March 7, 2017 by Lee and Tracy

First Time Publishing a Book

Well, it finally happened! The cookbook is out on Amazon, and since this whole process has been pretty intense for me I thought I would walk you through the steps. Please keep in mind I have absolutely no idea what I am doing here, and I am absolutely sure there are better ways to self-publish a book, but this was the path I went on. So let me step back a little.

I have always wanted to write a book. Over the years I have kept a notebook full of ideas, some more developed than others, but never had the time to go much further than a broad outline. The ideas were always fictional books in the fantasy/sci-fi genre though, because those are the types of books I like to read. Completely separate from that, when we first started camping in 2013 I had this idea that I would cook the bulk of our meals over a campfire. Because I didn’t have many campfire recipes I started collecting them almost immediately and added them to the early posts in the blog. Really the main reason I added them was because I didn’t want to forget them, plus I thought it was a cool way to fill out a blog post and provide a little value to people. Truly nothing more than that, but it is kind of interesting that the very first recipe I put in a post, made it into the book.

Once we became full timers I quickly realized that campfire cooking was really not that practical, but not all of my standard recipes worked in the RV. Lack of room for ingredients and minimal space for prep really made it challenging. Plus the propane oven cooked very unevenly and there was definitely a learning curve. So I started collecting recipes that worked, and again I started putting them in the blog. I have a pretty battered hand written recipe book that I had been using for years and brought with me, but I liked the idea of having them online so I could access them via my iPad. I also started gathering recipes from friends. We spent lots of time with other couples in Year 1 and sometimes you just have to get a person’s recipe. There was quite a bit of that.

As my collection of recipes started to grow, and I started having fun in the kitchen again, I started thinking about putting the collection together formally. I’ve thought long and hard about the appropriate way (if any) to monetize this site, and I always felt it would be best if I offered something that had intrinsic value. I still think the best example of this is the RV-Dreams Budget spreadsheets. I purchased them when we were early in our research phase, used them religiously, and they provided me value. We still use those spreadsheets to this day. So I could support them and have something of value. That made sense to me. The problem was I couldn’t figure out anything that I could actually offer. But with these recipes, well, I really started to feel like I might have something. Plus since I knew I wanted to publish a book at some point, I thought this might be a way to get my feet wet, so to speak.

When we were in Alaska and business got very slow towards the end of the season I took the time to do some research. I’ll be honest, I didn’t do nearly enough research, but since I was looking specifically for a recipe book template, my choices were somewhat limited. Formatting a recipe book is not easy, and there were very few templates that I liked, but finally I found a good one in a program called Bookwright. This free tool was associated with a book publishing company called Blurb and although I didn’t do nearly enough research I did do enough to find out that for a one-time fee of $9.99 you could use the tool and get an electronic copy in a tablet friendly format. Sold!

I then spent whatever free time I could over the next several months getting my existing recipes into the new format. I had to learn the software. I had to figure out where to place everything, and most importantly I had to decide on categories. I knew early on that I wanted categories that were somewhat RV specific so I ended up with Happy Hour, Pot Luck Dishes, Travel Days, Pressure Cooker, Dinners for Two, Side Dishes, Regional Specialties, and Desserts. Then I had to take my existing recipes and put them in the best suited category. Once that was done I had to fill in the gaps. I decided that I wanted 10 recipes per category. I know that’s somewhat arbitrary, but I like round numbers and it was important to me each section was even. But that meant I had to finish out each section. All of this took several months, mainly because we were very busy at the Beet Harvest and Christmas Trees, but when I could I tried new recipes to fill in the gaps. Progress was slow though, because most of the recipes I tried just weren’t good enough, but I was picking away at it and then finally we started gate guarding.

Lee and I settled on a work schedule to ensure that I would be able to make dinners, and I made a big push to finish up. Every night was a new meal and Lee was really a trooper, although occasionally he did want to eat something that we knew would work. Don’t get me wrong, very few of the recipes we tested were inedible, but many of them were simply mediocre, and even though I was close to the finish line, I just didn’t want to cut corners. Finally I was down to needing one solid stir fry recipe, and after three attempts we judged it good enough. I am actually making one of those versions in the cover photo. Oh, and that was the other thing. I needed a good picture for every recipe and didn’t have a good one for many of the older recipes. So I remade meals and took better pictures and then asked Lee to take the cover photo. I knew what I was looking for in my mind, but explaining that to Lee was a bit tough and we were both a bit cranky that day. So I was pleasantly surprised when I liked one the pictures and decided on the spot to use it. I am not what I consider photogenic, but Lee got a nice one of me laughing at something he said, and most importantly it was a real picture, of a real person, cooking in their real RV. Done!

