Memorial Day.

Got up at 7am.  Looked out the windows, no empties.  There wouldn't be any, but I had to check.  The other driver in line ahead of me nowhere to be found.  I got my coffee maker going, had a cuppa and got out of the truck and walked around, stretched.  Later on, I saw on of the yard guys had shown up, taking readings off the tankers.  

Any idea if/when an empty will show up today?  He got a blank look on his face, thought about it for a few seconds and said, I don't know if any are coming today or not.  Okay, thanks. He then asked if I had brought a certain trailer into the yard.  No, not me, why?  The driver hadn't put the papers/bills into the mailbox. 

That was my cue to contact my dispatcher.  Umm, 83911851, they're saying the driver didn't put the bills for that load into the mailbox.  She replies, the bills for which trailer?  Remember, this is all texting, in writing.  "83911851".  So the bill of lading isn't in there? No, the driver didn't leave ANY of the paperwork.  I then went on to say that the man stated that he didn't know if any trailers were coming today, and I couldn't be waiting around until this afternoon for empties to show up.

"Let me contact (the manager)".  She texted back several minutes later: You can go home, sir.

And leave I did.  All the way up 50 miles, where I passed by a large number of state troopers parked on both sides.  I passed on of them and he immediately jumped out onto the highway, cut in between the vehicle behind me and my truck and I knew I was going to get pulled over.

Inspection. And asked all kinds of questions, wanted to see my logs, lights, turn signals, tires, brakes, etc etc etc etc. And then asked where my "spare fuses" are.  I had some in there, but I don't use them and I couldn't find them.  He wrote me up for not having spare fuses......and also for the fire extinguisher. The clasp that holds the band on it had come open. Instead of just saying - the thing needs to be clamped down again  - he wrote me up for unsecured fire extinguisher.  Petty, bs nonsense.  They are warnings, yes, but warnings count against the company.  

It's the CSA crap  - just more federal bs leveled against companies and drivers to make lives miserable.  There was no good reason to write me up for either of those things, neither of them have anything to do with "safety", the fire extinguisher is in perfect working order, it's just the clasp came loose and fuses have nothing to do with highway safety.  

This crap is the reason many older generation drivers are exiting trucking.  And why the increase in the numbers of drivers needed nationwide.  None of us want to continue to put up with this bs.  The federal government won't catch a clue about it until so many drivers are gone and the cost of everything goes way up for supply and demand.  Just pile on even more garbage, watch the exodus grow. It's going to affect you - yes you, whoever you are- eventually at any store you go to.  I don't even care anymore, I'm looking to get out of trucking and hopefully tomorrow morning I'll catch a gift in the right direction to getting there.

After that bs, I got caught in a mile long wait at the immigration checkpoint about 89 miles up the road.  After that, long lines of cars going through small towns. Everyone must have been going home from Padre Island is all I could surmise.  

Arriving at the yard, I went into the office to find two drivers in there.  They were both quite drunk.  Somehow the subject got onto the tattle tale driver who reports everyone/thing to corporate.  I flatly told them do not drink in this office around that dude, he will report your @$$es and try to get you fired.  The one dude looked at me in shock after I relayed to him the fact that he had already tried to get 4 people fired.  Seriously? 

Yes.  I personally don't care what anyone does in their off time, regardless of whether they are at the yard - many of them "live" there.  But the company does - if they catch anyone drinking on the premises they will automatically be fired, no matter they aren't driving anywhere, it's a gated yard and private facility.  That means cops can't come into the yard and arrest people for DUI for sitting in an idling truck, the facility has an automatic gate.  

The company can operate however they please, everyone knows the potential for trouble, but with a driver tattle-taling?  Just don't do it when he's there guys, that's all I can tell ya, don't want to see you get fired.  Ok, in reality, the manager is never there at night.  Upper level management make visits occasionally - it's nowhere near any of them, they have to come in from out-of-state.  If they show up, it's day time, not night time, excepting one middle level manager who will arrive at night and try to catch people doing things they aren't "supposed" to.

Anyway, I made it home. Steak dinner waiting in the microwave. Decent hour, not too late, I can watch some tv, look up a few properties a second time and make a decision on whether I want to bid on them, get a decent night's sleep and get up in the morning for the sale.  It's supposed to rain - pretty much all day tomorrow.  Maybe it will keep people away from the sale, tho it  didn't last time it rained, the rain wasn't that bad last time. It looks like thunderstorms, I can hope people don't show up, especially the ones with money lol.  

I have an agenda well beyond the sale tomorrow - that shouldn't be at most a couple of hours if I end up buying the property I want - just go to the bank, get a money order, get in line, pay it up and leave.  After that, a trip to both properties on cooks road - depending on the rain. Aspyn - really need to get her into the vet. Addler - get him into the bathhouse.  Aspyn needs it too but she needs her rabies shot first.  And other things on the list that I need not go into, for I doubt I will have time after I get other things done and probably will be sent back out on Wednesday.  

Well, I really want to find the time to drive over to Longview and get this AR scoped and some ammo and try shooting it.  All of that can be done at the indoor shooting range over there.  That probably won't happen tomorrow, not if I can get the dogs into the bathhouse and the vet.  

Whatever the case, I have a couple of properties to look over again and then, watch a rerun of star trek or the Big Valley, lol and go to bed.

G'nite.  

 Pick up where I left off. We viewed the property yesterday. The front is about a 500 foot long driveway, about 100 feet wide with 75 feet of trees deep next to the driveway. At the end of the driveway is the gas well operation.  It expands to the entire width of the back of the property, hundreds of feet wide.  But it's just a couple of tanks and a piece of equipment used to bring the gas out of the ground.  The rest you can just drive through there with no problem.  

The back - is where the problem was.  I got out of the pickup, started walking back and  - found basically a dropoff.  About 10% grade for a visual.  It goes down appears to be hundreds of feet at that angle.  No RV'er is going to want to drive down that steep of a grade even if I had it paved with asphalt or concrete.  I didn't have time to walk all around and see if there are any other access points.  The boys were in the truck and we needed to go home for arrival of a new dishwasher.

Before we got to that property, however, we ended up at the other one I had originally gotten approved for.  I started reconsidering that - and eventually caved.  I offered 10 more grand less than what the owner had dropped the price to.  He's been sitting on that property quite a while now and that is his business - buy tax lien sale properties and resell them. Oh how I would have loved to have been at the sale when this one was sold. He only paid 11 grand for it, but paid other taxes apparently and it ended up being 15 grand.  I won't hear until later this coming week what his reply will be.  

Meanwhile, I had to drive down to Brownsville today.  I mean, I knew there weren't going to be any empties down here.  I pleaded with this new dispatcher to give me an Oklahoma run, she was having none of it and for whatever reason I was forced to come down here.  So, I'm going to sit here until about 10:00 am tomorrow morning and then tell her I need to start heading back up, are we still honoring the commitment to allow me to bobtail back up since no empties are here? She'll have to contact my manager and then a decision be made.  In reality, this decision should have been already been made and disclosed to me.  I was approved for the day off, there isn't any good reason not to allow me to have it.

Anyway, I knew there weren't going to be any empties because another driver called me when he was just leaving down here earlier today saying that two empties had come in, he and another driver took those and there is still another driver waiting down here. It's Sunday, they aren't bringing in any more empties or if they do, it's only going to be one for him.  

As I say, I'm not going to let them get away with just forcing me to stay down here until late afternoon for an empty to arrive. If one arrives mid morning, I'm fine with that, but I don't want to be driving until 2 am to make it back and get very little sleep and then up and at it for the auction. 

Well I'll be. A further look at satellite of this newly listed 22 acres on Cooks road reveals a road going down the side of it all the way to the back and then onto other people's property.  I never saw that road when I was there the other day.  This is worth taking a look at.  This is not part of the tax sale, it's just property for sale but I'm guessing - and will look - that it was also bought at tax sale however long ago.  Hmm, inconclusive whether that was a tax lien sale. It says HCAD trust - that's the appraisal district, but I haven't heard of that term before or how you would get a trust property?  Must be some other type of sale that I don't know about.  

Well, answered that one. They also have separate trust sales listed, currently none in my county but I have no idea how often those sales are held or even where.  I will be looking at that, this property was bought under a tax sale, apparently, just another type and apparently was done late last year in December.

Learn as I go here, folks, I never said I was an instant authority on this subject.  

Well, I'm stuck here for the night anyway, so I'm going to watch a movie : )

Have a great evening!

 Okay.

Back from Oklahoma. Opted to spend the night in my truck versus using my 16 hour exception - which adds 2 hours to the 14 hour on duty clock and get home last night.

The reason is because the dispatcher insisted that I take the Brownsville load tomorrow, even after discussing with here the fact that oftentimes on Sundays - which is what tomorrow is - there aren't any empties. The 2 hours? That helps if I have a breakdown such as a blown tire and I need the extra hours to either make it down or make it back up without going into a 3rd day.  

I informed her I would be fine with taking an Oklahoma run - they go out every day as well.  She just wouldn't have it, she is sending me to Brownsville and that's that.  Fine, but you know I need to be back Monday for my thing I'm doing Tuesday.  She informed me that she would contact my manager and ensure that if there aren't any empties available, I can bobtail back up.

