For those who aren’t interested in our daily descriptions of gate guarding we have provided an overview. If you would like to read our daily account you can start here.   It is important to note that there can be significant variations from gate to gate, but most are scaled to pay more if the traffic is higher and/or the weather and gate conditions are more difficult.  The pay also varies significantly based on the current oil prices.  This account is based on a singular experience in South Texas working a brand new gate with three wells on it that were not drilled when we got here. The more wells, the more traffic, and in our case there was additional traffic initially to build the lease road which leads to the oil pad, and the fracking pond, which would already be done at an established gate.  We also did not experience the fracking process, which is a high volume activity that occurs at the end right before the well starts producing oil. These numbers are a summary of our 79 days in the position between January 11 and March 30.  The hourly wage depends upon how you look at the position.  Since it is a 24/7 gate, you can look at all the hours in the day, or just the hours between when the first truck comes and the last truck leaves, or only hours where a truck came or left.

By The Numbers

• We worked 79 days, which was not the complete cycle of time between drilling the well and oil production.  Wells can be dug and oil flowing in less time, but due to a shortage of resources in the area there were delays to the schedule.  One of the downsides to the job is you never really know how long a position will last.    There is a project plan and an overall schedule, but this is rarely shared with the gate guards or the gate guarding company.
• We opened or shut the gate a total of 5,722 times.  Each passage was logged into the computer and the entire process takes approximately 2 minutes. The only exception to this would be when a truck wasn’t in the system and all the information had to be added, or when gravel trucks came through and we only needed to capture a check mark on a sheet.  Those were the exception though, so for simplicity’s sake we will estimate 2 minutes.    Using this logic pure task time was 191 hours.  We had to be available 1,896 hours so that works out to we were opening and the shutting the gate roughly 10% of the time.  
• The busiest day we had 422 trucks (the bulk of these were gravel trucks) and the slowest day we had was 0.
• Our average work day (if you look from when the first truck came until the last truck left) was 12.5 hours.  Our average number of trucks per hour was 6.  The bulk of the traffic was between 6am and 6pm, but there were several days where we had trucks all night long. 
• For the 79 days we made a total of $9,750.  We did take off a partial day for our anniversary and they deducted $31.26 for those 7 hours.
• The site and services are also covered, which some people include in their wages.  We don’t, so I didn’t include that here.  I will say our costs were the lowest they have been on the road, because our schedule and location made it easy to keep costs down.

Hourly rate is interesting.  If you count the 24 hour period, the rate was $5.21 which is below minimum wage.  If you look at the rate between the first and last truck it was $8.09 an hour, which is above minimum wage in Texas, but because it is a contract position no taxes were taken out and their might (depending on your deductions) be an extra tax burden.   If you just look at hours we got trucks the rate is $9.95, which is better but still under $10.

More details 

• In Texas you do need a state license to do this work, but not all states with oil activity require one.  Our company worked with us to complete the application, test, and background check, and made it extremely easy.  The cost for both of us was under $100, although Lee got a military discount for his past military service.  Once you get the license it is renewable online. Not all companies help with this though, and it does take some time, so if you are thinking about doing this I recommend starting to work on that in advance.  You do NOT have to be a Texas resident to get a Texas security license.
• Some positions have guard shacks, but most allow you to work from your rig.  This is a huge benefit as you can watch TV, read, complete personal chores, etc during your down time.  You could even work a second job, if the job was virtual and  allowed tasks to be completed at nonspecific times. Since you never know what the schedule will be from day to day it would be difficult to have a job where you were required to complete tasks at a certain time of day.
• We were allowed to split the day however we wanted and both work a 4-4 shift, which is somewhat unusual.  It worked for us because Lee is an early riser and I was able to go to sleep while it was still dark outside, which made working nights much more pleasant for me.  We were individually able to take time and run errands, but neither of us did anything fun away from the RV during the time period.  Partly because we couldn’t go together, but mainly because there wasn’t much to do in the immediate area.  Lee went into San Antonio a couple of times to buy things we needed, but I never felt the desire to drive that far on my awake time off.
• There is minimal supervision and the people we have met have been very nice. Sure, you get the occasional cranky person, but nothing particularly obnoxious.  The oil business is a small community and few people want to cause an issue for someone else because you never know who you will be working with down the road.  It’s also important to note that the contracts are written so your job responsibilities can be changed.
• The positions come with a water tank, a generator for power, and weekly dump services, and no fees are paid by us.  You certainly can boon dock cheaply in the winter, but the cost for full hookups in a winter friendly place is generally not cheap.
• The work is mostly easy, but it is outside and elements can be at play.  Extreme heat, high winds, thunderstorms and tornadoes can all be a factor, and vary from day-to day.  Rattlesnakes are also a concern in the more remote areas along with illegal immigrants in some areas.   Also your house WILL become extremely dusty if you take one of these positions, as the constant traffic and dry conditions make dust clouds a near constant element.
• We were issued safety vests, two chimes (which worked poorly in general and particularly poorly on windy days), a cell booster, and two tablets. Safety was  a major concern and stressed to us from Day 1.  We were encouraged more than once to wave trucks through if they started to stack up on the road, which made the job much easier.  The only safety issue we had was initially the gate did not have drop rods and while I was struggling with the gate in the wind I fell into the cattle guard and banged my leg up pretty bad.  Once we reported the problem they did fix the issue and our company does provide workers compensation, although not all do.  It is recommended that you take off your rings if you are working one of these positions because they can get caught in the gate and hurt you. We’ve heard stories of people losing fingers when the wind grabs the gate and a finger gets caught in it.
• The location of the jobs is usually pretty remote and cell/internet services can be limited.  Grocery stores, and laundromats can be far away and since one person needs to be onsite at all times, errands must be done by one person during their “off” time.

What We Thought

We both liked it, although we did have a few rough days when the volume was particularly high.  The slow days though are extremely pleasant, especially if you have hobbies or side projects you want to work on.  I like the fact that unlike most work kamping positions there are jobs year round, although I would have to be hard pressed to take a position down here in the summer, because we don’t handle extreme heat well.  The winter weather was really great.  It can be windy and the dust can certainly get annoying, but after we started we mostly kept our rig closed and ran our two air conditioners which kept the dust down. Now that we have experienced it start to finish we would both definitely do it again. We would be careful  though to ask questions regarding traffic volume, whether we could work out of our rig,  and internet availability.  Using my triangle scale to determine if we liked a job or not it was great on time, and OK on quality and money.  If we were on a busier gate, or the work conditions/weather were extremely unpleasant this would change for us significantly.