cover1000

The book was finally made, and now came the editing. Let me just say I have a tremendous amount of respect for professional copy editors after that experience. The formatting had to be adjusted, spell checking, grammar checking, and every time I reviewed it I found something else. Lee looked at it, I sent it to people who had contributed recipes to get their feedback, and we looked at it again. The problem is the mind tricks you. You see what you want to see, and when I discovered that several of the recipes steps were numbered incorrectly and despite numerous reviews neither one of us had caught the mistake I almost threw up my hands at the whole process. Still we had come that far, so we kept plugging away, and finally we had to say “It’s good enough”. If you ever do this, let me warn you. You can rewrite and rewrite and never stop, but eventually you just have to take a deep breath and go with it.

Once I made that decision (which was difficult enough) it was time to publish. I had to go back and read the instructions provided by Blurb and this is where things got interesting. Blurb is a good company, but their bread and butter is printed books. They provide eBooks, but since they don’t make anything off of them it seems to be a bit of an after thought. The instructions for getting your printed books for sale are extremely detailed, but eBooks, not so much. They do provide a pretty easy way to submit the file to Apple iBooks, but with Amazon you get the files and are pretty much on your own. Before I could get to that step I had to upload the book though. It took me forever to figure out that there is no way to review once it is uploaded unless you make the $9.99 purchase, so I did that and discovered there was a problem with my Table of Contents page. All the other pages looked fine, but the Table of Contents formatting was all messed up. So I called their help line on Monday, and talked to this really nice person, who turned out to be a full time RVer! It turns out you can’t review before paying, so she made some recommendations for adjustments to format, issued me a refund, and then gave me a code to upload another version for free. I did that and it was still wrong, but then I tried something else and the third time (which I paid for) it finally it worked. Awesome!

Once you upload and pay you are given two types of electronic files. The “.mobi” is for iPads and I was able to download and open it in my iPad. That was a really cool moment. The “epub” version though I couldn’t find a way to open with my Kindle app. None of these challenges were made easier by the fact that I was a complete nervous wreck the whole time. At this point I had quite a bit emotionally invested in the process and my concerns that it wasn’t good enough were exacerbated by the technical challenges. I had to keep taking lots of deep breaths, walking away from it, and Lee talked me down from the ledge several times. Which is a shame, because all those nerves really cut into the joy of the accomplishment. Still, I wasn’t that surprised. I am terrible at doing things for the first time, and almost always anxious when I am outside of my comfort zone, so I kept reminding myself one of the reasons for doing this was to work through those feelings.

Please understand, I am under no illusions that this recipe book is going to become a best seller, but if I am going to do something, I want it to be the best I can do. And even if no one besides our friends, family, and blog readers ever buys this book it still needs to be the best I can make it. Thus the state of emotional turmoil, and I am trying to navigate the pretty complicated world of e-book publishing. A couple of times I almost asked Lee to handle this part for me, but I knew he wouldn’t do it. He’s really great about taking care of stuff when I need him to, but not when I am simply afraid of something. He held my hand through the process, but he absolutely made me do it. So let’s talk about the process, and again, I am in no way an expert and I am sure there is an easier way. I certainly hope so. And let me switch to numbered steps to help organize my thoughts here.

Once I received the file I had three choices. Sell through Bookwright, sell through Amazon, or sell through Apple iBooks. Selling through Bookwright alone is tempting because they don’t take any portion of the sales for eBooks. The problem is they don’t have a large global distribution and this is the best choice for people who have an established audience and no intention of finding a broader one.
Submitting to iBooks was pretty easy, but it takes a minimum of two weeks for them to approve or reject the book. I started that process, but saw something in their guidelines that said the book couldn’t have page numbers, which really confused me. Mine does have page numbers, and I submitted it anyway because at this point the only way to make a change is to re-pay the $9.99 and do another upload. That is one of the downsides of using this program for e-books, because every new version costs an additional $9.99. I wasn’t aware of that when I originally chose the program, because that is not the case for their hard copy books. Also, once it is out on iBooks you cannot make any changes, without un-listing the book and listing a new one. No versioning. Still, I submitted it and we’ll see what happens. They take 30% of your list price off the top and you get the rest, so you have to fill out banking and tax information to get started.
Finally I started the Amazon process. Information on this was a little tough to come by, so I went with the Kindle process because it seemed the simplest. You load your file, preview it for free, and then fill out tons of information and submit for the site. The good news is it took less than 24 hours for it to hit the web site, the bad news was I had a couple of issues. First off I uploaded the Kindle-friendly version I was provided, and in the preview their was some weird formatting issue with the Kindle version. That wouldn’t work. So I went back and uploaded the mobi version, and that actually looked pretty great. Their spell check also caught two minor spelling errors (I added an extra e in saute on one page) but the only way to fix that at this point would be to go back, change the original, and pay and additional $9.99. (For the record, I had a total brain failure and added that extra “e”, not her. – Lee) Just to be clear, Ekindle accepts changes to your books, but I have this format I am stuck with and that requires a new upload each time. If I had done the book in word and then uploaded it that would have made this part much simpler.
Next, I had to set pricing. Amazon Ekindle has two royalty plans. With one you receive 35% of the list price (that would have been around $3.05 a book) and the other you receive 70% of list price but are charged a data fee depending on the size of the file. Since my file is around 20 MB this means my $8.99 list price (my choice because I had 80 recipes and I thought 10 cents a recipe plus $1 handling charge was fair) becomes a profit of around $4.00 a book. I was hoping to make around $5 a book, but I sort of get it. They are the sales and distribution system and data does cost money, so I have to pay for that. The thing that concerned me the most though was the fact that in either case they can decide to change your list price. I have no choice in that and at 70% I only get my portion of whatever list price they change it to.

