My new home and employment

I went to Kristi’s on the 1st, while she and Victor went to the closing and took the three great-grandkids geocaching.

On the 3rd I gave the seminar to the TPWD Interpreters’ meeting. It was well received and I got a surprise! Ranger Cindy from Lake Texana State Park said that she has a host position open for December. So now I live there and am again productively engaged.
I am enjoying the host opportunity immensely – the setup is different than McKinney Falls. Here I rotate the jobs, so I get experience in all of them. The staff and hosts here are happy and friendly, making it fun and not really work!

Here's the view out the front of my site.Tomorrow I will be back in Houston, on my day off, sitting the three GGKids, while Kristi and Victor go out and party. Then back to the park until Christmas with Jeff, Mary, and the Ingurgios.

Thanks

I’m thankful this Thanksgiving that I am still able to keep up with the life on the road. I enjoy being “houseless” and am glad that some don’t consider me “useless”. I have no idea of my future – after next week – and that’s fine with me.

I left Livingston and went to a Lake Texana State Park. I did some geocaching while I was there and found some of the caches in the park needed attention. I asked about them and found out that, not only the caches needed attention, but TPWD (Texas Parks and Wildlife Department) needs to update their program of controlling caches in their parks.
I got involved and stayed a week longer at the park explaining what was needed to the Interpretive Ranger, Cindy. Then she invited me to come to the region Interpreters meeting and bring the region up to date. That meant that I needed to get approval from the state, so I went to a meeting with the Regional Director to request to give a seminar to the region – and maybe later to the other regions. It is still in the “approval” stage – but I may be going to the Dec 3rd meeting with the PowerPoint presentation that I have worked up. And this may lead to a tour around the state in the future.

Now (Thanksgiving) I am cooling my engine and waiting for Kristi, my granddaughter and her family to arrive in Houston to move in to their new home. I offered to take care of the GGKids while Kristi and Victor go to the closing on Dec 1st and move in on Dec 4th. There is a geocaching meeting in Houston on the 7th and Kristi asked me about taking care of the GGKids on the 12th. So…..I may not go south as quick as I thought!

And….there’s the TPWD program – and park hosting – and the Red Cross Kitchen. No moss growing on this old man!

Lots of updating – and change

After my relatively easy job at McKinney falls, I volunteered to work with my son Gary for a few days. He really worked me – and we both ended up under the weather (something we ate maybe?) for a few days. He has an independent business restoring vacant apartments to being attractive to renters. While I was at his place I met many of his AA friends – a great group of people, living very positive lives.

After Gary’s I headed to Rainbow’s End, the Escapee home in Livingston Texas. Before I arrived, I received a phone call that a previous offer to work for the Dallas Area Chapter of the Red Cross had been accepted. I immediately turned toward Dallas where I had a very enjoyable week joining their chapter and renewing my role as a custodian of the Sysco Mobile Unit Response Feeding (SMURF = Kitchen). I was welcomed into the chapter warmly and went to work restoring the kitchen’s disaster readiness.

Next on my agenda was the regular 6 month doctor’s appointments, vehicle inspections, and voting in Livingston. Since I know so many of the Escapees in the park, it is always like a homecoming when I arrive there. I did the voting and inspections and doctor appointments, but now I am awaiting the results. It seems that my cardiologist feels that I need an upgrade in my medications – I hope that that is all!

While here, I am applying for a host position at Lake Livingston State Park. The woods here were very badly damaged by the hurricanes, Gustav and Ike, and the park has quite a bit of repair effort underway. I hope that I can become part of that effort for the next month or so. Stay tuned for more news about the life of this vagabond!

A great ending to a great week!

Mc Kinney Falls has really been a busy place this week. It all started off on Monday the 29th when a film company, NEPI (I think that stands for Northern Entertainment Productions Inc.) came in and changed the name of the park to Dillon National Park, just for the night of filming. They filmed a couple of scenes for “Friday Night Lights” and then turned the park back to us as McKinney Falls.
All week the headquarters was getting ready for the annual TPWE (Texas Parks and Wildlife Expo), held just around the corner from McKinney Falls – actually on the same land grant. I invited my daughter, Mary, to come but unfortunately she was unable to make it. I went both days and enjoyed it immensely. They had lots of educational and hands on displays – all under canvas – some of it even had cooling. The area that I enjoyed the most was the Green Area that spoke to energy conservation and alternative power. I feel that my little Casita spaceship and Chevrolet command module should earn me a page in this historical time.