So why do I have to go down there instead of someone else?  I didn't ask, I don't want to get on her bad side.  She is giving me a lot of Brownsville runs, which I like, just didn't want one this time.  But I'll take it and run with it and hope there aren't any issues and hope that there is an empty down there so I don't have to force the issue about coming back up.  It just mystifies me that there are drivers going up to Oklahoma tomorrow, any one of which would gladly take the Brownsville run save one person that doesn't like going down there.  

Now then, property. James and I are fixing to go over, cut the lock on the gate and go take a look.  Yes, I said cut the lock on the gate. The gas well company keeps putting locks up on the gate and the realtor keeps going out there and cutting them off.  The gas company doesn't own the land, it's an easement, they buy the right to use the property, not the right to control what others do on it.  They can't lock it up.  They can't put up signs saying no dogs and firearms and such - as this one has.  Unless it is written into a contract with the property owners somewhere, I'd have to take a look at that first.

If it isn't written into the contract with the property owners and if I bought that land? I'd take the gate down and remove that sign.  They have wells all over the place, one right down the street, they don't have those signs up on any of those properties....

I mean, the rear of the property is nothing but trees and enough land there to do what I need to do with it.  I could just build a separate road back in there and the gas people can have their own deal and I'd have mine.  I've noticed these well operations don't make noise - at all. Only if trucks are coming in removing salt water will you hear truck noise.  

Ugh but taking a real satellite view of the property, it doesn't look promising.  You'd have to drive through their operation to get to the rear of the property.  Curb appeal - zero, tho an RV'er wouldn't even see that until they drove all the way down the road to get to it.  Property way overpriced, they are extracting their money out of the ground, keeping the mineral rights and attempting to make even more profit off the sale of the land.  

Well we're going to go look anyway.  Just to curb my curiosity if nothing else.  

The other property on the same road is looking more appealing. I originally wrote it off because of the gas well there.  But it's on the edge of the property and most of it is on the property next door.  If I could get them to agree to me building a road for them on the same edge of the property, I wouldn't have to worry about it.  And get the perimiters of the easement clearly defined.  

Just got home, the boys are down for a nap so gotta wait til they wake up to go and cut the lock.  

Okay enough of this.  I won't be getting anything done at home today. It's already 2 and I intend on relaxing besides going and looking at this property.  The Brownsville run is a rather ruthless drive in terms of traffic, small towns and idiots on the road.  It takes it out of you.  Sunday drives are better, I won't lie.  And going down on Sunday means I don't have to content with all the Padre Island traffic coming up. 

Addler came in the house, said hello in his goofy way and proceeded to take over my bed lmao.

G'day.  

Friday morning.  

This "new" dispatcher isn't doing very well. She just doesn't know what she's doing.  She's been in the position long enough she should have learned a lot of this by now.  She contacted me last night telling me I would have to take a later load time so I can get my 34 hour reset in. 

Okay.  She never contacted me back with that load time.  So this morning, I'm laying in bed wondering if I'm going to work the time I'm scheduled or going later?  I have enough hours left on the 70 clock to do this Oklahoma trip, there's 17 on there that's plenty.  It takes about 14 on duty hours to complete that trip from start to finish.  So I contacted her a bit ago, she told the plant that I'm running late and I will be there at 11 am instead of 10:30. am.

The plant doesn't like drivers showing up late.

Regardless, I scoured the property sale sites yesterday and found only one property on there that might fit the bill, the rest of them are either too high priced, over priced per acre, under water or have other issues that make them unappealing, such as being out in the middle of nowhere.  The property I did find, I couldn't access, there is a padlock on the gate.

It's a live gas well operation, they apparently believe they own the property, replete with signage at the front declaring that guns, dogs, alcohol and other things aren't allowed.  Never saw a sign like that at any of the other properties, has my curiosity piqued.  Like, what's going on back there that makes it different than others of their properties?  It's not likely a good location for an RV park unless I create another road into the back of the property where there is plenty of room for RV pads and facilities.  That is possible, the front of the property is nothing but a long driveway at least 300 feet long with trees next to it.  Take down the trees on the corner of the property and create a separate road in there and I wouldn't have to fool with the gas operation. 

But I need to be able to get back there to see for myself if/how that would work out.  And most certainly not paying what they are asking for the property, they are getting their money out of that place, premium prices per acre are not warranted.  They must have had this property up for sale previously, for the for sale sign out front has underbrush grown up all around it and you can hardly see it.  

Whatever the case, I need to get out of here.  Another rainy day in this region, a long day to boot. Whether I make this a one day trip depends on how far I make it tonight.  I'd like to get this over with today and have tomorrow completely off, but that remains to be seen.

G'day.  

 So the bad news.  Seller's realtor contacted mine, who repeated this to me: "Agent said the chances of this property being sold without involving litigation is very slim, and more like none.".  

Heirs.  This is the problem and likely not to go away anytime soon. I was offered to end the contract and get my earnest money back or - wait indefinitely for something that may never happen.   

As much as I hated to do it, I terminated the contract.  I don't have until the second of never to get something going.  I love that property, but I had to let it go.  It was at least agreed that if this seller ever does get this stuff taken care of, we'd be the first to know before it gets put in the MLS for public acquisition.  

So here I am, after all of this, back at literally square one.  I've accomplished absolutely nothing in all of this time, other than to secure a land loan that I can't use.  

The property I was interested in looking at today (it's 1:30 am, later on today I was going to to look at it, it just came online a few days ago)?  It's already sold.  

Am I being given a sign that I shouldn't even be trying this?  I mean, I am running into dead ends at every turn.  The only thing that was encouraging is the land loan going through - albeit with quite a lot of ordeal, it's there, it's available.  

I dunno what's going on. I"m going to try and get that 2.2 acres coming up in a few days.  It would make a great "parking lot RV park", where you just cram them in there and they pay you and they - don't seem to mind. Or if they do,  they chose to come in and park.  It's prime property, it's north of 2 other RV parks and therefore, before you get to them off the Interstate.  

I mean, you really can't do a lot with 2 acres for that kind of setup.  I don't want to get too far into talking about that property, because it might go away - be withdrawn - or it will get bid too high.  Who knows, but I doubt I'm the only one that understands that the location is pretty good.  

I've had thoughts, even, about buying the 8 acres I was originally going to buy and just run with it, live gas well and all.  

There aren't many properties that would be suitable that are available and they are well over priced.  And have been sitting up for sale for very long periods of time because of it.  There are plenty of buyers out there - that's obvious whenever a good property comes up, it's gone quickly.  

Running out of time.  A property has to be closed on before the 90 day period for the loan - before I have to go through all of that again.  

I uhh, don't know now what to do.  I think people might take all of this dead ends as a sign to stop, do something else, just keep working, give up.  But the thing that keeps me going, that makes me not want to stop is the idea that I do not want to keep on trucking forever.  But that's exactly what I'd have to do if I don't find something different.  

I'm kind of at a loss here.  Is the Lord simply not in this endeavor?  Or am I just being held up for the right property?  Or...what.....

I have no idea.  Wish I had the answers - I simply don't.  

I think I'll find the resolve to simply continue on this seemingly endless search for a suitable property.  There are a couple of places I haven't seen yet except through satellite - didn't look too promising from that view but, now that I'm back to nothing, I'm going to go take a look and probably tomorrow....uhh, later on today. 

It's late. 

Some sleep might help.

 Brownsville, once again. I will never tire of coming down here, especially considering this is the 5th time in a row down here that I am getting detention pay.  This trip I would have gladly turned around this morning and gone straight back up - I have business to conduct, namely, look at the rest of these properties on the tax lien sale in person. 

I just finished going through the entire list - that took a while.  The biggest lot for sale is 27 acres for 15 grand.  Great price, but this property has been up for sale for quite a while.  NO takers.  Why? It is completely landlocked.  The description from the realtor is that "owner is attempting to gain access". Good luck with that.  Without paying for an easement, you have completely worthless property. I'm not fooled by this kind of thing.  If someone buys it, they are going to be greatly disappointed.  Only if they have money to pay a property owner a decent amount for an easement will they be able to access their property.  Otherwise, it goes to the backburner and comes up again later this year, bidding starting at $30.  Then I"d bid on it.  Yes, because there are numerous properties surrounding it - all with the potential of being greedy enough to allow easement access for the right price.  

What's more, you can see giant washes whenever it rains.  It obviously floods out whenever we get a storm.  

There's something like 20 houses on that list.  Some of them have already been redeemed for the taxes owed.  Many of them  -- not yet anyway. Yes, I have the cash to buy any of them at starting bid, but buying another house isn't high on my priority list, as long time readers well know.  I have 4 solid properties that I want to bid on. Well one of them I still need to go look at, it's out of the way -  which doesn't bother me for the price tag - but I have to see if there's water and electric available.  

On the houses, yes I"d get one of them if they bidding doesn't go too high, but I suspect this list will attract the people with deep pockets considering the large number of houses on there.  

The tax lien sale is a secondary project. It's not priority at the moment and so, getting any thing off of there will have to go pretty cheap. One property in particular I will bid as high as I can go before I have to say no more.  The one way out in the middle of nowhere possibly as well if there are utilities available.  

Speaking of that, I will call the water company after this entry - providing an empty doesn't show up, the dispatcher said one is coming this morning (it's 10:30 am, I hope it comes soon so I don't have to be out late driving tonight).  The power company will hook me up, they said that at least. The water company - who knows - but probably have to pay for the installation to the property is my guess.

