Thanks, Everyone!

First off, I want to thank everyone for the many warm birthday greetings (and yours too, Nick). It almost makes up for being officially old now.

The gate’s been pretty quiet recently with only about 70 to 90 vehicles a day. Looks like the frack site is starting to go into production, and a lot of equipment is being pulled out. The pipeline work still gets a lot of traffic through the gate, but we don’t have to log them, just the people going to the 3 sites here.

Other than that, not much is going on here.

I did want to post the latest photo of Zoe Nadeau. She’s our son-in-law Lowell’s sister’s daughter’s daughter. I’d probably have to sign up for Ancestry.Com to figure that out.
 

Now that’s a real cutie!
 
And of course the obligatory Landon photo

That’ll about wrap it up for today. With all the bad weather in the Midwest, I thought I’d repost about one of our encounters with it up there.
 
On by the way, since Nick likes to tell tales on other people, be sure and ask him about how he almost cut his own ear off . . .TWICE!

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So far, no snow…yet

Originally posted on May 26, 2010

We left Riverfront RV Park in Garrison, MT about 8:45 am heading for Billings, MT about 270 miles away. We had planned to leave about 8 but it was in the mid 30’s outside, and the bed was warm, and we overslept. What can I say.

This park had some really nice views.  Here’s a close-up of the mountain I showed you yesterday.

And here’s the view in the other direction.  You just can’t beat views like this.

But before we left I wanted to put some air in one of my tires, so I started up the coach engine and went outside to air up the tire. All of a sudden I hear the engine accelerate to what sounded like wide open throttle. Running around to the door I looked in and saw Mister standing on the left hand control panel looking out the window at what I had been doing. Unfortunately, this meant he was standing on the cruise control switch. When you’re idling, the cruise control allows you to set the engine speed.

Mister set it to wide open!

But luckily there didn’t seem to be any damage done.

Anyway, about an hour after we left, and after a long slow climb, we crossed the Continental Divide at 6393ft and started back down. There was still a lot a snow along the road up there.

About 11:30 am we stopped at a rest area and Jan fixed sandwiches for lunch. Then it was back on the road.

Then, about 1:30 we stopped in Big Timber to take on diesel. The last time I got diesel in Washington state, it cost $3.70 a gallon. Today it was $3.04.

A big difference!

We got into Billings about 3 pm and got parked at the Billings’ Trailer Village.  It was certainly nice to have better weather than the last time we were in Billings.

Here’s how it looked today.

When we first came thru on our way to Alaska the end of March of 2008, we had only planned to stay a couple of days to visit a friend of Jan’s. However the weather didn’t cooperate.

We ended up staying a week due to heavy snow. Here’s how it looked then. Here’s my beautiful wife taking in the snow.

And here’s Mister first encounter with snow. He put one foot down on the step and reconsidered going outside.

Then he just sat in the door and looked around. He absolutely refused to go outside. After all, he’s a Texas cat. He doesn’t do snow.

Then, coming back from Alaska the first part of October 2008, we again stopped in Billings for a couple of days, And again we got snowed in for a week. With even more snow this time.

14 inches!

But this time we broke the jinx. But as Jan said, “the day’s not over yet.” We’ll see.

About 4 pm we headed out for some errands and dinner. We first stopped by Sam’s and picked up some kitty litter, then it was on to Great Clips to get my bi-annual haircut.

Which took about 5 minutes. Hah!

Then it was off to Famous Dave’s, one of our favorite BBQ places, for dinner. They have a great new BBQ sauce called “80 Proof” made with Jack Daniels.  And it is good!

We got home about 5:30 and Jan went across the street to do some laundry. She likes to do our throw rugs in the bigger commercial machines. It’s quicker.

While she was gone, I vacuumed the rugs and floors, and cleaned some spots on the rug.

Then it was in for the night.

Tomorrow we head for Gillette, WY, about 238 miles away, for 4 days of the American Coach Rally.

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Thought for the Day:

Crime doesn’t pay. You have to use a gun.