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Day 65

The weather was absolutely stunning today. 74 degrees, no clouds, and a light breeze.  I decided to go to the grocery store and it was nice getting out.  Everything is very green here and as of yet the “hordes”of mosquitoes that we’ve been warned about haven’t appeared.  When I got back I downloaded Google Hangout and tested it with my youngest daughter, Kay.  She helped me worked through the interface and we discovered it didn’t work very well on the IPad.  Since this is what I am using for my upcoming call with my favorite author I wanted to work out the bugs before I started.  Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the frack pond lining guys have been working pretty hard on the pond and told me when they left they have one more day of work to do.  I’m not sure how that will impact the fracking schedule since the work-over crew is still going, but they are making progress. (The way I look at it, every day brings us closer to our April 1st departure, so they can feel free to take their time. – Lee)

Since we know things are going to get busy soon I have been spending quite a bit of time at night writing.  Last night I wrote about our final days in Keene, and the first few months we were on the road.  As exciting as things were back then we had a pretty rough start, and dredging all that up was kind of tough.  Still, it was good to be able to write about it without being concerned about my job, or how folks would perceive us.  I worried a lot more about that sort of thing back then.  When I woke up this morning and looked at the blog comments from yesterday’s post I had the past firmly in my mind.

One of our readers, The Wandering RVer (who coincidentally lives about 30 minutes from where we used to live, and is facing 18 inches (Better her than us! – Lee)  of snowfall today ) asked, “How would you compare your “happiness meter” now with your “happiness meter” 5 years ago?” That’s a really good question.  My happiness meter is way higher, but the scale has changed.  It is not lost on me that we are very lucky to be enjoying 74 degree weather and not dealing with the crazy snow anymore.  I know many people are anxiously awaiting being in a position where they can experience the same thing.  But I can be grateful for the parts of this lifestyle I like and still want to tweak it so it is better for me. When we first started out I was acutely aware of how lucky I was. We were financially stable because I got to keep my job, we were in Florida during the worst snowstorm in New England in many years, we had our families blessing  for our lifestyle choice, and we had many friends who were close by and extremely supportive.  I was grateful for all of that and felt lucky, but that didn’t mean the adjustment wasn’t very difficult.

I tell my girls that most things in life worth having are hard.  I completely believe that.  Childbirth was hard, parenting is hard,  and marriage is absolutely hard.  That doesn’t mean they aren’t wonderful, but it does mean you have to work at them. Being full timers, at least for us,  isn’t always easy.  It requires compromise, some sacrifice, and lots of communication.  And that doesn’t mean anything other than the fact that it is real life.  I know that  in the beginning I fell into the trap of seeing the lifestyle like a vacation.  After a couple of months I knew that wasn’t true, but I still thought since we struggled we must be doing it wrong.  If we could just find the magic combination of travel and work it would be like we had envisioned it in our heads.  In the last two months we have gotten much better at talking about the reality of what it is.  I think that’s a good thing.  It doesn’t mean we aren’t committed, and it certainly doesn’t mean we are doing anything wrong, it just means we haven’t got it all figured out yet. And that’s OK because we will keep plugging away until we figure out what works best for us.

In the meantime, to answer the question,  I am much happier than I was living in New England. My relationship with my husband is much better than it was prior to us going on the road, and I have more deep and meaningful friendships than I ever have in life. Plus, it’s 74 degrees, and not snowing, and that doesn’t suck.

Day 66

Busy day today.  First we had our meeting with the accountant and found out what the news was there. Keep in mind I am not an accountant, and am passing along what I heard him say.  I could have gotten some of this wrong.  We have to pay $3700 this year, which is almost the same as we got in a refund last year.  That really wasn’t that bad, because we had to pay taxes and a penalty on a 401K loan I let expire right after we went on the road, and we ended up paying $1K penalty because we didn’t have ACA compliant health insurance for 9 months out of the year.  Since the compliant insurance was going to cost me $1K a month, I was OK with that.  And in case you were wondering (I was) the executive order that President Trump signed did not stop us from having to pay the penalty.  First, it is only for 2017 forward, and second, the order he signed said the IRS has “the right” to attempt to collect the money but “must” accept the tax return as is.  We could have filed that way and rolled the dice that no one would make a fuss later, but that’s not really our style. Thankfully we are now ACA compliant in 2017, so regardless of what happens with legislation it won’t be an issue going forward.

That amount also included $48 in interest because we didn’t pay 90% of our taxes in the calendar year.  Since the 90% is calculated off the prior year earnings, that would have been impossible for us anyway.  $48 is not a big deal, and going forward we could avoid this interest by paying tax periodically to the government.  Or we may not, since it’s still hard for us to guess what our net income will be.  What Lee would like to do is set aside the money into a savings account as we go so we have it at year end, and I am fine with that.  The good news was we went from a 25% tax rate down to a 15% tax rate because we made so much less money.  The bad news was we had to pay an additional 14% on all business/1099 money which took us to an overall tax rate of 29% for a portion of our funds.  Since this year most of our money came from W-9 jobs, it wasn’t that big of a deal, but it is important to take into account going forward.

We also spent a big chunk of today planning our route and stops when we leave here. Originally we were going to Padre Island and Big Bend, but we had an opportunity to see our friends Deb and Steve, who we have not seen in over a year.  It’s been a long time since we had to coordinate a trip with multiple people and I had forgotten how complicated it could be.  They are headed east at almost the same time we are headed west, so we tried to find a place that worked with both our routes, had things to do, had cell coverage (Steve is still working his corporate job), and had availability.  Not as easy as you would think.  Ultimately we found a place and both booked it at the same time, so we are super excited.  We were also talking to Cori and Greg who will be with us for a couple of days and even though they are on vacation in Mexico found a way to book their spot as well.  Really, really excited about seeing them. (Lest anyone’s feelings get hurt, we not more excited to see one couple than the other. One we are apparently “really, really” excited to see, but the other we are “super” excited to see. We love everyone equally, except those that we love more, and you know who you are. – Lee)

Once we had those dates locked in we went ahead and booked more of our route.  I wanted to visit our friend Sherry in Cottonwood and see Sedona, and when I saw the State Park only had two spots left we went ahead and booked that as well.  Then we looked ahead to Flagstaff but that got a little trickier.  Most of the campgrounds there don’t open until May 1st and we will be just a little earlier than that.  On the plus side there is tons of Forest Service land in that area, so we are going to check that out.  By the time all of that was done several hours had actually passed.  Part of the reason it took that long was we had moderately heavy truck traffic.  The people doing the pond liner finished up today and that just leaves the work-over rig crew.  Not sure yet how much longer that will be, but trying to find out. (Once again, no rush, take your time, guys. – Lee) 

Day 67

I didn’t sleep well at all last night and had a slow start to my day.  Lee worked more on editing (he has completed 171 videos to date) and I looked in a recipe book for a chicken marsala recipe.  It is one of Lee’s favorites, so I would really like to learn how to make it, plus it has Marsala wine and mushrooms in it which works for me.  In the past I always avoided cooking with alcohol for some reason, recently I am finding I really like it. So I am going back and re-looking at some recipes I skipped over in the past and giving them a try.  I’m not nearly as interested in cooking meals though, so Lee and I are largely eating “whatever”, and I am just cooking the items I like.  Tonight I am trying crawfish tail stuffed mushrooms, and that may be my entire dinner. I have always been a person who could mostly eat “whatever” for meals, but Lee has always liked a full meal, with some kind of meat, starch and vegetable. Thankfully he’s fine with cooking his own meals, and I am eating an odd mixture.  Something about working nights has my eating schedule kind of screwy so yesterday I had four small meals; toast/bacon, leftover steak/green beans, a hot dog, and a bologna sandwich.  Works for me.