Other than that? Nothing.  I'm hungry, sitting in this yard since last night, but I don't feel like eating sandwiches.  The big decision, lol: Leave and get something to eat or just sit here until I get so hungry, a sandwich starts to look appealing?  

I'm going to - slightly - bug my realtor today about the property.  She is pretty unhappy person and I hear the other realtor is too with this seller.  I dunno, people get to that age they get set in their thinking.  They're going to do things their way and if you don't like it? That isn't going to change anything.  I'm referring to the seller, at 84 years old, he probably doesn't really care how long it takes, unless he's desperate for money for some reason.  If that's true, my loan is ready and waiting.  I guess it's a good thing that I don't have to worry about the loan going away for the 90 day period - which is slowly wasting away.

Whatever the case, I'll have to take a 34 hour reset after this trip. I was only 2 hours away from a reset when I started this trip. But I'm glad it didn't happen, it's possible that I will have to work straight up to the tax sale and that wouldn't work out too well.  I need to see the properties I'm bidding on first, otherwise I won't bid on them.  A few of the houses are starting low bid price.  But who knows what condition they're in?  

Alright enough of that.  I think I'm going to get out of this truck, stand up and stretch and walk a little.

G'day

 Tuesday morning. 

Had Monday off. Can't say as I got much accomplished beyond laundry, some cleaning, getting a pond liner off and talking to my son - he turned 28 yesterday.  He's doing really good, amazingly enough, he went into full detail about how his life changed after the divorced and how he has his small grouping of friends.  

He's also saving to get his own place and has amazingly saved up 10k in a pretty short span of time. He must have my mom's genes. I am not the avid saver either of them are, I like a mix of saving and living life at the same time.  That does not, by any stretch of the imagination, mean that I am not saving.  Hundreds of dollars come out of every paycheck and go into 401k.  Hundreds more go into savings every month.  

I could be saving more, tho.  But, I see people wait until they are retired, well past the prime of their life and wonder how that works out for them.  

I finally found the utility company map from the state of Texas - something I'm going to be saving so I don't have to dig it up again.  It shows the name of what company that serves where.  Water utility to be precise. It does not show it serves my intended property, but it does show the property across the street.  I assume that means I can have a line run to my property - but assumptions are not facts and I will be calling them about that if/when I hear anything about the property.

Which, of course, no news came yesterday.  I will be contacting my realtor today to ask about what the other realtor came up with after meeting with the owner.  

Well, I'm off to Brownsville. A later load than usual, and later than I like at 10:30, but nothing as bad as when you start loading at noon or later. It's the time of day that the run keeps you out til to make it down there.  I probably won't be out of the plant until 12:30 at the earliest, meaning a 10:30 night - at the earliest - today.  That's not terrible, it's not great but it could be worse. 

And with that, time to be off to work.

G'day. 

 Looks like it's been several days since I last updated.

Today is my son's birthday, I think he's 28 today. Gonna call him, haven't heard from him in a while.

Yesterday was a Oklahoma run.  I had it in my mind that I was going to make it a one day trip - and that I did.  I drove straight up there without a break, took my break while doing the drop and hook procedure, then drove straight back down, running out of drive hours only 8 miles from the yard. I used a bypass that is legal by going into personal conveyance mode on the quaalcomm, input "seek safe haven" - that's something that hazmat haulers can use - and legally drove out the 8 miles.  

The nearest safe haven was the yard. The nearest truck stop is probably another 7 miles further away.  Unfortunately it was a late load appointment time yesterday, so I got home rather late and didn't get into bed until 3 am.

There was a reason I wanted the truck in the yard, however.  The vibration in the truck got much worse yesterday after I left the plant.  I had half a mind to turn around and take the loaded trailer back to the yard and tell the dispatcher she's going to have to have someone else haul it.  But, I decided to run with it. If the truck breaks down, it's not because I haven't reported it numerous times to our shop mechanics.  

Anyway, I texted them and hopefully they will look at it and figure it out. I couldn't, I don't know what's wrong with it excepting guessing that one of those new recaps they put on the drive axles is bad.  You can have a bad recap that looks perfectly fine when inspecting the tire.  If they take the truck to a tire shop they can have the tires balanced and see if one of them is seriously out of whack.   The vibration is to the point I don't want to drive that truck again until they fix it.  

That kind of throws off today, however.  It's 10 am and I've been awake for a while. Jus that thing that gets into my head, sleep or no sleep, it's daytime, time to get up. 

And an update already: the lead mechanic texted back and said my truck is up next, will be in the shop in 30 minutes. I replied thank you, I don't want to drive it again until it's fixed, I'm guessing a bad cap. 

Now concerning property.  A new property came online and is already sold.  It was well out of my desired price range per acre, I wouldn't have bought it anyway but it was a very nice piece of land just outside of city limits.  Now, another property has surfaced, less appealing but still would work.  I started looking again regardless of how burnt out I am at looking for properties.  I am going to go look at some of these houses in a few minutes, see if any of them are worth bidding on.  

I've got 8 days to see what I'm going to see with properties and then the sale.  I don't blindly bid on properties, if I haven't seen it, I ain't bidding on it.  There are a couple of small properties I need to go take a look at as well, outside of city limits, do-what-you-want-with-it land without the encumbrances of mini-god-like humanoids who exert their will over anyone who dare wants to do anything with property within "their" city limits.  

Now, concerning the land I am under contract with?  Look, this property is highly desireable land, but the strings attached to it so far make it less than desireable.  While I'm out, I'm going to drive by the entire tract of 36 acres and see if the surveyors are out there. The seller's agent is going to meet with the seller today to get an update on where we are with this.  I'm hoping he doesn't come back and say nothing had been done.  I expect/want a report by the end of the day, tomorrow at the latest. If I hear nothing, I'll contact my realtor.

Must be reading my mind, my realtor just contacted me, but concerning another property. It's under contract, she texted, I thought, yea I know, it wasn't up for sale but 2 days.  I don't really have any great choices concerning land right now excepting to wait this seller out.  I put a quasi-deadline on my desire for the land, but that can change if it must.  The property I am under contact was never listed on the MLS, if that happens someone will come and buy it right away, I can almost guarantee that.  Location, utilities, peaceful, nature, beauty, it's just a no brainer to me it would sell quickly.

With that, I best get my butt up and moving. 

Have a great day.  

 I am wasted tired. I think I got 3 hours of sleep last night.  Never-the-less, I pushed myself hard to get down here - here being Brownsville Texas - and potentially get that sweet detention pay.  You never know if there's going to be empties or not down here unless another driver tells you about it.  Well, there are no other drivers down here right now, tho the tattle-tale is behind me.  

Anyway, I got in there and no, there weren't any empties.  I got in and out of that yard fast.  "No trailers upon arrival" written on my tour sheet. Dropped the trailer, put my paperwork  in their mailbox, back in the truck and the hercules out of there.  I have no desire to be getting up early tomorrow morning to leave and now, legitimately, I can not only sleep in, I can also get detention pay.  

I was lucky I have enough fuel to last until tomorrow morning.  The Love's is closed. I mean, they actually locked the doors to the establishment, their network is down, apparently, they can't sell anything - including fuel - and I have no idea when they are coming back online.  I've watched truck after truck after truck pull up in the fueling lanes, get out, try using their card, then walk to the entrance door to find it locked.

I wondered when they would actually put some signs up on the pumps saying the store is closed until further notice, save people a lot of hassle.  There's a truck stop 30 miles north of here that accepts my fueling card. There is a Circle K truck stop not far from here - I don't know if it accepts our fueling card but if I get into desperation mode - the tanks on E - I will go over there and find out.  Worse come to worse I'll pay for fuel out of my pocket and get reimbursed for it.  

Don't ask me why I couldn't sleep, I don't know. I went to bed at 9pm, was awakened at midnight - well wait, I did get back to sleep around 3:15 am, but had to get up at 4.  So a little more than 3 hours of sleep, but you get the picture.  

They already have me scheduled for an Oklahoma run for Sunday.  I replied to my dispatcher that FYI< there were on empties here.  She said it's fine, if she had to readjust the schedule she will.  I don't care about going to Oklahoma, that's fine by me, but right now? I don't want to do anything.  I'd go to sleep but it's not even 7:00 pm.  

Oh, I found another property. 22 acres, 95k.  It's not the greatest location but it's good land and it's just outside of city limits.  Price is too high, I'd offer $3,500 per acre if it comes to finding something else.  It's covered with trees.  In fact, I love this road it's on, it's all farm land and cattle ranches. Beautiful area.  

I did not get the promised update this week on the property, that is not my realtor's fault. She tried to get them to update her, they just aren't doing it.  There is likely nothing to update.  Who knows.  Maybe she'll hear from the other realtor this weekend. I just want to know if they're actually working on this or if this is a doomed deal and time to move on.  

And we congratulated the 6 year old for graduating kindergarten today.  Replete with pics Taylor texted me, I didn't know graduating from Kindergarten was even a thing, but I try to go with the flow here. Times have greatly changed since I was that age, whether I agree with how they do things now or not is irrelevant.  The boy gets his day in the spot light and that's that.  Ok I'm battling extreme fatigue here, I think I'll end this one.  

 Short update.

Going to Brownsville tomorrow, 6:00 am load time : ( not a fan of that early stuff.

It's almost bedtime at almost 9:00 pm lol.