My support vehicles are the van that provides power and office space and my Schwinn Sidewinder, that supplements my gasoline usage and provides exercise. The van has 8 AGM batteries that are kept full by a 300 watt solar array to supply my needed electricity. This is enough power to conservatively provide for lights, fans, pump, TV, microwave, computers, air-conditioning and heat. Notice that I said “conservatively”. I consume about 70 – 120 ampere hours of electricity each day – and it comes from the sun – for free! Of course that doesn’t include the modest initial investment. My longest continuous period off of the grid and without a generator has been 93 days. It could have been longer except that sometimes my lifestyle is influenced by those with whom I travel. I can not leave the trailer for more than a couple of days without being hooked to the truck’s umbilical cord. And, sometimes, it is just nice to sinfully splurge and have unlimited power hooked up to a plug in a park or at a rally.

As part of the greening of America, I would urge all who read this to seriously consider how much energy they use, and how much they really need. Even the Vatican is going solar! You might want to visit Clinton’s Global Initiative and the site MyCommittment.com. It is satisfying to me that I consider myself a Liberal Conservative, as well as a Materialistic Minimalist.
Also at the Expo I finally got to meet Mrs. Captain Pickard, who was teaching folks that visited the geocaching tent.
Julie (Mrs. C.P.) is the premier geocacher in the area (Texas?) with 13,129 caches found and 81 placed. I only have a measly 1259 found and 8 active caches!

Mary would have enjoyed meeting Julie – and she also missed out on the great meal that I had following the Expo at the Catfish Parlor on Hwy 71 east of I35. I even celebrated the week with a Michelob float. Life is good – and enjoyable.

And the wind blew in – so I drove out.

On my second day as night host at McKinney Falls State Park (almost a month ago) I received the call to go to Louisiana and volunteer with the American Red Cross. The assignment was to work at the headquarters in Baton Rouge, in Transportation – that is dealing with all of the rental cars and trucks used by the staff. Instead of working in Transportation, when I arrived at the headquarters, they felt that I was needed more in Facilities – that is securing agreements to use facilities such as warehouses, parking lots, schools and churches for Red Cross functions. I got two agreements signed, one for acreage to be used by a kitchen and the other a church to be used as a shelter. Then I sat around waiting for something else to do. I did some inventorying in a warehouse and helped set up a new warehouse inventory. Then I was sent to Alexandria, where I worked at getting the signed releases for church shelter facilities and doing the final inspections of those facilities. Then I was called back to Baton Rouge where I sat waiting for work again. I helped move rental cars and trucks back to the rental agencies – so I guess I did do some work in Transportation. My last day was spent with several other volunteers packing up the cots and mattresses from a shelter. I am quite discouraged about the lack of real work for me during this disaster. I feel that in the future I will not go out on an assignment without more assurance that I will be used to the fullest.

On returning to Texas I went back to my job at McKinney Falls State Park. The night host job had been filled, but I was welcomed back as a maintenance host – that is going through the various areas taking care of litter and servicing bathrooms etc. I have only been back for two days, but I am enjoying it immensely. My time at the park will be up on October 10th and I will head north to Gary’s house while I get my ailing truck serviced again. Gary has also agreed to install steps on the van for me at a good price.

What will be next remains to be seen!

The Trek South

I started south by taking a short leg down to Chickasaw National Recreation Area. Since it is not a “Park”, they allow geocaches, which I did. I also put in an application with the National Park Service for hosting jobs, but none were available at Chickasaw. Next on the agenda was the DFW area, where I stayed two days at Hickory Creek COE Park, geocaching, of course. I attended the Dallas Area Geocachers Back to School Breakfast, where I met Geo D – who is one of the original geocachers in the area and has quite an interesting profile. Look him up if you have a sign-on on www.geocaching.com. After geocaching the area around the meeting, I met my “Boys” Jeff (& Al), Dave (& Jeanne), and Jim (& Gail & Emily) for lunch at Pappasito's in Dallas.