The mushrooms by the way turned out great.  Over the years Lee and I have tried to duplicate Red Lobster stuffed mushrooms numerous times and were never successful.  These weren’t quite the same, but were definitely in the ball park, and the closest we have ever been to duplicating them. The trick apparently is to make the stuffing first, then saute the mushrooms, without stuffing,  until they are tender.  Once the mushrooms cool you stuff them, top with cheese, and then place in the oven at 350 degrees for 10 minutes to finish off.  Perfect.  The stuffing was close, need to tweak it a bit with a little more salt and maybe a pinch of garlic, but I am thrilled the technique was mastered.  That’s one of the reasons I continue to try new recipes.  Even if the particular recipe isn’t exactly what I want, I often master a new technique in the process. That’s often the fun part.

Day 68

Didn’t sleep well again last night, maybe I am just tired of working nights  When I woke up the company man was leaving and I asked when he thought the fracking would start.  He said they had a couple of days left on the work over rig and it could be a couple of weeks before the fracking began.  That really surprised me, because I thought it would be somewhat immediate, and he saw this and then quickly said it could be sooner, but he really had no idea.  It’s important to note that this particular company man has been our account manager’s point of contact through the entire process.  When I fell into the gate, he is the one who got them to come out and put the drop bars on it.  I figured if anyone would know it would be him, but once again I was told he only knew his part of the process.

In our case that’s OK.  We have 13 days left and if there is a delay in the fracking that is no problem for us.  As much as I would like to experience that so I can report on it, I also would be just fine at this point if we skipped it all together.  From what I have read the traffic is heavy 24/7, which we have not experienced.  Our heaviest traffic days so far have had the volume occurring mostly in the daytime, but from what we have heard the sand trucks come around the clock.  The interval in which you get truck traffic can vary significantly though, depending on where the sand is coming from.  We read one account where all the sand came at once and the gate guard had 20 trucks lined up on the road.  In other accounts the trucks can comes as frequently as every 5 minutes if the sand pile they are pulling from is close by.  I am sure it isn’t solid busy all day, every day, but since we have established the slow days are the good days, we’re not looking forward to it in any event.  If there is a two week delay, we might actually miss it all together which would be just fine with me.  To prepare for leaving Lee made a trip up to San Antonio.  He had to return the speaker bar he bought, get a haircut (he is super shaggy) and make a Costco run.  As tempted as we were to buy enough for two months at Costco that has never worked out well for us in the past.  So he will be buying some things this trip and then we will need to go again when we are near Phoenix with our friends. Hate going twice, but buying huge amounts there always blows our budget and then we never get that money back by buying less the following month.  Best to just stay in the food budget month to month. (I cleverly designed this trip so I ended up arriving on the southwest side of San Antonio at rush hour on a Friday, and Costco was on the northeast side. It took me 90 minutes to go 23 miles. So I ended up not getting a haircut, which is kind of a drag, because my last haircut was November 1st. I’m pretty sure I’ve never gone nearly 6 months without a haircut. And I really don’t want to drive back SA before we leave April 1st, so I will either need to wait until Phoenix, or go the little place here in town. Tracy needs to learn how to cut hair. – Lee)

While he was gone, I spent some time looking at my PMP credentials.  In 2008, I took a class and an extremely hard test and received my Project Manager Professional certification.  In order to maintain this certification I need to earn 60 Professional Development Units (PDU;’s) every three years.  In the past this was easy, and I was working in the field, going to school, and a member of my local Project Management Institute chapter.  This last year I have pretty much blown it off and when I went to pay my annual membership fee was a little concerned to see I  needed to earn 35 credits in the next 406 days.  Since I want to keep my credentials up to date, I need to find a way to earn those credits and I have a couple of different routes I can take.  While I have been out of the field Agile Project Management has become all the rage and they are now offering a separate certification in that methodology.  I could easily earn the credits if I took the classes and got that certification, but that would be a major undertaking.  I had to study every day for 6 months for the last one. Plus, Agile is primarily used for IT projects and although I have managed those in the past they are not my favorite types of projects.  They are lucrative and there is always plenty of work, but I am much more interested in less technical projects, in particular the “soft skills” of team building, process improvement, and change management.  If I am going to re-enter the field I would like to be choosier about what types of projects I work on. In my past I largely had to accept whatever I was offered because I needed the practical experience and of course it was my full time job.  Now, hopefully, I can be choosier.

So this leaves me with volunteering my time and completing some online education.  Thankfully there have been huge improvements in the virtual offerings available and many of those classes are now offered for free to PMI members.  Basically for every 1 hour online course you earn 1 PDU so at worst I need to carve out 35 hours worth of time to watch these seminars. And  if possible I would like to do some volunteering.  There are some virtual positions available through the international network of PMI chapters and it seems like a great way to get my head back in the game and do some networking.  In particular I am interested in working with some overseas chapters to bulk up my international experience. I am really kicking myself though for not looking at this sooner, because we will be traveling soon and I am leery about signing up for anything until we see how the internet connection is in Oregon.  There is a good chance we will not have internet at our site which would make volunteering more challenging.  At least though I can start doing some of the online courses now.  It’s great that we have unlimited data because I don’t need to worry about data usage.  I know that is quite a bit of detail but I am mentioning it for those whose game plan is to maintain a professional career on the road.  There is nothing wrong with taking a break, I actually encourage it, but keep in mind in today’s world skill sets can become outdated very fast and it is certainly something to keep an eye on.

On a completely different note I keep forgetting to mention our “pet roadrunner.”  We have one particular road runner that hasn’t gotten more used to us over time and he/she likes to hang out in the ditch that runs right by the RV.  We haven’t gotten any pictures, because he will come up when we are sitting outside but if we try to go in the RV he takes off.  He’s been getting closer and closer and today he walked up and picked up a bug less than 10 feet from me.  They really are beautiful creatures and I am enjoying getting to see him/her closeup.  I was talking to one of the truck drivers about it and he said some gate guards nearby had one that was really fat.  Every night they put a wooden board out and when they flip it over in the morning it has bugs on it.  They eat their breakfast outside and the road runner, comes every morning and eats the bugs off the board.  Very cool.