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Jan’s no longer an illegal . . .

unlicensed security guard. After 18 months of waiting she finally got her license.

We both applied when we started gate guarding in April 2012, and mine came back in about 5 weeks. But hers never did. I told that it was probably due to her very shady past, and she couldn’t pass the background check. She threw something at me. So now I’m thinking it was probably a felony assault conviction.

But as it turned out, it was probably a problem with her fingerprint card. Maybe.  And possibly some government incompetence in there as well.

I kept checking back with Gate Guard Services after we left here in August 2012, and finally in January 2013, the Texas Department of Public Safety told GGS there was a problem with her fingerprint card. So before we left Houston for our travels, we submitted a new one. And waited.

And waited.

And when we started gate guarding again this past August and it still hadn’t shown up, I decided to just forget about it. After all I wasn’t the one that was guarding without a license. But maybe that did the trick.

I got a call from the GGS Corpus office about a week ago and was told that it had finally come in. And unlike my license that was just printed on piece of paper, she got a nifty drivers license-type of plastic card. So I guess good things do come to those who wait. I’m jealous.

The licenses are good for two years from the issue date, so mine expires in May of 2014 and Jan’s expires in September of 2015, so we’ll have to keep track of when to renew them.

Blog readers and our new friends Margaret and Rich Bergen showed up at the gate again Wednesday afternoon. And they brought food!

After they left here Tuesday after their visit to our gate, they drove on down to Corpus Christi and spent the night. Then coming back to San Antonio Wednesday afternoon they stopped off at the BBQ place out on the Interstate and brought us sandwiches.

Jan’s anniversary present finally showed up today. I had ordered her one of the new KIndle Paperwhite models, but being brand-new, they didn’t ship until September 30th.

Kindle Paperwhite

Jan was really surprised and happy to get one. She said she’d thought about asking for one because she reads a lot when she’s out on the gate and has to use her old Kindle in the daytime and then switch to the Kindle Fire at night. But with the Paperwhite she can do both.

This is because the Paperwhite has a built-in backlight so it can be read in the daylight or at night in complete darkness. Even in daylight the screen is much brighter and clearer than our old Kindles. And because it uses a faster processor, the page turns are much smoother too.

Being cheap, I decided to save $20 and get the Paperwhite with “Special Offers”. This is Amazon’s polite way of saying “Ads”. But they’re pretty unobtrusive. Where our old Kindle has a rotating set of blockprint-looking pictures when it’s turned off, “Special Offers” shows you ads for other books. And there’s also a half inch high banner ad at the bottom of the home page. There are NO ads shown within the books themselves. I also like the fact that you can get the Paperwhite with ads to try it out, and if you think they’re still too annoying, you can pay the $20 difference and they go away.

Personally I don’t find them a problem, and in fact bought one of the books that was advertised on the off screen. So I guess they work.

Kindle Paperwhite Cover

Once Jan had seen the Paperwhite, I ordered her a cover for it. They come in 15 different colors, and she wanted red. So red she gets.

Another neat thing about this cover is that it utilizes the Paperwhite’s Auto Wake/Sleep mode. Closing the cover turns off the Kindle, and opening the cover turns it back on. All automagically. Neat!

Under the heading of The Butterfly Effect, the butterflies are back, and in force. One semi pulled into the gate this afternoon and said he was running hot because so many butterflies were clogging his radiator.

Butterfly Migration

This is the 3rd time we’ve seen this here at the gate, and they always fly in the same direction. Amazing.

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More Student Errors:

The inhabitants of ancient Egypt were called mummies. They lived in the Sarah Dessert and traveled by Camelot. The climate of the Sarah is such that the inhabitants had to live elsewhere, so certain areas of the dessert are cultivated by irritation. The Egyptians built the pyramids in the shape of a huge triangular cube. The Pyramids are a range of mountains between France and Spain.

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Jan says I can run with Scissors now . . .

Bobby, our inside guy here at the frack site, says the way this job is going it might be Christmas before they wrap things up. Maybe.

