A Few Hours...

Before we were assigned to our own gate we filled in for a few hours for a guard that works 24/7 by himself.  Here is a picture of his pop-up trailer that he stays in; he also has a washer and dryer set up outside the trailer.  Makes sense, he can't go anywhere working all alone!

Let's Catch Up...

We moved to a gate about 40 miles east of Laredo on January 21.  There are 3 gates on our road back to the natural gas well, Barb and BJ on the 2nd gate and Milford and Rachel on the last gate.  From what we are told they are laying pipe now and we don't know how long that lasts.  Very interesting though, so far we are enjoying our new line of work, which is very different from anything we have ever done before!

David is the GGS field tech (not sure if that's his title but makes sense to us), he is the person who takes care of us.  Great guy, friendly, smart, helpful and always ready with an answer to our questions or a solution to our problems.  Roger is the person in charge of this area, nice guy as well, in fact everyone we have met involved with GGS so far have been really nice people!

We sat for about two weeks before getting a gate which was because of the hunting on the ranches.  At least we got one!

The only big issue we have had thus far is phone/internet service.  We are with Sprint and use our phones as portable hot spots for the internet, however, this is primarily AT&T area so our phones didn't work well at all.  We had read on some of the other gate guards blogs to get a Wilson cell phone booster which we finally did yesterday and now we have both phones and internet.  Grant you, the internet is slow, way slow but it beats none!  The booster was $300 at Best Buy in Laredo. 

I'll start posting pictures as soon as I figure out how, hopefully today.  Oh, I saw my first wild pig!  I was walking the dogs down our dirt road when River alerted on the shrubs next to us and I saw a black pig running parallel to us in the bushes....so, I turned around and went home!  You can hear the coyotes hunting in the surrounding area both day and night which gets all 3 of our dogs excited and barking out the windows.  Jim took the dogs another direction on a walk and heard a pack howling in the distance and then a bit later they started howling again only they were much closer...so, he turned around and went home!  Love the bird songs here though, different and very pretty.

Ok, so now we're all caught up and I'll try to stay that way.  Be safe.

Still Waiting....

I know, we won't be waiting forever but we are just so anxious to get started!  So, we will just have to live through all of you other gate guards whose blogs I have been reading religously, keep it up everyone I love hearing your stories.  The only issue we have had so far is that the dogs pick up stickers in their feet whenever they go out but I don't see anyway around it, we'll just have to continue pulling them out.

I'll post more when something new happens. Keep safe.

One step closer!

We are heading to the yard in Carrizo Springs to wait for a gate.  Jim has been fishing here at the gulf all day, still hasn't caught anything though, but at least he's had his "fix" so that will have to last for awhile.  Not much to post at the moment, just anxious to get started!

Waiting, waiting, waiting.....

We made the trek from San Diego, CA to Corpus Christi, TX in 4 days, it would have been only 3 but we ran into snow of all things!  I never thought snow would be an issue in Texas even in the winter, just shows you we have alot to learn about Texas.

We met with Patty at the Gate Guard Services office in CC so that we could take our Security Guard test then went to get our fingerprints done at a store called Sharpshooters.  Very interesting store, they sell all things to do with hunting, firearms, etc., as well as have a shooting range.  If you know any female hunters they have a great line of clothing, belts, etc. 

The yards for GGS are full at the moment which means we will stay here at the rv park until we hear from Patty that we can move to one of the yards while waiting for a gate.  Not too bad a location, we are on the water and there is a small fishing pier right in front of us so that keeps Jim happy, although he hasn't caught anything yet.  No fishing today though, the wind has been gusting up to 38 mph which makes it darn cold!

So, here we wait for our newest experience to start as gate guards in Texas!