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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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Day 30

One thing I forgot to mention yesterday that was a pleasant surprise was we found out they had instituted a change with the water vendor, I’m assuming at least partially  based on what happened with us.  Going forward they are going to have the company scrub and sanitize the fresh water tanks quarterly (they changed their contract with them) and it will be done onsite so the gate guarding folks can watch it being done.  Very cool and so nice to know we were heard.  We also got a visit from our company support person and he brought us some donuts when he brought the water and said thanks for doing a great job.  That was really nice.  Speaking of water, we did really well this week only using about half a tank.  The X factor appears to be how many sinks full of dishes we do, and because we went out one night, and I cooked less, we didn’t do dishes every day.  Also the new popup canopy Lee bought for $50  is working great.  It extends our shade coverage during the hottest part of the day, which is much needed.

You can see the shade square it throws

If it’s not windy we can have both the tent and the awning which gives us even more shade

And the new tent was up just in time, because the day started out pretty hot, and by 2:00pm it was 93 degrees with a cloudless sky.  I worked outside between 1:00pm and 2:45pm and got so hot Lee had to make me take a break and come inside in the AC.  It’s fine in the shade, but this new policy forces us into the sun for longer periods and the gusty hot wind didn’t help as I was struggling with the heat.  Pretty soon I was sweating and feeling pretty flushed.  On the plus side. my legs will be getting that sun I was looking for, but I may need to bust out some sunscreen as this sun is quite intense.  Thanks for all the great suggestions on how to solve the gate problem by the way! (We think we have a winner, but I’m going to test it first before I make the big announcement. – Lee) Lee has a call in to the ranch owner to get permission to make this very minor modification to the gate, and our Account manager seemed pleased that we were trying to help solve the problem.  I am also glad I took my rings off because my hands got caught in the gate a couple of times.  The combination of heavy gate, gusty winds, and sweaty hands isn’t the best.

Right as I was typing that last sentence, the ranch owner stopped by and I went outside to handle trucks while they talked about the gate.  Lee was just starting to explain it when the oil company man coincidentally showed up.  The ranch owner immediately turned away from Lee and started to talk about the problem with the company man, who said he would put drop bars on.  Lee and I were both completely cut out of the conversation.  The ranch owner did ask why the new policy, and the company man stated that it was easier for all their gates to have the same rules.  The ranch owner, to his credit, said he didn’t care if the gate was shut all the time, but was concerned for me since the gates were heavy in the wind, which was nice.  The downside is now we are at the mercy of when/if the company man gets around to it and their solution is not our first choice.  It will actually increase the work load even more. This will require lifting the drop rod, walking each gate over to it’s open position, then dropping the rod before going back and doing the other side.  That will increase the time we spend wrestling with the gate even more on non windy days.  It will probably be the same or a little less on windy days.  Well, it is what it is, but I got to experience first hand what it is like when people make a change to the job you do every day and don’t even ask your opinion.   Not that pleasant of an experience, for us at least. In the meantime, Lee found he can use the chain to hold one side of the gate.  It  involves some bending down, but works in a pinch when it’s super windy.

Its hard to get the hook on the rings but its better than nothing

The ranch owner  had said he would stop and talk to us on the way out, but instead he used the ranch gate, watched me struggle letting a truck in, then took off. No discussion, no update.  Boy, I got mad.  And really, really fast.  And let me be clear, the ranch owner is a nice guy and has been very polite to me, but apparently he had more important things to do and I didn’t need an update.  And that’s what made me angry.  There is a pattern here with these jobs we have been taking (camp hosting aside) where they are hard work, low pay, and the expectation seems to be you will accept the conditions as is and shut up about it.  And for those of you who are perfectly fine with that, more power to you. I finally realized in that moment that I am just not.  I’ve worked plenty of low level positions in my life (security guard, waitress, monitoring station operator, secretary) under way more dire financial circumstances than these and I still felt I had a voice. In these temporary jobs I mostly don’t feel that way.  And you  have to understand that by nature I am a rule follower.  I have to force myself to stand up for myself.  I am much, much better at standing up for others, but generally when it’s me I let things go, and let things go and then blow.  So when I do get worked up enough to say something  I want to be heard. I don’t expect to get my way, but I want my concern acknowledged, and if possible addressed.  I think that’s pretty reasonable, but apparently in this world it’s not.  And I never signed up for that.

Lee of course has no problem at all speaking up for himself and I end up often being the “voice of reason.”  But I am getting pretty tired of that and standing out there in the hot  sun fighting that gate I was really tired of it.  And before I go any further I feel the need to kind of prove my case.  I almost got knocked off my feet a couple times today so let me show you what I am dealing with here.

This is the size of the walkway I use to bring the two gates together

Around that are these cattle guards and as you can see my foot can easily fall in so I try to stay on the walkway

Running back and forth AND trying to stay on that walkway is tough, plus these gates are heavy for me and when the wind was gusting I almost got knocked off my feet a couple of times.  The scampering back and forth doesn’t help as I really try to be deliberate in where I step.  Basically it’s like walking a balance beam holding something heavy with the wind pushing at you.  And it was very hot.

So I was upset, which made Lee upset, and we started talking about finding another gig.  Work is picking up in the area and since we are at the lowest wage we are pretty confident we could make more money.  Plus, we now know the questions to ask and could make sure we had a gate that fit our needs better.  I was close, I mean  really close, and the only thing that stopped me from calling one of the numerous job opportunities we have seen on the Facebook gate group was the young woman we initially interviewed with.  I like her very much and she has really tried to take care of us and I just didn’t want to do that to her.  So I took a deep breath and went back out to the gate.  I had three or four trucks lined up and  was struggling with the wind when Lee came out and said “Shut the gate”.  Since there were trucks in the general area I didn’t really understand but he quietly said “The company man he needs to  see it.”  (The company man was one of the vehicles waiting. – Lee)  So I brought the gate to center and of course it swung open with the wind, so I ran over to it and the company man saw me struggling.  He pulled up immediately, lowered his window, and said to Lee “The guy behind us is fixing this tomorrow.”  OK then.  And “the guy behind” was one of our favorite guys from the construction company so we got to talk to him a little and ask him if the drop rods he was going to install could be locked in both the up and down position.  No problem.  To his credit he looked pretty upset and he is fixing it first thing in the morning.  Well of course that made me feel better and in the meantime Lee rigged together our “Jim Jam” named after our friend Jim who had the idea.  Pretty awesome, and he even shot some video to show the difference.

