August 2013, Lake Whitney, Texas

This is part of the crew we worked with At
Waco North RV Park in West, TX

Well we are down to 2 months left on our Army Corps of Engineers Contract. It has been a fun and interesting 2 years. We probably won’t bid the summer positions again, however we may bid on winter positions after we earn enough money to upgrade our motor home to something with a little more room.

     It looks like we are going to try our hand working as Gate Guards on the Oil Fields. There seems to be a fair demand for those positions. We have some friends, Dick and Judy Mott that have been down south of San Antonio for about a month now as Gate Guards, and are enjoying doing it. They’ve had to make some adjustments to some of the things they do but overall it has been a good experience and good money. We are going down to Corpus Christi sometime this month to get the ball rolling so to speak, then as soon as we are released from here on Sept 30^th, we will head south hoping to get a gate assignment right away. We need to get a position before the “Winter Texans get down here right after Thanksgiving. We’re hoping they will keep us busy for about 7 or 8 months, then we will take a couple months off, then back to work again next fall. We're both looking forward to another adventure in our semi retirement years! We also love the fact that they don't require us to shovel the heat down here!

     With the hot summer down here in Texas, our Rhino Side by Side just wasn’t working out. It had a heat duct running between the seats and there was no way to shut it off. Then there was the fact that the Corps didn’t allow anyone else to bring their ATVs in the park unless it was licensed for highway use. Texas doesn’t license ATVs anymore so they are out of luck. We didn’t feel comfortable driving it while there were people in the park because it looks like it is OK for them to do the same, so other than a few days early in the week when there weren’t very many people here we didn’t use it to make rounds. Another fact was it didn’t get any better fuel mileage than our pickup, so there wasn’t any advantage there. A few of the other Gate Attendants used small scooters to make rounds, so we started looking for a small Scooter to use for making rounds with. We stopped into Waco Motor Sports to see what they had. To make a long story short, we ended up trading the Rhino for 2 New Scooters with Covers, Helmets, Storage Pods, 2 quarts of oil and a nice pair of leather driving gloves for Sue. One of the Scooters is a 2013 Tymco 50cc so Sue doesn’t need a motorcycle endorsement on her drivers license. The other one is a 2012 Tymco 150cc. It was a demo unit with about 25 miles on it. The best part is they get about 85 mpg for the 150cc and well over 100 mpg on the 50cc.

Notice how petite Lucy Looks compared to Molly

      On Friday ,Aug 2^nd, our little Lucy got her last shots and also got fixed. She sure had an awful time with that big funnel over her head. We finally removed it on Sunday and she hasn’t bothered her wound all that much and is much happier. She hasn’t grown much since she joined our family but has certainly developed quite a personality. She has also grown very fond of Johnnie, one of our Gate Attendant partners. Sue has dubbed Johnnie the Godfather. He always gets her going and all excited till she pees, then he gives her a treat. Just the opposite of what we want, but it makes an old fart happy.

    

 

Lucy alongside Jody

Still Sue's Favorite "Velcro Dog"

Surprisingly Molly is still doing rather well other than she refuses to go with Sue on her early morning walks anymore, so it is just Jody and Lucy. One thing that surprised us all though is, Molly started riding on the scooter with me in the mornings while doing rounds. She sits on the floor board between my feet and peeks around the cowling to see where we are going. Now I have to see if I can get Jody to ride with me. That could prove to be really interesting as one time I tried to get her to ride with me in the Rhino Side by Side, and she leapt off the seat as soon as I started the engine. I did finally get her to ride with but it was a challenge to hold her still.

     Sue’s walking partner, Ruth, is moving into an apartment in Whitney, so she won’t be out here every morning anymore. So I guess it will be up to me to motivate her to get up a little earlier to walk with me. It really is tough to get motivated on those mornings when it hasn’t cooled down much, which has been the case the past couple of weeks. We’ll probably have another week of the temps getting over 100° then we should be on the down hill slide heading towards Fall.

I guess we better get busy and change our sign.
 

     We’re looking forward to seeing some of our Family members in Oklahoma when we go up for Michael and Katelynn’s Wedding in September. We’ll be boarding the dogs so we don’t have to worry about what to do with them on our trip. We’re planning on switching a day of work with Janet and Johnnie so we can stay up there an extra day.

     I guess I’m running out of things to ramble on about so I’ll sign off for now. Thanks for stopping by our Blog, and we’ll write again later.