We went shopping today for all kinds of stuff.  Kids clothing, a few pairs of jeans I miraculously found in my size and a bunch of other stuff.

Prime rib roast for dinner, turned out excellent.  

Was hoping for tomorrow off and get Aspyn rabies shot and take addler to Petsense and get him bathed. Will have to wait until next week I guess.

And I have several houses to check out - I've found a dozen houses on that tax sale list now.  What condition they are in? Won't know til' I drive to them and see what they look like.

No word from the realtor, therefore I assume their realtor didn't give her the update she requested.  

I've looked at several property lists all over again, there is nothing available in the price range I'm looking at that is any good for what I want to do with it. It's this property or nothing, at least nothing under a loan.  

That's it.  I'm toast, slept 10 hours and now I feel like I could sleep another 10. That last trip kicked my @$$.  I was glad to get some good sleep.  

I'm not going to complain about another Brownsville run, tho, just that early stuff just hits me and it's a battle to drive all day long versus pulling over and going to bed lol.  

With that, I bid you a good evening.  

 3 more days of Facebook jail.

If they do it again, I'm going to download all of my photos and delete my account. Or deactivate it, one or the other but I don't care that much about Facebook anymore.  Once I stopped engaging in political debate groups, I realized how much time I was wasting with it.  

Facebook is operated by far leftist extremists, in my opinion.  I like being able to connect with friends - I don't like supporting a platform that engages in raw censorship of political opinion they don't like. It's their platform, but I am reverting my mindset back to the days before facebook.

I didn't cross the Facebook bridge until well after my friends, family and associates did. And even then, I didn't seen the value of it until I started seeing people I haven't talked to in years popping up. Then it got fun.  But now? My calling a person, putting up a post in an RV park TIPS group, who posted a post about how shitty Americans are - he is Canadian - and going off on the US - an arrogant, French Canadian was referred to as hate speech.

Whatever. I don't regret saying it and it is definitely not "hate speech".  Facebook has become too big for it's britches. It wouldn't bother me if they suspended my account indefinitely, tho if they did that I would delete it.  I only want my years worth of photos off of it.  There's some memories on there that I can't duplicate elsewhere.  Other than that, Facebook can piss off.  These people running these social media platforms have more power than any politician.

People are too dumb to research issues on their own.  Facebook is clearly in the progressive lane of thought.  And they have a huge amount of influence. 

Anyways, a rather large agenda tomorrow. After getting this trip from hell over with, I have a bit of running around to do tomorrow. That will hopefully include a trip to shooting range where I can get a mount and scope and some ammo for the newly-purchased AR15 and hopefully go to my hunting property and shoot off some rounds at a target that I already have in mind that is well out of the way of anyone in particular, that property is well enough away from any houses that I don't have to worry about it.  

I've found many more houses tonight on the tax sale list, amazing.  I mean, they not only show on the tax assessment statement, they are showing on satellite as well.  I will do my due diligence to look at every one of them in my price range.  I mean, it's not impossible that the people showing up to previous auctions get discouraged and don't show up.

Even then, most of them don't bid on anything.  

One of the 1 acre properties is now canceled off the list.  It's possible that too many of them will pay off unpaid taxes and make it a waste of time going. We'll see. I don't mind that people pay them up and keep their property tho, I am not a proponent of property taxes.  At all.  

It's amazing how you can pay off a property, come on hard times and then the government comes and takes it away from you. How we as citizens tolerate this nonsense, I have no idea.  Taxes for schools can be generated from a myriad of other sources.  An initial property tax - when you buy it - I can deal with that. Paying a sales tax on a piece of land you own, every year, forever, is outrageous.  What other things do you pay taxes on after you buy it?  

Whatever the case, time for bed.

 The 16 hour day srtarted with the pre-trip inspection yesterday.  

I always do my pretrip before I get on the clock - if there's something wrong, I can get it fixed or get switched to another trailer without wasting my 14 hour clock. 

Tires.  It was immediately evident someone had locked up the brakes.  Tires had flat spots on them - deep flat spots where the tread was completely gone.  I went into the office, informed the mechanics of the situation. They ran out there (they literally ran), looked and said back the trailer into that bay, we're replacing 4 tires.  

That, in turn, caused me to be late for my appointment to get the trailer loaded.  No worries, when I showed up at the plant, it was shut down. 40 minutes later and they were letting us in.  After that.....I get to the loading rack. Sorry to inform you, Mr BenB but they are working on that rail car and they have a procedure they have to do to it which will force me to stop loading until they finish.  

Yup, it ratcheted up the time it takes to load by another half an hour.  As you can tell, the day wasn't exactly going swimmingly. I dunno how I got in and of the scale house so quick, that was the only thing that went well there.  

Driving down the road, going up through Oklahoma.  Got to the end of the Indian Nation Turnpike, 75 northbound coming up to Henryetta.  It's a down hill to the stop light.  The truck wasn't slowing down.  I mean, a little, but something was definitely wrong.  I got the thing stopped into before smashing into an unmarked police cruiser in front of me, went through the construction site with barricades - there was no place to pull over.  I got through that and several people in a small dump truck were waving at me and pointing at the back of the trailer.

Never a good sign when people are trying to get you to stop - I was going to do that anyway but now I really wanted to see what they were pointing at. I got out and went back and it was immediately obvious: a brake chamber was on the ground, hanging on by the air lines. 

Brake chambers actuate the brakes.  No brake chamber, no brake on that particular set of duallies.  But worse, air was just dumping out of it.  Twofold problem  I just left it parked there, got out the orange triangles, put them up, called our company's breakdown hotline.  

I was so tired anyway, that after I made that call I crawled into bed in the sleeper and went to sleep. I had awakened early that night and wasn't able to get back to sleep. Well, this mechanic showed up in less than half an hour, amazingly enough, but what transpired after that was - interesting.  Replacing a brake chamber is a relatively simple operation that should only take like 10 to 15 minutes.  It's easily accessible, right there under the trailer.

At least, it should be a simple operation.  It took this dude almost 4 hours to replace it.  And after a couple of hours he had a total meltdown.  I was sitting in the truck and I could hear him screaming, I thought he had gotten hurt or something and rushed out there to see what happened.

Nothing happened. He was screaming obscenities, throwing wrenches, bashing his head, temper tantrum of the ages.  I SHOULD BE F***** HOME RIGHT NOW! GD F****** GD THING!!

You get the picture, that went on pretty much the rest of the time he was under there.  He called his boss several times, his boss just told him he probably didn't have the diaphragm in there right.  This guy was screwed, he had to fix it.  Those trucking company corporate accounts are coveted and worth a gold  mine.  You get one of those and you are going to have business and it's high paying business.

If you don't fix something because you - can't do it - you lose that account and they find someone else to deal with their breakdowns.  On his final attempt of taking that chamber apart and putting the diaphragm back in, he finally got it right.  His anger subsided, the rage left him and he was happy - happy that is until he found out the ordeal it is to get my company to pay the bill.  

I got out of there, went up to the Love's fueled up, got a lettuce wrapped Carl's Jr burger and forced myself to continue driving up to the plant.  I can tell you, I was done with that day and wanted it over with.  But, they want this stuff up there and I got that done, drove 25 miles back down the narrow, winding 2 lane highway out of that area, down OK20 and parked at a place that has been a reliable parking spot - meaning there is always a place to park  - since I found it a few years back.  I went straight to bed.  

I can only hope and pray I don't experience anything even remotely as ridiculous as yesterday went.  It's raining, I'm waiting for my 10 hour clock to be done and get on down the highway. I'm still a bit tired but I couldn't sleep any longer.  I really do not want to go to work tomorrow.  A day off and sleep in would be nice.  I'm not going to ask for it, but it sure would be nice to get this out of my system and get back on track.  

And my Keurig coffee maker has failed.  The one for the truck. The one that gets me a cuppa when I wake up in the morning and I'm not near a truck stop or a convenience store.  It's going in the trash, I just ordered another one, but a different model this time. It's the Keurig mini - it just makes one cup at a time. That's all I need.  So, crisis abated, I can happily move on without coffee being an issue, lmao. 

Uhh, close to time to get moving.  6 hours back, I neither had the hours or the desire last night to do any more driving than getting to the nearest parking area.  I don't regret that at all, I was dead tired and there wasn't going to be any parking spaces anywhere else within 100 miles besides places you aren't allowed to park, but there's room for a truck.  The problem, of course, is when security comes along and tell you to move along, you can't park here, didn't you see the signs? 

So, hoping for a bit better day : )

G'day.  

 Being highly motivated to get this trip over with and get home at a somewhat reasonable time, I cruised almost 500 miles without stopping except for 2 minutes to use a rest area restroom - run in, run out - literally.  I had to stop in Lufkin for 2 reasons.  1, because I had only a few minutes left on the 8 hour drive clock and 2, because I was near out of fuel. The stop is planned, I know both of those things will occur by the time I get there. 

My motivation was to get here - home that is - see my doggies, Addler is being very needy lol - and get this tax sale printed out and start taking notes.  

Unfortunately, the first property I'm looking at his no address or the satellite view attached to it, but it does have some sort of geo code.  So, I entered that code into a code reader and it showed me - Rome Italy, LMAOOOOOOO.  Umm, I used the wrong reader, or something. I have no clue, honestly.  Maybe Google Earth? I'll try that next.  If that doesn't work, I'll call the county tomorrow and ask them how to do this.  Or, I can go to the county appraisal building and they will usher me into a room and I can look up all of this stuff on their internal system.  