Lee fixing the gate for me

He later used two of the smaller clamps.  The Jim Jam is flexible so I can push the gate but it’s rigid enough that it also keeps it in place when I need it to stay

As you can see I look pretty wrung out, but at this point  I was happy we had a solution to get me through the day

So here’s the thing.  The wind problem is solved and more importantly the work associated with opening the gate is somewhat solved because Andy, one of our readers who is a long-time gate guard, suggested we only open half the gate for pickup trucks which honestly never even occurred to me.  We have been doing that all evening and it is waaaaay less work than opening and shutting the full gate.   So I have to ask myself was getting upset worth it?  Would this all have worked itself out if I would have just sucked it up and sat on my feelings? I think the short answer is “no”.  They wouldn’t have put rods on the gate.  Lee wouldn’t have reached out for alternative solutions.  We would have just suffered along and knowing us that wouldn’t have gone well. I think getting angry is OK.  I think not being satisfied with the status quo is equally ok, as long as either state isn’t all the time.  Great change comes from discontent. Almost every invention ever made came from someone being unhappy about something.  So again, it’s totally OK if you’re not a person who gets crazy about these sort of things.  And it’s even OK if you think we are wasting our time or making ourselves unhappy for little gain.  I don’t believe that, and it’s my life and my time.  To the contrary, I think I have to agree with Lee that a little more discontent is called for.  If I was OK with the status quo we would still be living in New England freezing our butts off right now.  The fact that we are not is a good thing even if everything else isn’t perfect.

This is actually the absolute best solution because only opening half the gate is half the work! The little trucks (the bulk of our traffic) can drive through this and it forces them to go slow.  So thanks Andy!!!

Thirty days into the job by the way, and new policy aside it has been fine.  We still have tons of projects to work on and the hours seem to be working OK for us both.  The key for us has been both of us to go to sleep when it’s dark outside.  We did discuss changing that to make the workload more equitable, but neither of us wanted to try to go to sleep when it was light out.  Both of us  have worked third shift a time or two in our past and it never went well.  Our current sleep schedules of 9pm – 4am (Lee) and 4:30am – 12pm (me) are close enough to our regular sleep schedules to make it work. We are really leery of messing with that.  The money is fine as long as we are getting a reasonable amount of downtime and with very few exceptions that seems to be the case.  Hopefully once this gate problem is solved we can go back to things being comfortable.

This wasn’t all we had to do all day by the way.  While all this was happening we were also getting the paperwork filled out for our summer job, which we are pretty excited about.  Because the job is for a large electric company the HR process is pretty involved.  We had to agree to a credit and background check (they said they don’t actually do the credit check, but we don’t care, our credit is great) , coordinate a drug screening and a physical, send three additional references, one of whom needs to be a former supervisor, and sign a non-disclosure. I read the last pretty carefully and it relates mainly to computer programs, processes, and company proprietary information.  I will need to be a little careful when I blog about the job, but it seems pretty clear this language is universally used for the power company employees, which makes sense. Nothing in there about pictures thankfully, because that would be a bummer, so I should be fine as long as I continue  my new policy of not mentioning the company by name. Since we have to print and mail this information (their policy) we are also printing out all the tax information.  All we are missing at this point is one form from Fidelity, but I think I have enough to get started.  Update:  Lee found a free fax service online and “faxed” our email so it was all done before we woke up!!  Nice.

And I found time in the day to read a really outstanding post by our friend Howard from RV-Dreams about balance in the lifestyle. (Howard and Linda are at the big RV show in Columbus, OH, this weekend, by the way, doing free seminars on full timing. If you’re in Cbus you should go to the show. Attend a seminar. Meet Howard and Linda. Buy an RV. Sell all your junk, quit your job and hit the road. Or just tell them we said Hi! – Lee) He talks about the need to really look at work/life balance and the fact that even after 12 years they need to keep an eye on things.  The post reviews their balance history and spoke to me on many levels and as is often the case with his posts they come at a very good time.  We need to remember that we are only a couple years into this lifestyle and obviously we still don’t have it figured out.  (Not me. I have it all figured out. – Lee) And that’s OK, because even people who have been doing this a lot longer still make adjustments.  It’s comforting and I really appreciate the fact that he wrote this.  And finally, just to show the day wasn’t all pain and misery here are a couple pictures of some lighter moments.  When the sun went down, things were much, much nicer.

I made Lee a new recipe;  ham and bean rollups. His response “Why are you making me eat me prison food?”  lol. They weren’t that bad, but his reaction made me laugh. (This is her idea of “lighter” and “not pain and misery”. – Lee)

And we had a beautiful sunset

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Day 27 

It was Super Bowl Sunday and once again Lee let me change the schedule so I could watch the game.  I was nervous about wearing my Patriots shirt in the heart of Texas but a couple of the guys actually talked to me about it and spoke with respect.  Since there are some New England haters out there I thought I would take a moment to talk about my team.  

We moved to New England in 2001.  I was new to the area and new to the New England culture (which is quite different than the Midwest) but I did bring a love of football and an appreciation of the game.  Since the New England games were always on in the area, I watched them and soon became a fan.  Living right between the Bengals and the Browns I loved pro ball, but never had a team.  I had the Ohio State Buckeyes of course, but at the pro level I always just appreciated good play.  And I loved the underdogs.  So in 2002 when this little known duo of Belichik and Brady won their first Super Bowl I was hooked.

It wasn’t even really Tom by the way, despite his good looks and amazing game play, it was Bill.  He reminded me so much of my dad and his mantra of “Do Your Job” really spoke to me.  Plus, to be honest, having a sports team to talk about when working in a male dominated industry is a good thing.  So at first it was fitting in, then it was admiration, but the year the Brady broke his leg and the backup quarterback stepped in and they did so well, it was true respect.  The same with this year.  Say what you want about “Deflategate”  but those coaches did a hell of a job with a 2nd and 3rd string QB that kept them in the running despite the 4 game suspension.

So I am really really happy they won.  Not only won, but set so many records, first QB and Coach with 5 Superbowl wins, first game won in overtime, largest deficit (by far) overcome to win a Superbowl game.  Plus it was great to see my favorite sportscaster Howie Long on the field with his son becoming only the fourth ever father/son team to both win a Superbowl.  And when Tom knelt on the field at the end, I’ll be honest I had tears in my eyes.  Because these players to me represent what makes this country great.  Any given Sunday, anything can happen.  Teams that shouldn’t win, do.  Players get hurt or sidelined and unknowns step up and become stars.  Grit, determination, and yes, pure love of the game can make all of the difference.  And even if you “hate” a team you can admire their play. It is uniquely American and I love it.  And I love the Patriots and am very proud to be a fan. (And for those of you who don’t care about football, or can take it or leave it, do yourself a big favor and take five minutes to enjoy this. – Lee)

I am writing this right after the win, so I’m on a little bit of a “high”.  Thankfully things were pretty slow.  Lee actually went to bed because he was tired and I thought the game was done and thankfully there weren’t many trucks so I only missed one of the two-point conversions.  Yes, the world of oil drilling goes on, even during the Superbowl, although I have to wonder if they would have shut down for the night if Dallas was in the Superbowl!

It was quiet all night except for a black cat that was making one of the sensors go off.  That’s a little unsettling, having the chime go off but not seeing what’s setting it off.  I like cats and it occurred to me I could make friends with it, but then I realized that it would just hang around and keep setting off the alarms which is not a great idea.  Frankly, I am surprised that a cat could live out here with all the large raptors and coyotes, but it is jet black so maybe that’s helping it.