I stayed the weekend at Jims doing geocaching chores at my cache on his property and then got my bi-annual eye exam and a new set of contact lenses before heading to Leander, where Gary Lives.

The Express Van was acting up again, so I stayed at Cedar Breaks COE Park and geocached, while the Chevrolet garage spent two days analyzing and fixing the system. $441 later, with a new O2 sensor I finally got to Gary’s house. He acquired a lot of truck parts in lieu of pay from Carlos, a man who he had worked for, when the Carlos went out of business. Since Gary is not allowed to use the internet, I offered to list some items on EBay for him, and forward the results to him by phone. There has been some interest, but no bids yet. The sale will be over on Monday. Gary has had 5 years without a drink. Mary and Matt and I are going to his AA Meeting tomorrow where he and others will give there testimonies.

After Gary’s I went to Sportsmobile, in Austin, where I intended to start on getting my Van converted to a Class B motorhome. After seeing all of the prices and not being able to fit all of my needs into the floor plan, I decided to do a conversion myself to use for short trips – and keep the Casita as my home. I started on the conversion at Mary’s hose in Wimberley when they offered me a small refrigerator, which should be able to run on my solar power without severely draining the batteries.

After Mary’s I went to McKinney Falls State Park, where the Texas Parks and Wildlife office is located. I put in an application with the State and they suggested that I go directly to the parks that I am interested in with applications as well. I started with McKinney Falls and after spending 4 days hiking and geocaching there, I have landed a volunteer (that’s unpaid) job there. I will work 25 hours for my full hookup site and have the weekends off. My duties are easy. Essentially, I just sit at the gate from 6 to 10 PM and keep track of who comes and goes and give out information. I will start as soon as my criminal background check is completed.

I plan to stay here for at least a month and accumulate a little more money for fuel and get the van up to date.

Settling the Prairie

Oklahoma just celebrated their 100 years of statehood, but the prairie still is far behind the rest of civilization. Things like communication, roads, and food supplies are not really up to par. Those of you who have visited “Lynch Hill,” my daughter Michelle’s and Cathy’s place will know what I am talking about. Well, in the last month there has been significant progress here on the prairie. The first major improvement was that the ¾ mile road in to the property has been improved to the point where I can get my trailer all the way to Cathy’s house and not have to worry (too much) about if it will rain before I need to get back out. The next breakthrough was that I bought an AT&T aircard and Wilson antenna setup to get on the internet. I can only get the signal here at the property because the surrounding 3 miles is a dead zone, but we are on the top of the hill. The signal is only 2G most of the time, with occasional spurts into 3G – but it’s about 10 times faster than Michelle’s dial-up. Broadband has been installed to the neighborhood, but it hasn’t been tested and released to marketing yet – but hopefully the Lynches will be able to get into the 21st century soon.

While here I have been involved in some domestic chores. The air conditioner went out and had to be replaced. Of course, there wasn’t a direct replacement available, so it was necessary to replace all of the mounting hardware in the wall as well. The Poison Ivy had taken over in the woods and I spent one very hot day spraying it. Now, a couple of weeks later, it appears that it is dying out. Both of our vehicles have required attention and hopefully have now been fixed. We both have installed our TV converter boxes and are enjoying them very much. If you are going to need one I recommend them highly. We pick up about 9 more channels and they are very good pictures, even here in the fringe area. Last week we both worked on the K of C garage sale. It was a huge success but, of course, we bought too much for ourselves. We shipped Cathy’s quilting machine back to the people who sold it to her. It has proved to be a lemon, and they have agreed to replace it if they can’t find out what is wrong with it.

I have started on a new venture – eBay. I took the training course at the Escapade and have started selling. My first item was a Pickard Tea Set from my mother’s things that have been gathering dust for years. At 10:38 on my birthday the bidding stopped and, after 10 bids, I got $52 for the set. I consider that a success, since I am just learning the intricacies of the web based sales.
I plan to perhaps market some of our old books while I am on the road this winter. It’s amazing what some people will pay for this old stuff!
Since winter is approaching, I am heading south this week. I plan to visit all of my kids on the way and then I am going to look for a job hosting or something for one of the park systems. That will get me a nice place to stay and still be able to travel frequently enough and, of course, do more geocaching