At this point I could have stopped and found another distribution method, but my head was spinning with all the new information and my emotions were churning, and really I just wanted to get it out there. So I rolled the dice that they would not change my list price and selected the 70% plan. That may have been a mistake, but I always have the choice of un-listing the book in the future if they monkey around with the price more than I can live with. We will see what happens and I promise to let you know. For some reason I was more OK with making less profit than having my price change, but I suppose that is how book publishing works. I am learning.

So there you have it. The Kindle version is up on Amazon and I really like the way the Fire tablet version looks. Unfortunately the eKindle version is all in black and white, but this copy does not have any formatting issues, which is a good thing. Click here to see the book and there is a free sample of the first 30 pages you can send to yourself if you just want to check it out. If you would like to wait for the Apple version, I will let you know when that is available from iBooks.

Either way, thanks for following along as I talked about this process. It’s been a huge part of my life the last few months and I really needed to share it. Just writing it down has helped put it into perspective and I feel calmer about the whole thing. Appreciate your listening and appreciate the support. Take care!

Update: Initial response was really great. So nice having people show an interest. I received several questions about how to view the preview though so I wanted to add a screen shot. You can see a preview online with the Look Inside feature on the left side or the download free sample on the right. I have encircled both in a red box for easier viewing.

The book is also available out on Apple now. Check out this link for the IBooks version.

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March 5, 2017 by Lee and Tracy

First Time Gate Guarding – Days 50 – 55

Day 50

Today was nice and slow again. We had 5 guys working overnight back on the pad doing cleanup, but since they rarely came out it was not a big deal. And we hit day 50, which is a substantial amount of time and I have been trying to think about how long I ever worked without having at least one day off. I worked two jobs once for a couple of months without a day off until I rearranged things so I had one day from both jobs and I worked a couple of projects that we were busy for about 6 weeks with no days off, but I think that’s it. It’s been a long time though, that’s for sure, so this feels like the longest I have ever gone without one.

I spent some time reading, more proofreading, and watching a little TV. Only one interruption during Walking Dead. I also spent some time researching how to get the recipe book onto Amazon. I am going through a company called blurb and they can sell the book themselves or help you get it on Amazon. The main advantage of Amazon is larger potential readership, but the downside is higher percentage (15%) taken from every sale. It’s better than iBooks though, they take 30% of every sale. Crazy. Either way, it takes a few weeks to get your book listed, and once it is out there you cannot change it. You have to unlist it then put up a revision, so proof-reading becomes even more important. I swear every time I look at it I see something else. Today I noticed I had mis-numbered the steps on a few of the recipes. Crazy, I’ve looked at it 100 times and never saw that before. Lee missed it as well. Anyway, I am working on it a little each night and my goal is to have it uploaded by the time fracking starts.

Day 51

Today was by far the slowest day so far. Only a handful of trucks, which was nice. I made meatloaf for dinner, because Lee requested an old favorite…I think he is taking a taste tester break, and then we watched a couple of shows before he went to bed. I am super happy because the Voice is back on. I am loving this foursome and it’s such a great feel good show. The only thing of interest was that we talked quite a bit about the new unlimited AT&T plan coming out tomorrow. Lee and I have been very cautious about changing our grandfathered in plan, but we really think we can make this new one work. (Right before we hit the road, we were lucky enough to get in on the last day of a promotion that doubled your data, so we got 80GB per month for what they were charging for 40GB. 80GB might sound like a lot of data, but it’s not. We use it for everything we watch, and some months we struggle to stay below 80GB. And the worst part is that overages are billed at a ridiculous $15 per GB. So we’ve been watching what AT&T and Verizon have been doing waiting for things to improve. And we think that time might have finally arrived. – Lee) If there are no fine print problems with the new unlimited data plan, it will save us $185 over what we’re currently paying for 80GB, which is a substantial amount of money on our current budget. I’m excited because I really thought if we waited long enough something good would come out. Good for T-Mobile and the Millennials for driving this change. It was past time the companies responded to market pressure on this issue.