Pretty cat, but anything that sets off the sensors is  not good

Day 28

– – Today started out as another pretty  slow day and just to show that things can change quickly they did.  Around 7:30pm we were handed a printed email from one of the company men that stated our old company man (who we liked very much) had moved onto another rig and he was our point of contact.  The email stated that starting immediately ALL gates associated with this oil company were to be kept closed, and opened and closed for each vehicle.  Well, that’s not good news.  I keep it closed at night, at the request of the ranch owner, but the  traffic is much lighter than in the daytime.  Lee gets probably triple the amount of traffic I do and this will  increase his task time significantly.  (Right now when folks are already in the database it takes less than 30 seconds to check them in and you can usually do that while sitting under the awning which protects us from sun and rain.  Going forward, the process will involve walking to the gate, unlocking, logging the vehicle into the tablet, opening the gate, waiting for them to drive through, then manually moving each piece of gate back to the center and clipping.  This may not sound like a huge  deal, but takes a very simple 30 second task and turns it into 90 second task, at minimum, and possibly longer. It may end up not being a big deal, we will have to see, but it kind of stinks to have things changed up when you have established a comfortable routine that works well. After checking around it’s probably the result of a new safety  policy, but if that’s the case I actually feel less safe when I am standing right next to the gate when the  big rigs go buy.  Much better to flag them in from over by our rig. – –  (We asked, but haven’t heard exactly what the point of this new rule is. To be clear, we do not make ANY decisions as to who comes through the gate. ALL we are supposed to do is log the traffic, so there doesn’t seem to be any reason for this, other than it prevents someone from “sneaking” through the gate if we go inside for a few minutes. I don’t personally care what the reason is, all I care is that it has tripled our workload. Trace has more on that, so back to Trace…-Lee) 

And in case you are thinking “You are getting paid to work, so what’s the difference?”, well that is sort of fair and kind of not. As you can see from the latest spreadsheet our hourly rate has steadily gone down as truck patterns have  spread out and most days even our adjusted hourly wage is less than minimum wage.  One of the things that still made that OK was the amount of downtime within most hours and anything that increases the workload and consequently reduces the downtime must be taken into the  equation.  For example,  in the time it took me to write the paragraph above that is between the dashes  I went outside four times to unlock the gate and check a truck in.  So it took me roughly 20 minutes to write one paragraph.  Hard to get into a creative flow under those circumstances.  Well, like I said, we will have to see how it goes. Here’s the spreadsheet for last week.  You be the judge.

Day 29

I forgot to mention yesterday that we received a call that the  fuel for the generator would be a day or two late.  Lee checked the tank and we were doing fine with 1/3 of the fuel still there (a couple of “solar only” afternoons helped) and we were very happy to get  a heads up so we could have adjusted if necessary.  A couple people have mentioned using our own generator, but while we could certainly use our generator if our batteries got too low, that wouldn’t work for the outside lights because they are hard wired into that generator.  The lights are the big thing, because running this gate without them is not fun, and unfortunately there is no substitute for that.  (It’s really, really REALLY dark out here when those lights are out. Not to mention using our generator eats our propane. – Lee) 

Lee spent the morning with the new process in place and he was not happy.  He did some time studies and for him it used to take 20 seconds to log in a truck (30 seconds if it wasn’t already in the database) and now it is taking at least 80 seconds, and if there’s any wind at all, closer to 120 seconds. This significantly reduced the amount of time he was able to do other things. The gate is very difficult to manage in the wind.  You have to manually close both sides, one at a time, and the wind will push them in either direction.  So you have to gauge the wind, which is gusty, not steady, and push one gate, then push the other before the first gate swings away from the center. (The gates swing in both directions.) I am actually better at this than Lee, mainly because I am willing to scamper to catch the gate.  Lee not so much.  (I am a little on the large side for scampering. I mostly amble. Sometimes I strut. – Lee) It’s tough to explain, so I took a series of pictures to show you.  It looks kind of funny, but try doing this 50 times a day. (It’s actually more like 80 times a day.)  This is all one instance of trying to get the gate closed while the wind was blowing.

First he swings the left side to the middle,

Then walks over to swing the right side to the middle. As you can see, the left side is waiting there patiently. And the a little gust of wind comes along….

….and blows the left side open while he brings the right side to the middle.

This is FUN!

Soooo, he walks over to retrieve the left side while the right side waits patiently……

….aaaaaand the right side gets blown open.

Wheeeeeeeeeeee. It’s like being at a theme park, except NOT.

Anyone want to guess what happened while he was getting the right side?

When it goes over the ditch you have to grab it close to the edge which requires some muscle because you are pulling the entire weight of the gate right at the hinge. Plus you are standing on the cattle guard so balance isn’t that great. Those bars are about 8 inches apart, and there’s a 2 foot drop. That’s a leg breaker for sure if loose your footing. I try to avoid this scenario at all cost.

Soooo, bring back the right………………

……and while you go get the left, the right swings back in the other way.

Won’t stay in the middle and nothing in place to make it stay there

If a gust hits when it’s this close it can still get away from you. Need to be careful too because the gate is heavy. You’d be amazed how hard that gate can hit you once it starts to swing.

Success

So, the above took about two minutes or so.  More excitement, same money.

After the gate closing we sat down and talked about it.  Lee had put a question out on our gate guarding Facebook group and the general consensus was, yes it does happen, but it is rare and very unpleasant when it happens. A few people said “suck it up” but many others said they would never take a job where the gate had to be manually opened or closed every time.  One person even said to make sure I took off my rings because his wife’s finger ring got stuck in a gate and was ripped off and worker’s comp refused to pay anything because they were independent contractors.  I actually had heard that story before from our neighbor down the road, but I appreciated the reminder and as of right now my rings are off.   In any event, sometimes it’s the oil company, and other times it is the ranch owner, and sometimes the ranch owner can supersede the oil company, so maybe we will get lucky there.  It is definitely a question the more experienced folks ask prior to taking the contract, and a big lesson learned for us.  After we both spoke about how we were feeling, I laid out our options as I saw them.

