’t bore you with all the details of the desk build, but here’s a picture of it after it was finished.
If you like, you can read all about it here.
And here’s a picture of Hobie on the desk, just because.
So the problem with having the desk in the slideout and having the floor under the desk 6 or 7 inches higher than the floor where the chair sits is that when you sit at the desk, and belly up to the front edge of it, your feet have to be up that high, which is really uncomfortable. If you don’t believe me, try it sometime. Sit right up against a desk, and get your feet flat, but up 7 inches. Incredibly uncomfortable. If you want to have your feet on the same level as the chair, then you can do that, but then in order to be close enough the desk to use it, you have to swing the chair sideways and it at a 45 degree angle to the desk, and then there’s nowhere to rest your left elbow, and your head is turned to the right. I know it might sound like a big deal, but imagine doing that for 4, 5, 6, 8 hours. It’s brutal. As illustrated in the image below. – Lee)
Long hours of editing do cause him some back pain and he’s been trying to figure out a solution for some time
Now, I know what you’re thinking. “Why not just get a keyboard drawer?”. Well, sure, that would allow me to sit back away from the edge of the desk, and be oriented correctly, and all that, but those things are flimsy, and usually just big enough for the keyboard. Nowhere to rest my wrists or elbows. Why would you want me to live like that? What did I ever do to you? No, I needed to extend the entire desktop back to allow me to sit under it and have enough room for the keyboard (a large old school buckling spring keyboard) my giant mouse pad, and my wrists and elbows. Originally I was going to build a light aluminum frame and have the entire desk top on a sliding rail that I could pull back, but that turned out to be way to be much build, because of the weight. Instead I finally decided to just build a desktop extension, in the style of a keyboard drawer, but bigger. 33″ wide by 20″ deep. What was bugging me the most was what to use as the “desktop”. I didn’t want to try to match stains, so I thought I would just go with a solid black, or white. But pre-made shelving material would be too thin and would bow, and I didn’t want to have to build any supporting framework. AND I doubted I could find it in the dimensions I was looking for. Plus I was concerned about the front edge being sharp and uncomfortable, and I don’t have a router to round off the edge. So I went to Home Depot in Laredo to wander around and see what I could find. I toyed with the idea of oak stair tread, because it has a nicely rounded nose, but it was really heavy, and still not deep enough. I was almost ready to give up when it occurred to me that I might be able to use counter top, as I did with the desktop. Not only did I find the exact same color and pattern counter top I used for the desk, but it was also on sale for 25% off since they are discontinuing it. I was able to get everything else I needed, and the next day I cut and primed the pieces and let them dry overnight so today I could finish up.
The filing drawer boxes I use as desk pedestals are plastic, and while they are designed to hold a LOT of paper and stack up to ten high (!!!) all of their strength is for downward pressure. And it’s a pretty soft plastic, so I wasn’t wild about the idea of putting screws or bolts in them to hold the slides. The slides are 50lb capacity (I have very heavy elbows) and I didn’t think that plastic would hold up over time.
So I used 1/2″ sanded plywood panels that I primed and painted black and bolted to them by just drilling straight through and using fender washers to spread out the pressure on the wood and the plastic inside the drawer boxes. I used 1/4″ hardware. Pretzel piece for scale.
The shape of the drawers themselves allowed for plenty of clearance between the drawer and the box for the washer and nut. In the picture below you can see the panel already attached, and the line of dust inside the drawer shows the space between the drawer and the box itself, allowing plenty of room for the nut. (The dust is so you can see how dusty it is here in oil field land.)
I only painted the visible parts of the side panels. Reflective vest for safety.
Bolted left panel
I used gaff tape on the surface of the counter top because I read somewhere that it helps keep the laminate from chipping and/or cracking when you cut it. It worked, except for the rounded front, where a little piece chipped off, but I can glue it on.
Notice I am wearing safety glasses. Always safety first.
These are the medium duty slides. You can see a little sloppy primer paint on the work surface, but Tracy can easily peel that off.
With both side panels on, and the slides attached, the desktop extension slid right in. The slides are soft close, which is nice, because all you have to do is give it a push, and they suck the extension back in and hold it in place so it doesn’t slide out while traveling.
So happy it worked!!! And the chair arms slide just under the extension perfectly.
So here’s the before, with the awkward angles.
And the after
The monitor mount is an Ergotronand allow the monitor to be placed anywhere I want, including pan, tilt, and rotation.
And the final result, a strong, large, functional desktop extension that either of us can sit at for hours without back, neck, or shoulder pain. Look how happy I am.