Day 52

Another super slow day and we found out that the folks who are bringing the liner for the pond won’t be here until next Monday or Tuesday. This gives us many days of quiet to enjoy. The big news today was we signed up for the new AT&T unlimited plan and it went off without a hitch. That $185 a month or $2200 a year is a big budget changer, so we are both really excited about it. I also got some feedback on the recipe book from my friend Kelly, which was great, and she said she was trying one of the new recipes which was really exciting. I asked her if she thought the recipes were too simple and she immediately said no. Kelly is one of the nicest people on the planet, but she also tells the truth, and since there was little hesitation I felt much better. As she said, some of the recipes in each category are more complicated, but most are simple, which I think is a good thing. My goal was to show real food, that could be made in an RV and super complicated doesn’t lend itself well to the lifestyle in many cases. Anyway, I was getting cold feet about the whole thing and Kelly made me feel quite a bit better.

Since I am faced with several days with lots of down time I thought now might be the right time to start chipping away at the book about this journey we have been on. I have been thinking about it for quite some time, but didn’t really feel like I was ready to start but this morning I woke up and it felt right. This is definitely going to take some time, but getting started is the important thing. Oh and I also did this month’s budget tonight and as you have probably already seen we had our best month ever. That was definitely a plus.

Day 53

Lee only had a couple of trucks this morning. They brought in some pipe and used it. We did some housekeeping items and just took the day. Lee watched movies and I worked on the blog and a little on the book. I started writing last night and things flowed OK. Good enough for a first pass at least.

Day 54

Today was a good day for it to be slow because it rained all day. We only had one car all day and were glad of it because the rain and wind were near constant. I’ve wanted to have all that in one place for a while so it was good to get that done. Le is also doing the final edit on the recipe book. I really needed a fresh set of eyes so he was nice enough to go through it one more time.

Day 55

Well we have put all of this free time to good use. I finally finished a page I have been working on for a while which summarizes all of our Last night I spent some time finishing up a page I have been working on for a while that summarized all of our working on the road experiences. If you would like to check out the new page click here. I also took the opportunity to remove some of the less visited pages and reorder the web site in a way that made more sense to me.

For those who have read from the beginning, you have seen the website evolve over time. The changes are partly due to what people seem to be interested in and partly because of what I want to write about. The main goals of the blog have always been to have a place to tell our story and to try to write the blog we wish we could have read. The pages and their ordering reflects that to some extent.

We also finished the recipe book and I will be uploading that to Amazon very soon and I have started to write the book about our story. That has been very interesting as we kept it a secret for many months and I have little in writing to help me put together the timeline of events. Thankfully, I was able to be open in the RV-Dreams Forum and have been going back and rereading my early posts from 2013. I still can’t get over how quick everything happened. Even today as relatively adventuresome as I have become, I can’t see myself jumping into that big of a change that quickly. If nothing else it really shows me how much this all was meant to be.

Oh and sorry that there is next to nothing to talk about regarding Gate Guarding this week. There are apparently slow periods though and I needed to show the calm before the fracking storm. Things should pick up pretty soon.

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March 3, 2017 by Lee and Tracy

February 2017 Budget with Revenue

We had one of our best months ever with costs of only $2380.44 and 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.

March 1, 2017 by Lee and Tracy

First Time gate Guarding – Days 47 -49

Day 47

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 photoshopped out the roadkill on this one. Fair warning the next have it all

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!!!

February 26, 2017 by Lee and Tracy

First Time Gate Guarding – Day 44 – 46

Day 44

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!

February 24, 2017 by Lee and Tracy

Some Thoughts About Rural America

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 usually love those because they have really cool stuff in them

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.

February 22, 2017 by Lee and Tracy

First Time Gate Guarding – Days 42 -43

Day 42

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!

February 19, 2017 by Lee and Tracy

First Time Gate Guarding – Days 40 – 41

Day 40

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.

February 17, 2017 by Lee and Tracy

First Time Gate Guarding – Days 38 -39

Day 38

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 Key at 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)

February 16, 2017 by Lee and Tracy

First Time Gate Guarding – Days 36 and 37

Day 36

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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Travel Tales from Working Full Time RVers

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