1. Do nothing and live with it.  This might work in the short-term but we still have a couple months left in this gig and it was pretty unpleasant for Lee. (I hardly ever think that “do nothing” is a solution. There’s always room for improvement, and while I believe in balancing effort with return, there’s almost always something that can be done. – Lee)

2. Talk to someone at the gate guard company and try to get it changed.  Lee really wanted to do this, I thought it was an incredibly bad idea.  He felt we had nothing to lose, and even thought we might ask for more money since we were on the bottom of the pay scale as it is.  I pulled our contract and looked at the language and it is very specific that we have to guard the gate however the client wants it done.  So not only do I think it will accomplish nothing, but I also think it will overspend what little capital we have managed to earn with these folks and possibly damage our long-term relationship.  Lee was much less concerned about that.  (Only from the standpoint of having a relationship where I am being taken advantage of is not a relationship  which I care about damaging. – Lee) As a side note this is sort of an ongoing conversation we have been having, and although I have come much closer to his way of thinking, I can’t look at every one of these jobs as unique entities, especially not this one since there is such a tight community. (Just to clarify, my problem is not what they want us to do, my problem is that they gave us an assignment with very specific parameters for a very specific price, and that price was partially justified by the ease of the work. The parameters have changed, the work has tripled, the price should change. If I hired a contractor to build a porch, and my order didn’t involve a railing, and then later I decided I wanted a railing, the contractor isn’t going to throw the railing in for free. Not even the labor. I happen to think that “scope creep” is a serious problem, and while I agree that a little extra for free is good for building good will, I don’t think that applies here. – Lee)
   
3. Passive/aggressively fight the rule. Follow the rule for a few days then go back to the old way and see what happens.  Slow down work so it’s an inconvenience to everyone and see what happens.  Lee was 100% against this approach.  He simply was not going to change his work ethic in response to a rule, no matter how he felt about the rule. I, on the other hand, was surprised I was actually thinking along those lines.  For many years I have been a person who handed changes to others.  I have seen first hand their reactions, and although I like to think I did a better job of communicating why we were changing things, I also know that sometimes I made people’s lives much more difficult.  In those situations, employees don’t have much power but they do have some and I have seen many changes simply fail to “stick” because the employees behaved in the ways I described.  Sometimes it made the employers really think about what they were asking for and sometimes it just wasn’t worth the fight.  It’s never been my way of handling things either, but now that I am in the situation I really get it.  Everything was fine, and now it’s not, and no one even bothered to explain why.  That’s tough to swallow and the “you’re lucky to have a job” mentality has never worked for me and probably doesn’t work for most people.

4. Leave. The nuclear option is always an option, but in this case pretty extreme.  We don’t have another job to go to, for one thing.  It would damage our relationship with this gate guarding company and probably cause us future problems with other companies. Some of these work kamper jobs are like this.  They aren’t all stand alone.  Plus, we need the money.  If we were doing this for extra money that would be a different conversation, but the first problems still apply.

5. Swap our shifts. This is what we ultimately decided on.  Night shift has always had the gate shut, and because there is tons of down time in between trucks it’s not a big deal.  It will give Lee all the time he wants to edit, and I will go back to squeezing my blogging and recipe book project into what downtime I have.  I’m not sure how great that is going to work out for me.  I’ve known all along that I had the better end of this deal from a traffic and free time perspective, and it is going to stink to give that up.  Still, of the options I can see at this point it is a place to start and we can always choose another one if it doesn’t work out.  Plus, who knows?  Other folks with more reputation and emotional coin may fight back against the rule and it could be overturned.  Again, this is definitely not the norm and since it was done for multiple sites, other folks are also being affected. We will see.

I will just say one more thing though.  Every time I start to think, “this is getting boring”, or “I am running out of things to write about” something like this happens.  It’s like God/Universe says “Challenge accepted!!”  Seriously, I have got to stop thinking that.

Update:  After Lee proofread this he asked why I thought I wouldn’t like days.  That was easy.  I just barely think this gig is financially worth working nights and that is because of all the free time I have.  If I change to days and all the free time goes away, at that point you might as well get a job making more money.  Lee at this point changed his mind about swapping shifts.  He didn’t see any reason why both of us should be unhappy, and he thought any benefits he might get by working nights would be outweighed by actually working nights.  In that case he would rather do the gallant thing and stay on days, but he is keeping the option open to say something to the account manager.  He promises not to throw a grenade on the situation but it is important that he lets her know that he thinks this sucks.  So it’s status quo at least for now. (I just need to figure out a diplomatic way to put it. Diplomacy is not my strong suit. Why burn a bridge when you can take it out with a ballistic missile from orbit? Seriously though, any suggestions on how I can make my point clear without doing any damage are welcome. I’ll even make it a contest! Best submission gets a free packet of desiccant in the next package of bacon bits that they buy! – Lee) 

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Day 20 

One thing that’s different about the nights (other than the 40 degree temps) is the well drilling fluid.  I’m not sure what the big trucks carrying this is for, but they are coming at least once an hour.  What this does essentially is stop me from really taking any naps.  Staying awake is my preference, so it’s OK, but I did like the 1:30am -3:30am lull that really allowed me to chill.  Ah well.  It’s the job. At least we aren’t as busy as the gate down the road.  They get at least 5 trucks an hour all through the night so not really any break down there. One of the guys working on the water well did stop by and say they were pulling the heavy equipment for another emergency job tomorrow.  He looked slightly apologetic, but I really didn’t know why.

Interesting side note, I am a very curious person, but in this job that curiosity is extremely muted.  Partly it’s because we can’t see what’s going on, partly it’s because when people do talk to us they use jargon we don’t understand, and I also think partly because of the nature of the job. I don’t need to know what’s happening back at the rig to check trucks in and out and although that’s never stopped me in the past, in this job, maybe for the first time, I don’t care that much. I’m not sure if that is progress or it’s not, but it is new.  Anyway, I had a hard time falling asleep and then woke up an hour early at 11am.  Turns out moving the equipment also included using the backhoe to put dirt on the water line right in front of our bedroom window and then moving a huge flat bed in front of same window and rolling the big equipment on it.  OK,  I’m up!  I suppose I should have paid more attention when he said he was “staging” but not sure what I could have done about it even if I had known.

Lee snapped this pic of what was going on outside my bedroom window. No wonder I woke up!

One last thing about last night.  Our data finally rolled over so we have started a new tracking program.  Lee created a spreadsheet (I have obviously infected him with my particular brand of crazy) (No, no, I was already crazy long before. I used to have a spreadsheet for everything in the world. I love data. I could tell the kids to the penny how much it cost to run a light bulb or leave a computer monitor when nobody was in the room (they didn’t care), or how much money the furnace burned by the minute (they didn’t care), and how much it cost to stand in front of the fridge with the door open for 30 seconds (they didn’t care). I knew to the tenth of a mile how far away things were, and what was the most efficient route to get there depending on time of day and traffic density. Don’t give me crazy. I was the leading distributor of crazy for New England for fifteen years.-Lee) Every night we are writing down how much data we’ve used by device. I am responsible for my iPad and iPhone, and he gets the info for his iPhone, the PC and the laptop in the morning. Imagine his surprise when he saw I used 3 GB on the computer last night.  I watch  Top Chef and they have an online portion called Last Chance Kitchen .  I was way behind on seeing who got eliminated so I watched all nine 10 minute videos last night.  Well actually 10 since I accidentally closed the window when a truck came and loaded one twice.  Turns out only watching part of each video doesn’t matter.  You are charged for the entire video regardless of how long you watch it.  I really didn’t understand that.  I mean I like the show and everything, but not enough to burn an entire day worth of  data in one hour.  (80 GB / 30 days = 2.66GB per day alloted).  It was good though, because the tracking sheet’s job is to highlight issues like these and discuss them.  Lee understands I don’t know what he knows so I am learning. (If you ask nicely I will give you a more detailed breakdown of our data usage in the near future. It’s not like I’m doing anything else. I’m also working on a water audit because I am a complete nerd. – Lee)

And I probably should mention here that we do take advantage of free wifi when we are able, but those chances are a lot less frequent than people talk about, at least in our experience.  We have had limited success with McDonald’s, Starbucks, etc but we have had  very good luck with libraries.  Unfortunately, Dilley is so small it doesn’t even have a library, let alone one with internet.  Plus, using other people’s wifi really sucks up time.  Lee has to sit there, sometimes for hours, while files upload/download.  We both like libraries, but that’s much different than setting a program up out of your rig and then doing whatever you want until it is completed. We will do it though when we are in a data crunch if able.  But it is definitely not something you want to build an internet usage strategy around in my opinion.