Oh, well anyway, the trip back up was pretty normal, besides a few odd things I saw.  Like a car that had run into another car in a ditch full of water. The offending car was trying to back out of this deep water but the wheels were just spinning. It was really strange because it wasn't moving at all, it obviously needed to be pulled out of there.  And it rained half the way back - again.  I used to love rainy days, now I'm getting sick of them.  We need some clear blue skies for a little while here. Alas, it's going to rain tomorrow and the next day.  So much for - putting the pond up.  It's fine tho, I have my day planned, lol. Taylor is going through the pantry and throwing away old cans of stuff that is outdated - I offered to help with that.  

And I'm going to a couple of properties on the tax sale - rain be damned, it's not going to stop me from going down there and looking at this very prime property.  The 10 acres was just the first appealing property on the list, solely from an acreage factor.  It's a 13 thousand dollar opening bid, so not high on my list but I still want to see it.  Interestingly, the person that bought it - acquired it also through the tax sale in 2015.  Guess he couldn't keep up with the property taxes, or lost interest, or possibly serious issues with the property itself.  It will be interesting to see if the deep pocket people at the sale - providing they show up - bid on this one. They obviously know far more about all of this than me, I'm still on the learning curve.  

My Verizon bill came down almost $40 with recent offers to reduce the bill.  Not a reduction in service - I never do that. If I have to do that to get a "normal" bill, I quit the service and go to someone else.  As noted by the outrageous bill I was getting from Dish Network. I called on 2 different occasions to get it back to what I was originally paying.  They said no, either reduce the service or tough.  I called a third time - after getting pissed by curt and rude people and just said cancel the service.  I'm done with this. The house can go without satellite until I get Directv installed again.  I despise ATT but I'll play this little game if it saves a sizeable amount of money.

So, I am switched to someone - who tells me they can remove over $50 on the monthly bill. I had to ask, why couldn't or wouldn't these other people I already spoke to do this?  Because I was quite serious, stop the service and now.  I dunno, they didn't give a good explanation, they just gave me the deduction and now I'm paying less than when I was under contract with them.  On both accounts - I was ready to cancel the one where I live as well.  

Now to Cox; We got a "Countour" box a while back - 2 years at least - which was supposed to be $20 per month. It was, under their introductory offer, but then it went up to $70.  No thanks.  They only wanted it at the house over there - in Phoenix - for the "free" HBO Max.  Yea, I can get it for $17 per month added to satellite.  Everyone can watch it and I will save even more money.  

Ugh it's getting late and I wanted to do more research on the tax sale list - it can wait until the morning.  Excepting I'm not sleepy, Addler is still wanting attention and I am watching a movie while writing this.  I could have driven for several more hours tonight if I had needed to.  Well rested is a thing but it doesn't come frequently to me. I can drive all night long when I am in that mode. 

So, I'm home. 34 hour reset - mandatory. Not from the Feds, when we get down to single digit hours available, the company automatically puts us on reset.  I'm fresh off of 3 Brownsville runs in a row - more money than I could have ever dreamed of making in my younger days - all 3 have detention pay on it - it's mostly the only thing I like about this job.  Honestly I hate trucking.  I despise going to work.  It's just nothing I want to do anymore.  Which is why I'm going to look at properties tomorrow - besides the property I'm trying to buy. 

I'll have a decision to make on June 1st if this deal with the property I am really in love with hasn't had any progression in getting the stuff done the seller needs to get done in order to sell it with a clear title.  Bow out of it, bid higher on a property that has enough acreage to do my RV park - or - not of course and wait this property out.  And still, bid on the small acreage properties and hopefully get one of those.  

I dunno, but I'm going to watch this movie, get sleepy and go to bed. 

Traffic

 Okay I give up on trying to upload vlogs to this site, at least through my phone. It uploads, then says ok, proceed or whatever and then? It disappears.  Lol, I've tried several times, I may be messing it up, or it just doesn't work, I don't know.

I'm back down in Brownsville and for the third time in a row, there are no empty trailers here.  Plus, another driver came down here ahead of me, tho it was pretty odd that he had just - literally 5 minutes before I got here - shown up.  He should have been about an hour and a half ahead of me.  He said a friend called him and asked him to come over for a short visit - in Conroe, Texas.  I mean, that's actually a godsend for him, he avoided all the hell I went through today.  

But still, I kind of have an issue with him doing that, he's actually trying to get in behind me so if there is detention to be had, he'll get it if only one trailer shows up, I'll have to take it since I showed up before him.  He's done this before and if it happens again, I'll be contacting the manager about it - this dude is getting my detention pay because he did "something else".  He's a nice guy otherwise, we get along and such, but this stuff has to stop.  Regardless, I showed up far later than I should have because...

I was driving down 59.  I got into the northern metro area of Houston - that's what I call it - any big city, there are smaller towns all around them going on for miles and miles. People live in the small towns, go to work in the big city.  Anyway, I came around a turn and saw it about half a mile ahead. Brake lights, lots and lots of brake lights.  OHHH NOOOOO.  I kicked myself for not checking the GPS. I know better.  When going anywhere, you look at the GPS. It doesn't matter if you know the route by  heart, you need to know if there are any traffic snarls.  

This was bad, too. They had shut down the highway going both directions.  Everyone was getting funneled off at 3 different exits going southbound, but  it was stop for a while, go 50 feet, stop again, etc etc etc. For an hour and a half.  I lost that much time. They were doing some repair work on an overpass and apparently needed to shut everything down to accomplish it. It is actually going on all weekend into Monday. 

But, when I arrived down here, I was actually glad I went through all of that.  It caused me to still show up after this other guy and I am getting at minimum overnight detention pay.  I'm trying to get as much money as I can in my bank accounts right now.  Well I always try to do that, if I'm going to work, make as much as you can.  But with this tax sale auction coming up, I'd like to get 5 or 6 grand extra in there so I can spend it on a property, if possible.  

I left the yard after having a conversation with him - good conversation, I didn't bring that up, no sense in it.  I came up to the Love's - there are actually spots here and that company that uses their parking lot as a second lot apparently has been driven out of here.  I mean, there isn't a single one of their trailers in here and that's the first time I can remember seeing that since not long after this place opened.  You take out 10, 15, 20, 25 trucks and suddenly you have parking available for paying customers.  

I wouldn't mind no trailers showing up tomorrow and go get a hotel tomorrow night.  Probably won't happen, but one can dream.  It will be a Sunday, tho, and there have been plenty of Sundays when they don't bring any empties back up from Alta Mira.  

A little over 2 acres just south of the Interstate.  Perfect location.  I want that property.  Others might want it too, but I'm definitely going to bid on that baby.  It's just south of where the "commercial property" - 4 acres is listed for $400,000.  Lol.  I'm looking at some of this stuff, but I'm going to wait until I get home to do much more research so I can  print out all of it.  Much easier for me to go by.

As for now? I'm at the truck stop.  I can hear that damned thing.  A reefer unit just backed in beside me.  I won't be listening to that crap all night long, I can back up in the space 20 feet and get that noise out of my ear drums. I can't stand the sound of reefer units on trailers while trying to sleep, it's ridiculous amounts of noise. 

With that, I'm offa here and going to bed - soon anyway.  

 Today wore me out, I'm plain flat tired. It's not that I had to get up early - I was in Brownsville this morning waiting for an empty trailer. They showed up with one at 9:45 am, amazingly enough, making it possible to not only get back to the yard today, but driving all in daylight.  I figured I would get to Houston around 3:30 and I figured right.

I didn't figure I would run into horrific, nightmarish, rush hour traffic at that hour.  I've been through Houston hundreds of times, I can only surmise that because it was Friday afternoon, people got off work early and everyone - literally everyone - was going home - all at the same time.  That kind of traffic is nerve wracking and doing it for 30 miles of stop and go even more so.  Not to mention numerous construction zones where it was also stop and go and then, a portion of highway was on fire and the firedepartment had the road shut down to put it out.  

So yes, it was a very long day.  It only got more interesting that, after I texted the dispatcher which empty trailer I had - presumably for the next driver to be assigned to for the morning - she said stay under that trailer, you can take it in the morning.  I mean, Im not going to complain about 3 Brownsville trips in a row, it's just that I'm wiped out right now.  Just a tad bit too early to go to bed, so I thought I'd catch up on my blog. 

Oh - I didn't go home.  I'm sleeping at the yard.  In the truck, it can run all night long and that's that.  See, I didn't get here to 8:36 pm and I have to go back out early am. I figured the amount of time I would have at the house - drive home, go to bed and get up at 4:15 am, it's just not worth it.  I lose time I could be sleeping.  I don't do this often, but when it needs to happen, I am fine with it.

The only problem is, there is no one home. James, Taylor and the boys headed up to Missouri early this morning to meet up with her dad at Grandma's house for a visit for the weekend.  So, the dogs are all home alone.  Maria went over there earlier to feed them and put mine in my room and the other in their room, feed the fish and presumably the cats are already fed and don't need anything.  I would have like to seen the dogs but oh well.  

I think I fully explained what was going on with the property in the last few entries, nothing is likely to change with that for a while - if at all.  But because it appears there is a chance that this deal isn't going to go through, I started looking for properties again today, online of course.