Certainly bodes well for us to be here until we leave for Houston on the 23rd of November. But we’ll see.

Yesterday, Monday, was our Day Off from the gate. Officially it was to celebrate our 46th anniversary this past Saturday. Unofficially it was to quell Jan’s cabin fever. This was the first time she’s left the gate since we got here five weeks ago.

Michelle, our replacement guard, showed up right on time, and by a little after 1pm we were on the road to San Antonio, about 60 miles away.

Jan said she was ‘giddy”.

Our first stop on our Day Off was the Alamo Quarry theater complex to see the “The Family”, starring Robert De Niro, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Tommy Lee Jones. Based on the previews we thought it looked “cute” and “funny”. Well, it was very funny, even hilarious in some places. But “cute”, not so much. I mean, it’s about a mob family in the Witness Protection Program. What could be funnier? Well, if you look up “dark comedy” in the dictionary, there should be a review of “The Family” there.

BTW does anyone still look up things in the dictionary, since the Internet? I mean everyone pretty much has their phone with them all the time. You have to go hunt down a dictionary.

Jan and I both really liked the movie, but be forewarned. It’s very graphic, very violent, and very bloody in places. But funny.

I did say it was funny, didn’t I?

Our next stop, about 3 miles away, was one of our favorite San Antonio restaurants, Magic Time Machine. They have great steaks, and an entertaining waitstaff. I mean a salad bar in a car, what’s not to like.

And here’s my beautiful sweetie!

After a great meal, plenty of leftovers, and a Happy Anniversary serenade from the waitstaff, Jan and I headed out for some shopping. Our first stop was a Joann’s Fabrics to get some heavy duck cloth to redo our director chairs. After three years in the sun, they’re starting to come apart at the seams, so I’m going to recover them.

Our next stop was a three’fer, Sam’s Club, PetSmart, and Wal-Mart. It seems like we always need more ‘stuff’. Apparently it is not possible to have too much ‘stuff’, even living in an RV.

After a great day, and finally heading home about 9:30pm, we stopped at a Pilot/Flying J along the way to get a coffee. And a blueberry scone, as it turns out.

Don’t laugh. I think overall I like Pilot’s coffee better than Starbuck’s. And it’s certainly a heck of a lot cheaper. We both had coffee/cappuccino mixes, with Jan having Pumpkin Spice coffee and Pumpkin Spice cappuccino, while I had Hazelnut coffee with Caramel White Chocolate cappuccino. Pilot keeps their coffee fresh made 24 hours a day, and throw it out before it sits too long.

Lucky for us, (and our diets) the Cinnabon bakery was closed for the night so we were able to resist the temptation. Yes they do have a kiosk there that makes fresh, hot Cinnabons. And it’s located right by the front door, and you walk in and the smell just overpowers you.

That’s just cruel.

We got back to the gate about 10:45 and found Michelle had everything well in hand. Before she left we set it up with her to come back on the 22nd of October so we can take off for our birthday’s, both of which are in October. And then since we leave the gate a month later, that will probably be it for this year.

Today, Tuesday, we had a couple of visitors at the gate. Blog readers, Margaret and Rich Bergen were visiting San Antonio and wanted to get a first hand look at the gate guarding life for when they start full-timing in a couple of years.

We had a very nice visit and hopefully we’ll meet up again on the road in couple of years.

Finally, as far as the whole ‘scissors’ goes, my 65th birthday is in a few days, so as of yesterday, I’m officially on Medicare, so now I’m allowed to run with scissors again. It was really a pain only being able to walk with them before.

When Jan and I retired and hit the road six years ago, we decided that since we were both healthy and had no real medical problems, we would just forego the whole health insurance thing and take our chances. And for us, it worked out fine. However, your mileage may differ.

So now, where I used to pay about $300 for my yearly checkup and tests, I get to pay $1200 a year for the same thing. Yay!

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The World According To Student Errors:

Socrates was a famous Greek teacher who went around giving people advise. They killed him. Socrates died from an overdose of wedlock.

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