Day 21

All of a sudden we have tons of things to do.  The W-2’s are flowing in so I need to start preparing the taxes, I am getting some final few recipes together to try and finish those out, getting caught up on all the shows I missed when we ran out of data and I started a new book called Seveneves which is excellent. Seriously, if you like science fiction, this book is good!  Forty pages in I didn’t want to put it down.  I read some in the afternoons when it’s my turn to be on duty and the traffic level and weather make it nice to sit outside.  It’s not great having to put a good book down every time there is a truck, but when the sun is shining and when the traffic is light it’s very nice.

Thanks to everyone who has been sending me recipes, by the way.  I really appreciate it.  I’m trying to fill in these last few holes with very specific recipes, but I promise I’ll try them all eventually.  I’ve been giving that some thought actually, since I have finished some of the categories.  I’m going to keep trying new things for sure even after the book has been done.  It’s been a lot of fun trying new recipes and keeps cooking from being a chore.  I would like to try more complicated recipes though I think.  I stuck to very simple ones for most of the book, because they lend themselves more to the RV Lifestyle, but now that I have learned some new techniques I would definitely like to try some “fancier” dishes.  That can wait until another day though, for right now I really want to get this done.  I’ve been trying these new recipes for over two years now and it will be nice to cook whatever I want without feeling like I need to always try something new.  And yes I know that feeling is 100% self-imposed but I can’t help it.  I don’t know what the opposite of procrastinator is but about most things I am just that. (Believe it or not, there is not technically a one word opposite of procrastinate. However. If you wanted to create one, following the rules of latin by which procrastinate was created, then it would be innunctiation, but that’s kind of hard to say, and it won’t catch on because people are lazy. You could throw out the latin altogether and use a greek prefix, and make it precrastinate. I don’t like that either. It sounds too easy. I suppose antecrastinate would work, but it lacks a certain zip. My favorite is concrastinate. – Lee) The sooner I get something done the better, which is why as soon as the last tax document is in place that will become the top priority, even though I know I can file an extension.

Speaking of taxes, our mail service (which scans the front of envelope so we can look at it online and see if want it shredded, sent or opened and scanned) received a letter from the IRS and I’ll be honest, I was a little worried.  Last year was the first year I ever filed a Schedule C, and although I had a good accountant helping, you never know if a mistake was made.  Thankfully we had the mail scanned and it said the IRS was paying us $47 in interest on last year’s tax return.  It took forever for us to get the check because our account was flagged because of the move to Florida and we had to go through a pretty complicated process to prove we were real people and not fraud perpetrators.  Seriously complicated.  The questions they wanted answers to on the online version I couldn’t even answer so eventually I just called them on the phone and it took almost 45 minutes to verify who I was. Apparently there have been some fraudulent returns in the Florida area and our move and refund flagged us.  Anyway, I’ll take the $47 but I am surprised by the amount. The refund check wasn’t that much money, and the payment wasn’t that late, but maybe they assessed themselves a late payment penalty..lol.   I was just glad no mistake was made.  I felt extremely confident in the deductions we took because we were VERY conservative, but no one likes to get a letter from the IRS.  This year I have no idea how it is all going to turn out.  I had a little income carry over from my old job, we had two jobs with taxes taken out, and one job where taxes were not and some business income.  Putting all that together is probably going to be a little complicated.

I also have been meaning to mention that Lee is sleeping very well.  When I traveled for work he never slept that great without me there, but he is sleeping very soundly.  I am sure subconsciously he knows I am safe and in the rig, so it’s OK for him to sleep, and he does seem to appreciate not being woken up by me throughout the night. I always was a light sleeper and the difficulty getting my temperature regulated has only made that worse.  It’s a small room, so as hard as I try to get up quietly I was disturbing his sleep.  If nothing else he’s sleeping well and between that and the project he is working on he’s been in a very good mood. (Fear not. I’m sure my good mood is only temporary, and in no time at all I will be back to my lovable cranky self. – Lee) 

Finally, here are last week’s numbers. As you can see, the pattern shifted over the weekend and now we are getting 1-3 trucks every hour, even through the night.  Part of that is large trucks bringing drilling fluid.  That seems to happen 1-2 times an hour at night now and the other part is they are still using the very noisy water pump which breaks down every night and they are in and out a few times trying to get it up and running.  Hopefully that traffic will stop as soon as the well is done, but in the meantime the in and out is a little tough at night.

Even though the number of trucks per hour went down (it was actually quite slow on Sunday) the hour rate (which I am basing on hours worked) has gone down as well. I’m really not a fan of making less than minimum wage, even when I was a salaried restaurant manager I wasn’t OK with it.  When we had down time I really was OK with the adjusted hours, but now that the trucks are coming round the clock I have to call it what it is.  Even though the work is very easy, there is a reason for a minimum wage, and personally I don’t think being an independent contractor should change that.  Actually you really should be paid more, because in that scenario you are responsible for the employer’s piece of the taxes.  Your mileage may vary on that one, but that’s the way I feel about it.  It’s not a deal breaker for me, because really we both like the job, but intellectually it bothers me. (At some point in the future we’re going to have to have a longer discussion here about full timing and income, but today is not the day. I’m not procrastinating, I’m just gathering data. – Lee) 

Practically speaking,  the biggest consequence of trucks throughout the night is no opportunity for naps anymore.  It really is better that I stay awake, but I did like having the option to nap a bit between trucks. This is off the table though now, because generally the 2-3 trucks I get an hour are spaced pretty evenly so I might have 20-30 minutes between them. It’s not awful or anything, but I did like the long stretches of quiet between trucks at night and the fact that most of these trucks are the bigger ones is a little jarring when I go out there to open the gate.  I really need to pay attention, because its a narrowish space for those big guys and I make sure I stand well back from them.  The weather did warm back up though and stayed in the 50’s which was a good thing.  40’s and below is chilly especially when you are opening and shutting a metal gate.  The 50’s I can definitely handle.

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