There isn't much new on there.  One property with 11 acres looked very appealing until I saw that it is within the city limits. No thanks.  Another property, 8 acres, looked interesting but way overpriced.  And not in the greatest of locations.  I'm really going to be discouraged, to be honest, if this property I have been looking at multiple times now doesn't go through.  

Yowsa! I've been checking the tax sale for my county sale to come up every day.  I checked earlier today but it wasn't up yet. Now? There are 6 pages of properties on there.  

Ohhh....myyyyy. I just looked through all of them. A large number of 1 acre or so lots with small enough price tags on them.  5 lots 8 to 10 acres at low starting prices. Other lots going much higher than they are even worth - how does the taxes get so high on property that isn't even worth the starting bid?  I've got my work cut out for me, something to keep me occupied while this property deal either goes through - or doesn't. 

The work is looking up the property ID numbers and then looking at a satellite view of the property - if it's listed on the tax appraisal site.  See what it looks like, if it's out in the county and if I can see where it's at so I can go take a look.  Find out of there is water and electricity at least on the properties.  This is exactly what I was talking about before - small, acre lots where you put on a house and sell the entire property or - see if you can rent it out. Renting would make far more money in the long run.  

I wish I were at home, I could print all of that out.  I write notes on all of the properties of interest and I also write notes of properties that have serious problems - like rotted houses or situations that would cost a lot of money to fix/upgrade.  And then, at the sale, I look to see if anyone bids on them.  People just show up to these sales and don't do any homework.  I don't say anything, not my place to, I think I"d probably get some heat for telling everyone that's bidding on a property that there is a 2 story house that is falling apart and you're going to have to raze it before you can do anything with it - or worse - properties where the city has come along and put "condemned property" signage on the front of it.

Anything condemned will have to be torn down and if you aren't doing it yourself, you are going to pay thousands of dollars for someone to do it for you. Is the property worth it? Maybe sometimes it could be if it's a nice enough property in a good area. This will really help to take my mind off the land deal.  I can focus on something else that I've been wanting to look at anyway.  There is one mobile home for sale on there, but it's listed way high. It would have to be a really nice unit to be worth bidding that high on.  It's likely no one will bid on it and it will end up at the year end sale starting out with a $30 bid.  

Oh, speaking of properties, 6 months will be up next month on the four that I bought. No one has come to redeem them.  I am going to try and get titles cleared for them and then they are going up for sale.  Or, if the title stuff is too expensive, I'll do one at a time and sit on the rest.  There is no requirement for me to do anything with any of those properties.  There are no houses on them, the city hasn't sent any notices about the condition of property, and I only have to pay property taxes.  That's in the $50 range and that's cheap.  I also found out that the city allegedly allows for a modular home on certain properties - information that dude/king at  the city planning and development office didn't bother to tell me when I was asking.  I found that out through a realtor website I was looking at. 

I am in the "teach an old dog a new trick" mode. It seems late in life to be starting on such endeavors, but hey, it's such a nice challenge!  I"m definitely going to the next sale - providing any of those acre lots are out in the county.  I would love to get just one of them - I don't want more than one - and then put something on it, probably a mobile home to keep costs down - and then see if I can rent it out.  Actually, on an acre I could put several mobile homes.  I don't want to get too far ahead with this right now, you know what my thoughts are concerning these things, I have only written about it exhaustively on here on so many occasions. 

Still, it's exciting to see all of that on that list.  The only other caveat that - isn't so nice - is that any or all of those properties could get yanked up to the last minute and not be for sale.  The nature of the beast, yes.  

Oh, and yesterday I tried to upload a Vlog entry on here.  It took a few minutes to upload it off my phone, it said it was finished and then  I posted it - and ..... nothing.  That's the last entry with nothing in it.  I'm going to try again tomorrow. If that doesn't work, I found my old YouTube channel - I haven't posted on there in years, I might try to put one up there instead.  I kind of thought Youtube would have taken that channel down by now since I haven't posted anything there in so long.  I dunno, but I'm interested in possibly firing that up again - with some of the content from my treks through the woods.

Anyway, enough of this. I want to look up a few of these properties before I go to sleep for the fun of it. 

 

 So the big let down has come.  

They have no idea when the issues on the seller side is going to be resolved.  There was talk about the wife's probate - which didn't concern me that much - but the thing about the heirs.  That was quite concerning.  There are heirs that are involved with this that have to sign off on all of this - and not just my 12 acres but also the 12 acres whoever else was buying across the street.  

What is the issue with me? I was informed today is the last day of the extra 21 days and if I don't bail out, I lose the earnest money. It's entirely  up to me, I was informed, to opt out and get my money back or continue one with it - but if it doesn't go through,  I lose that money.  It's $600 plus gone for nothing.  It didn't take me long to decide to opt out and start a new contract with the seller. If he wants to, fine, if he doesn't, well I just wasted a lot of time with this. A lot of time.  And a lot of daydreaming, looking the property over and figuring out how I would set it up. 

But, I'm not losing $600 for nothing.  

_____________________

And all of that is now cancelled. After all of that, they came back and said why don't we just extend the option period another 30 days?  I mean, why didn't they just say that in the first place? The seller's agent has gone through some ordeal with the seller.  Elderly was the attribution attributed to this fellow, today I find out he's 84 years old.  People get up there in years and get set in their ways pretty good.  The seller won't do anything unless his realtor/agent comes to his house.  So apparently that's where we're at and I'm content - for now - to wait this thing out.  I won't be content forever, especially considering I found a couple of other properties that would fit the bill that have recently come on the market.

Yes, I started looking again after I heard all of this today.  

Oh, well my realtor told me that the seller's realtor has gone through quite a bit of pains to try and get this deal done with the seller and his insistence the realtor come over to his house anytime anything needs to be done.  Losing a buyer isn't exactly on his wish list.  I do believe if this property came on the MLS and open to anyone it would probably sell pretty quick.  Well I dunno lol. Not with all of this stuff going on with it and the endless waiting game.  Stuff that should have been done long ago is now at a standstill and no guarantees that it will be rectified - meaning no property for me, at least not this one.  

So, the in-limbo game goes on - indefinitely.  Nahh, not indefinitely, I'll move on if I have to.  It kind of makes me wonder if this also isn't the right place to build. Or, is it worth the wait and sit it out.  
I dunno, but it's time for bed, early rise for Brownsville run. 

 2 trips out to the property, replete with a short video while trekking through it with the Great Dane.  The purpose wasn't really to hike through it, but the first time I did I couldn't find the info I was looking for. Namely, the name of the power company serving the area.  There was a small badge on one of the poles that said "RAE COOP".  You look that up? You'll get zero results.  You'll get different power companies but none of them are the correct one - I know because I called all of them. 

I then called the county and they thought it should be SWEPCO - well I had already tried SWEPCO so I called them again. This time, the lady on the phone said she was looking at map and it definitely is not their territory.  

I made a second trip out to the property and drove up and down the street looking at the telephone poles - the only one that had anything on it was the aforementioned company.  I also went to the plant up the street - they are working off of some other power company, they had power run across the Interstate.  

So, we haven't found anything out.  I remembered a company that I hadn't yet called - it appeared well out of their territory, it's amazing how many power companies serve the east Texas area. They looked up the address of the little house 250 feet away and said, yup, that's us.  Finally!  

Upshur Power company to be precise, clear over in Tyler.  The lines look pretty small, but then I got home and looked at the lines serving all the houses on our street and the next street down - they're the same size and houses use more power than RV's so I'm at least fairly confident that there should be enough to service an RV park. Otherwise, I'm going to be finding out how much it costs to run from the plant up the street - they've got huge lines running to that thing.  

The point is there IS power there - 2 different companies apparently and if worse comes to worst, the power IS running, just it's about 600 feet away.  That could be costly running power poles that far, I hope it doesn't come to that. The water company name and phone number was much easier to find: it's listed right on the stakes they have all over the place.  I can already tell you it's going to cost a few thousand dollars to get them to run that line to m property - it is what it is.  

I can't say this is "behind me" per se, just basic information that has been eating at me for a while, I was determined to find out who is what today.  The dog walk was going down a lane - you can't tell it's a lane tho unless you look up at the skyline and see where the tall trees are. It's filled up with small trees and underbrush to the point that it's a bid - ridiculous but that's nature.  2 giant lanes are maintained, someone must bring a bush hog through there occasionally, that's the hunter with his stand sitting in the middle of all of that cleared out stuff. It's what I go by to see how the rest of it will look when it's all cleared out.

Oh, the real reason I went there was to see if the surveyors were out there, nope, no sign of them.  

Anyway, I was just sent another Brownsville run for tomorrow. It is getting late in the day, I didn't think she was going to send me anything.  But I'll definitely take it and it's second run so I don't have to get up at 3:15 am to get over there.  More like 5:30 am rise which is still quite early but much better than this 3 am nonsense.  I was really afraid - considering I'll be starting with fresh 70 hour reset - that I was going to get sent on a long run. Just don't want any right now.  In fact, I would have been okay with an Oklahoma run but this run is quite fine. Both of those runs take 2 days - brownsville is just 2 full days but of course the pay is superb. 

With that, I have a 4 and a 6 year old asking for music videos on the computer so I will help them out - a little, lol.  