Here’s what it cost:
4′ section of counter top $ 42.00
Drawer slides $ 16.98
2′ x 4′ sanded plywood $ 15.95
Quart primer $ 7.64
Quart black paint $ 12.97
2 paint brushes $ 6.96
Nuts, washers, bolts $ 5.12
Total cost $ 107.62
Here’s what I used:
Measuring tape
Circular saw
Speed square
Yardstick (as a straight edge)
Phillips screwdriver
Cordless drill with 1/4″ bit
7/16″ ratchet wrench
Torpedo level
Gaff tape (duct tape is for amateurs)
This project took several hours, and when he was outside working I edited a short video. Lee taught me how to edit many years ago on a program called Pinnacle, but now he is using Adobe Premier Pro so I need to learn the new interface. Editing is quite a bit like playing music and I am good enough to play Mary Had A Little Lamb, but not much more than that. Still, it was enough that I was able to take an 11 minute video down to 5 minutes and from there Lee took it down to 3. I wanted it because I thought I should show you a little bit about what my life was like before. I have no intention of sharing those videos, mostly because other people’s home movies are pretty boring, but this particular video, which is of me cooking dinner really spoke to me in several ways. Before I get into all that though, take a look, if you are so inclined. If nothing else you’ll get to see the “old” me. This is from October of 1999 so it’s really going back.
So why this video? Well, first I think it’s interesting that I am doing something as mundane as cooking dinner, and cooking a meal that years later had made it to my recipe book. Sirloin tips and noodles is my own creation and was always one of the kids favorites. (I am not a fan. I think it’s icky, and she used to make me eat it all the time. I shot the video to use as evidence in her commitment hearing. – Lee) My middle daughter Kate, who was setting the table in the video, loves it to this day, and feeds it to her husband all the time. (Proof that she doesn’t really love him, and only married him because he’s funny. Because as she herself says, “All the handsome and smart ones were already taken.” Which is a perfectly acceptable reason to marry someone. – Lee) That’s a bit surreal. Also, I love how I say in the video “I’ll be fascinated by this when I am watching it when I am old and grey.” I think I was being sarcastic at the time, but it turns out I am fascinated. (In accordance with prophecy. – Lee)
I’ve talked quite a bit about how I have loved rediscovering my joy of cooking, and this video shows me at least how I lost it. Cooking for a family is nice, and obviously they were appreciative, but doing something a million times and with all that going on, it wasn’t really always fun. No time to get creative, just get the food out and as efficiently as possible. (And in large quantities. All of our girls ate like football players. – Lee) And to broaden that point a little I can’t help but think how different my life is now. It’s not just the physical, although eye surgery and a short haircut were no small thing. It’s not just the place, although I had forgotten how much I loved that house, we left it when we moved to New Hampshire. It’s how different my life is, but how similar I am in many ways. I didn’t realize how much of my personality had formed at 35.
I do realize some of this we would have gone through normally without becoming a full-time RVers. Empty nest changes things for sure and having three kids in three different states would have made for lots of two people meals. We definitely would have eaten out more and “family dinners” would have largely been a thing of the past. Boy, I am having a hard time explaining this. The major difference is the lack of obligation. Don’t get me wrong, I loved my kids and feeding them was part of the job, but there wasn’t always joy in it. Now I make a meal and it’s fun and there is usually joy, even when things don’t turn out that great. I’ve talked about this before, but it’s definitely worth saying again, my life didn’t always have much joy. I was satisfied, I was even happy, but pure joy…well there wasn’t a lot of time for that.
I was doing a whole lot of “checking off the boxes” in my life. Make the dinner, clean the house, go to work, raise the kids. They were all part of my job, a job I knowingly signed up for, but a job nonetheless. Mostly I felt good about the job I was doing. I thought things were going well, and they were. But that woman in that video could no more have imagined this life than taking a trip to the moon. Actually that’s not true. Since I was an avid science fiction reader I could have pictured going to the moon!
So how does it make me feel? Incredibly blessed. I am grateful for that life, and extremely grateful for the beautiful children I have, but this lifestyle (despite its challenges) is such a gift. I wouldn’t go back, by the way and tell that woman what was going to happen. Some things just need to play themselves out, and I think every moment of that life, made this one possible for me. Even making a dinner of sirloin tips and noodles.
Oh, and by the way, the cow plate was this special plate we had that didn’t match any of our other dishes. Whoever did something nice that day, or had something special happen to them that day, got to use the cow plate for dinner My decision making process was a little arbitrary, to be sure, but I think it’s interesting I never gave the cow plate to myself except maybe on my birthday. My whole life is the cow plate now 🙂
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, I might share that, but otherwise, honestly, who cares? Sharing too much trivia I think we lose the experience just as much as if we only talk about the highlights. I am looking for something in between. And that’s always been much easier when lots of things are happening. Either way, this blog has always been (for me) a good indicator of how much balance we have in our lives.
and allow the monitor to be placed anywhere I want, including pan, tilt, and rotation.
Camper Chronicles 