 15 to 18 days for gas to go from Texas to New York - just heard that on the news.  Gas prices aren't going back down "anytime soon" was another statement.  Here we are again, hoarding stuff and making life miserable for everyone.  The toilet paper fiasco isn't anything that anyone could have predicted before it ever occurred, yet it happened and will go down in history - as whatever, in my mind as an event that will have the rest of the world looking at Americans as entitled, piggish, stupid and ridiculous nation of people who have life so easy that they cannot possibly understand how the rest of the world lives.  We make ourselves the laughing stock of the world.  

They warned y'all about the consequences of hoarding gasoline, that if you just buy what you normally do, it will cause much less of a distribution problem and won't be a big issue. Instead, you see people taking giant gas cans and even 55 gallon barrels to the gas stations and filling them up along with the tanks in their vehicles.  

Whatever the case, it's 11:00 pm and I just got back from Brownsville. There wasn't any trailers there last night, so I got lucky and was able to get my 14 hours of detention time and then, an empty came into the yard and I boogied up the highway to get back to the yard and get home tonight.  They wanted that trailer for tomorrow anyway. I don't have work tomorrow so I'm going to go over to the property and see if the surveyors are out there.  I can  wish, lol.  

I've heard nothing back from anyone about the projected date for getting this done - tho I heard all last week about how they were going to have an update on either Friday or Monday  Well this is Tuesday and I'm not going to bother them anymore about it, if there is nothing to report, they don't need me prodding them about it.  If the surveyors are out there, it will quite easy to spot them.  I'm going to inspect the power poles and see if I can find what company is supplying power and start making phone calls and inquiries about that.  Water supply as well.  I might as well at least get the info in hand.  

I'll just keep making trips out there when I'm home until I see them out there, that's all I can do without making endless queries about what's going on.  I intend on working with this realtor in the future to get rid of my small properties.  I also intend on buying more properties as money becomes available - but any property I buy at auction from this point on will be out of city limits.  I'm simply not going to fool with the city any more. Perhaps in the future I can get a property and petition the city to allow it to be built into an RV park but that isn't going to be any time soon.  

I'm a bit surprised the law firm doesn't have a tax sale listed by now for my county for a June sale. They have several other counties up but not ours.  I went to the county tax site and they don't even have a link up anymore.  Umm, they aren't going to stop selling these properties so I dunno what's going on.  Maybe nothing, perhaps they are just putting it out another month for whatever reason.  I'd just like to see even an acre out in the county going low that I could at least try to acquire.  Put some kind of housing on it and sell it rent to own or owner finance.  Make it reasonably priced and keep the payments affordable - probably by pushing out the maturity date to something like 15 years.  The county won't even get involved in it. Yes, I'd probably have to pay to have sewer, water and electric installed, that would have to be covered by a down payment.  If you're going to buy a chunk of the American dream, you probably should expect a down payment in that formula.  

Addler is looking at me with these sad looking eyes. Lol. Poor doggy, I'm gone a lot.  He gets oodles of attention when I'm home tho. James gives him attention alot when I'm gone as well.  James doesn't have much of a choice, Addler just pushes his giant head into everyone's business and forces the issue.  

I'm not tired right now lol.  I usually am after a long day driving and getting home late.  I slept so long last night and into this morning.  I'd do laundry and other things - but that makes a lot of noise and it's too late, James has to go to work, Phoenix has to go to school in the morning. Taylor is stay-at-home mom now.  She's been diligently working on the house since she quite her job and the house is looking amazing.  We still have the back yard woes to deal with.  

49% chance of rain in the morning. I'm wondering if it will really clear up by afternoon, for this pond thing is really starting to irritate me. I was going to do it on Sunday, but it was going to rain all day long.  Instead, it didn't rain at all and I was not happy about the fact I could have gotten it done.  It was raining all day long up here today - I went through a long portion of the way back up in sheets of rain. Not raining dogs and cats, that is nothing compared to what I was driving through. I hate that stuff and everyone is sick of rain.  Really, we are all quite sick of it and would like to have a bit of a reprieve from it.

Of course, when the hot summer comes and the grass starts turning brown and we need rain - we'll be singing a different tune.  Lol. 

Speaking of hot summers, I have thought about this concerning the RV park.  People probably aren't going to want to come during the hot season and I'm going to need some permanent residents there.  My orientation is growing more acute concerning the pads and the sizes of them - one site doesn't fit all. I don't need all 65 foot long pads.  I don't need power meters at every pad. I only need that at pads where people are staying for extended stays or on a "permanent" basis. Overnighters pay exorbitant amounts for their stay and was surprisingly acceptable by the RV community. In one post I was reading, people were saying things like: "where does it say that it's going to be cheap to stay at a park?".  People want to boondock or otherwise find free places to park. That's all nice fine and dandy, but most of them are resolved that they are going to have to pay and they budget that into their yearly expenses.

The fact of the matter is, if I need more sites with meters, that can be done without having to do much more than replace the pedestal or add it to the pedestal if that's possible.  There is really no need to spend that much more money having power meters at every single pad.  I'm still trying to construct this park in my mind and doing that by reading, reading, reading.  But the savings in not having metered panels is significant.  You don't charge overnighters extra for power, they are paying through the nose for the  pad to begin with.  

Vacation. I need a vacation.  My friends apparently aren't going to be in the position to do anything but a trip to Missouri to meet up with her dad and grandma for a weekend.  I'm not sure what I want to do, tho I suspect I will just end up going to Arizona.  I wouldn't mind taking the dogs somewhere and just go camping or something.  In the mountains.  

My new AR15 needs a scope and it needs ammo. I might take care of that tomorrow as well.  

Anyway, I'm going to watch a rerun of the Big Valley and then, go to bed.

 Well first it was the small fish in the tank having their fins eaten off by bigger fish. But tonight, I noticed the bigger fish also had their fins disappearing. 

Gotta be fin rot.  Fortunately I have fish antibiotics in the refrigerator - I've been keeping a bottle around for years now after I found out you could just order fish antibiotics online without a prescription, fine for dogs and works quite well.  So I dumped 3 of those capsules in there a few minutes ago, will do it again 24 hours from now and probably the next several days and see if that starts to fix them.  

I've got way too many fish in that tank, that's the main culprit. I was going to go outside and put up the pond tomorrow.  Day off, ya know and need to get it done.  

Nope, it's going to rain tomorrow.  I mean, we have been getting way too much rain.  It's nice when it rains, but it's not so nice when it rains too much.  Can't get anything done.  

We celebrated mother's day with Taylor tonight, kid-free lol. The boys went to Maria's house for the night.  I've been gone for most of the last 5 days, the 6 year old wasn't too happy about that.  The part about going over there that is, he started getting cranky.  I just told him I'd be home tomorrow we can hang out a bit then. Not like we can do much anyway if it's going to rain all day long.  Otherwise, I'd go over to the property and do so more checking on things that have come to mind that I want to look at.

Mostly, just to get the dogs out and get them on a good, long walk/run.  

I can't say I mind just staying home, finally, on a Sunday. I have plenty of stuff I need to get done in my room if I feel so inclined to get to doing stuff.  

On another note, these people are trying to confuse me.  You see all these posts from RV'ers in various groups and they make statements that seem - weird.  Apparently some or many - who knows - of these people expect newly built parks to be pristine oasis of their demanding.  You built a park and didn't put in bath houses? Shame on you!  Why would anyone want to come to YOUR park, I saw in a thread and the person had no answer.  I can answer that, easily, on a few fronts but I won't bother to go into that again here.

After months of reading all of this stuff, I finally had come to the conclusion that I will do what I want and can do and if someone doesn't like it, I can't help them, they can move on down the road to the next place.  It's just that, if/when I close on this land, I'm going to have to make some serious decisions about the setup of the park and how many trees Im going to have to cut down.  I hate the idea, but there's going to have to be a lot of trees felled and there is no way around that.  I just made a promise to myself that the back 6 or more acres would be left untouched. Of if a portion of it was going to be developed, that would be a place for me to live, not for people to pull their trailers or coaches into.  

Time may change that thought, but it's pretty well set in my mind that a portion - hopefully a large portion - of that property is going to retain it's trees as is.  I think the walking trails through it is a great idea - as long as people aren't  disrespectful to the land and throw trash everywhere or do whatever irreverent people do when they are out in the wilderness and don't give a damn about God's majestic creation.  It's pretty sickening to walk through a thick, deep forest and find beer bottles and cans laying all over the place.  

What I do find encouraging is that there are a lot of people that love the idea of the park I'm building - that they mostly only find that at state parks.  It's the "camping" part of it, that's the original thought behind RV'ing - but that has morphed into this idea of having a home on wheels. And they have some beautiful RV's out there. They are exactly like a house inside just a much smaller version of it.  They're building them bigger and bigger.  In my view, if you can afford a 85k pickup and a 100k trailer you can also afford $75 per night park to that giant thing. And yes, there are parks that charge that much.  But those are the resort parks that have huge amenities.  I don't even know if I want to accommodate such huge things, there are plenty of smaller rigs around that require less space. Less price per night, but less amount of trees to take down as well.  

The RV concept and living in them full time is exploding right now. That's not the reason I am getting into this business, or trying to anyway, but it doesn't hurt that so many people are hitting the open road, selling their houses and even carting around families with them.  

A thought that crossed my mind about propane is simply to approach the local wholesalers and see if it would be worth it to one of them to send out a truck once a week or more to fill propane tanks in the RV's.  I take no cut off of it, it's all profit for them, customers get a service that they need and they are happier.  Make people happy, that's the goal. Make people want to come back again, another goal.  Make people want to give you good reviews, a highly important goal.  Give great customer service, smile, listen, take their money, thank you very much, have a great day!

Lol. The stuff I've been doing for large companies for decades perhaps I can do for myself.  Oh and then there was a discussion about whether you should try to clear the land yourself, paying for rentals or just pay a company to do it for you. The argument is that the company can get it done quickly and likely cost less in the long run over renting a machine. And then, if you insist on doing it yourself, what machine should you use?  This stuff is seemingly endless. 

The thought of Pandora's Box entered my mind.  Or cause and effect.  You do this, ten other things that you have to deal with arise.  And then, ten more things from each of those ten things.  There isn't anything that I have looked at where I started at point A and ended up at point - H, R, Z - going through endless possibilities, rabbit trails and potential consequences from one action taken and then several more problems potentially arise. 

It's become far more complicated than it really should need to be.  It's land. Clear it.  Put in the pads, Add the utilities. Get an office building delivered, set it up. Put the gravel down for the driveways and pads.  Get a service for debit and credit cards.  Do whatever you have to do and get it going.  Even insurance.  If you have a kid playground, you pay more.  If you have your own propane service, you pay more.  I haven't even acquired the land yet and I'm looking at all of this stuff, scratching my head, and wondering what to do first?

I know what to do first. Clear the land.  Get the water line to the property. Get the power company out there and give me a quote on getting power there.  Call ATT, what's it going to cost to have line/s run and service started for multiple users?  What's the best setup and how much is the monthly rate?  Does the power company have any statistics on how much power an average RV park uses?  Call septic system installers and get quotes.  You know, the basic stuff here.  If you take in a grand in one day, you can likely expect half or more of it to go to expenses. It doesn't negate profit, it's just how it is, you have gross profit and net profit. You have profit margins.   

I can tell ya one thing: I'm going to get quotes on the water, septic and electric, pad installation, gravel and everything else, add it all up and see what it's going to cost before I do much of anything. Except clearing the land. It's just impossible to understand how to set the park up without being able to see it clearly from the ground.  

I didn't even want to get into this thinking tonight but several posts popped up on my feed and I "had" to check them out. Then start thinking. Then come to the conclusion that - I don't know what I want to do about that - yet . Admit to myself that I don't know everything about this, tho I have freely admitted this several times before - I had to admit that again - and admit that it would be good to get some help formulating a plan versus just sitting here attempting to find out everything by endless searching. 

But, maybe endless searching isn't such a bad thing. I learn - pros and cons.  I get opinions of all different sorts. I read experts views. This method costs less but that method, tho costing more, costs less in the long run. For example, I read a very long thread in an RV forum not on Facebook that was discussing electrical hookups to each pad.  There were 4 different methods that were brought up and these people got into this highly technical discussion about it - they completely lost me at some point and I just kept reading in bewilderment.  Well, I had a basic idea of what they were talking about when I ended up going off that thread and looking up info on these methods.  Doesn't mean I completely understood all of it, but it was interesting reading and in the end? I still had no clue what method is actually the best.  

Until I read that thread, I had no idea that there were  different ways to set up your electrical system.  There's a lot of math involved in calculating voltage and amps, nothing I even want to get into. I'd rather just pay someone who is an expert in the field to design it for me tell me what goes where and what parts/wiring I need to buy for all of it, including lengths and quantities.  Let me rephrase that, I'd rather do all of this myself with some laborers and save a ton of money.  But I also don't want to get in over my head on any particular thing, make some massive, costly mistake and have to start all over again, costing twice the money it would have cost if I had just paid someone to do it for me.  

Changing gears, it saddens me my middle brother's behavior towards our mother.  She loves him, there is no question about that.  He - has not spoken to her in over 2 years now.  She has brought it up and it obviously weighs heavily on her mind.  It's the same pattern as with my dad.  He hadn't spoken to him in at least 15 years before he passed away.  My dad spent years trying to talk to him through various platforms. Mail, phone calls, text, emails and even going to his doorstep on one occasion.  To no avail.  I is hard to believe he is doing this with his own mother, an elegant, graceful, peaceful, lovely and beautiful person.  My brother believed things about her - and me - that were simply not true.

I don't care if he doesn't want anything to do with me, I've gotten over him years ago. But to deny your own mother is, IMO, unforgiveable and unconscionable if you allow it to continue on to their or your grave. He has a reputation, he used to tell us in an arrogant, condescending manner, he cannot deal with family matters.  He's the king of his world and our putrid, foul, toxic family cannot be a part of it since - of course - we don't bow to him, he's a family member, not our God.   

I don't feel hatred for him, I feel sorry for him.  He has created a bubble around him and some day it will come crashing down on top of him.  Mother is 85 years old.  She is in good health for her age, she takes care of herself.  But she won't be around forever, none of us will.  Eternity.  I always think about the other side of the grave, where you go to meet your Maker.  I have enough of my own issues to worry too much about other people besides telling them about the Maker, who He is and how much He loves you.  And the important aspect of Christ, repentance and forgiveness.  

But I can't be responsible for other people's lives or the choices they make.  I think he is making a very bad choice in rejecting his own mother.  I don't know what has happened to him in his adult life that has caused him to come to reject both of his parents, but, he has done it.  

I tried looking up his info through a large number of google searches with info I know about him. He moved near me years ago into a house about a mile away.  I see old info about his career dating back over a decade, I see nothing current.  I don't know what happened to this man during his lifetime that caused him to hate his parents.  I grew up with the same parents. They had their issues like everyone.  But they showed us love, took care of us and did the best they could, the same as we all do with our children.  We might not agree with everything they did or the way they saw things, but they didn't do anything to deserve our lifelong contempt and hatred.  

I would really have a hard time with this if mom dies and he hasn't tried to reconcile.  Not just for mom's sake - going down to her grave with an unforgiving son - but also dealing with her affairs and the inheritance.  He has always been the one that wanted everything.  If I got something from her, he wanted it and said he should have had it, notwithstanding the fact she had given him something of sentimental of monetary value as well.  It would be quite contentious, for I would look at him with disgust and disdaining for the way he treated his own mother, whose womb he came out of.  He would want his share of the inheritance regardless of the fact that he's had nothing to do with her.  

That's her choice, I would certainly honor that, but I wouldn't respect him, at all and I would make it quite known of my contempt.  

Okay, it's getting late and this thought process is draining and I want to stop it. It isn't anything worth dwelling on, I usually don't but mom brings it up here and there.  I sent her flowers on Monday for Mother's Day. I know, it was early but I didn't want to forget and then remember on Sunday - tomorrow - that I need to send her something.  That's like, gee, you remembered me, but a bit too late type of thing.  I'll call her as well plus wish happy day on my facebook page.  I know my oldest brother will do the same and probably invite her to dinner or something.  At least my oldest brother - who also wrote off my dad, has definitely not written off mother.  He was in shock that middle brother did what he did and he couldn't comprehend it, as far as I know. I don't have any communication beyond happy birthdays and merry christmases,  with him, he has never wanted anything to do with family from early childhood, but at least he still loves mom and helps her out whenever she needs the help.

With that, I'm going to bed. 

 I drove til midnight last night- not that I had to but I wanted to get most of the driving over with. Went straight to bed, no gambling for me, haven’t done so in quite awhile. I’m at the casino truck stop. 

Well actually I’m in the casino getting breakfast at one of the restaurants. So I get up a little bit ago, open the door to one of the closets to get fresh clothes - no clothes! 

Yesterday when I got to work I tried to fire up the truck - it’s the first thing I do. In case there are issues I want to get on it right away. Well, I got distracted with finding the mechanics and asking them to deal with it. They ended up putting new batteries in it and I ... forgot to put my duffle bag in. 

It’s a good thing this is only a two day trip. Id be finding a Walmart somewhere otherwise and buying new clothes. Not the end of the world. I actually was laughing at myself lol 😂 

Whatever the case, providing I get home early enough, we are going to Texas Roadhouse. I haven’t cheated in months and I’m ready for  a grand, one meal break from the same old stuff. Just one meal tho. That last time I cheated for several months? I kind of regretted that after gaining 20 plus pounds back and taking forever to lose it again. 

I’m hoping I get tomorrow off. I haven’t had one off in a long time. Load the dogs up, go to one of the properties and let them run out some energy. 

Monday. The appraisal should be completed. It shouldn’t be an issue, the land is easily worth $4,400 per acre. I suspect that property wouldn’t have lasted long if had been listed on the MLS. I caught a break on this one and I don’t wonder if all the trouble I’ve gone through finding the right place was actually meant to be to eventually end up with this one? 

I’m not going to get distracted with the property today. Just need to focus on something else. 

Right now? Breakfast is done and time to get back to the truck. My 10 hours is almost up. 

G’day 

 Here it is.  I could not get it to upload the image from my computer, so I took a screenshot of it.  Look at the rows.  There are lanes throughout the entire property. They have not been maintained and are filled with underbrush, and more specifically, a bunch of thorny vines that need to go.  There is a lane going vertically through the property, that is the cutoff.  To the left is RV park, to the right is kept as is.  Except, of course, to get rid of the underbrush.  It serves no useful purpose and can dry out in dry season and cause forest fires.  I will try to outline the areas for the things I want to install with lines tomorrow. It's late now, lol, I'm going to bed.