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.  

 

 There are days when I definitely do not feel like driving, today was one of them.  With around 540 miles to go to get back to the yard, I just wasn't in the mood.  I mean, I'll get  it done but I have to distract myself when it's going that bad.  Mostly listening to stuff on YouTube.  All kinds of content on there, you can find anything that suits your fancy.  

It didn't help that the thought of - simply because there are power lines nearby, that doesn't mean I'll have access to them. It just hit me today - those lines are on other people's property. There are easements going through those properties but there isn't an easement going to mine. Well there is a path that seems like it might be one, but who knows?  Awful large risk to take to think about buying a property you can't get power to.

So, after putting up with all the nonsense and lunacy on the road all day long - that's probably my biggest reason why I don't like driving anymore - I drove straight over there from work.  I had to get this out of my head.  I eight can or can't have power. If I can't, this deal is off, I don't want anything to do with it. It's one thing to have to have your own septic system installed, it's quite another to think about having to supply your own power. No thanks.  My concerns were eased when I saw a power line crossing the road maybe 50 feet from "my" property line.  That's all easement along the road, they could easily just run it from there over to my land without having to pay any property owners for easement rights - if they'd even give it.  

I'm still going to pursue this before signing day tho.  I have time.  I'm going to call what I believer to be the power provider tomorrow and ask them to please find out what will need to be done to get power to my property.  

I got at least a hint of hope today when the realtor joyously texted me that the title company was asking about my marital status.  Don't know why they need to know that but I gave it to her. She said it's at least good that they are moving on this.  We made jokes about how long this process is taking and that was that, lol.  It's still over 2 weeks to closing day.  

Back to working, I think besides dealing with all the ridiculousness in traffic every day, it's also the long days.  I put in 16 hours yesterday.  The day before that was 14 hours.  Today was less at 10 hours, but good grief.  It's too much. I'm tired of it, I want a permanent break from it.  If I could just work an RV park every day for 8 hours and take a day off here and there, I'd be good.  It's why I am seriously looking into just financing the whole thing, get 70-80 sites set up at the get go, have a laundry and bath facility, get an office building and let's go with this.  About 200k, maybe 250k to do what I would need to do would get the whole thing set up and over with. There would be other things I would want to add over time but that would get me over the initial hump.  

Whether I would qualify remains to be seen. Otherwise, I'm going to have to cash out that old 401k and then probably have to get a loan on top of that.  To that end, I'm also looking at home equity loans.  My house is worth far more than I owe on it, it's just it's a manufactured home and a lot of the lenders don't want to finance that regardless of how much it may be worth.  But I'll keep looking until I either exhaust all of it or I find something.  Right now, tho, I'm not doing anything that requires any kind of credit check.  I don't need that showing up for the lender for the property.  

I've got another loan that's down to less than 2 grand, I'm considering paying that off as well and get my monthly expenses down far enough that any lender looking at my monthly liability spreadsheet would definitely at least give consideration to my loan request.  And then there's the banker next door who knows the person in charge of the SBA loans in this region.  They have money and hardly anyone taking it at low interest rates.  That's his words.  

Lenders such as LightStream, Prosper, upstart and the like want way too much of an interest rate to even consider using them for a loan unless I didn't need that much. If I were to just do the 25 pads and I could get most of it done with the 401k, then I could see taking out a 15-20k loan. But you get into the 50k and up territory and they want more than a house payment for monthly payments.  I get that it's an unsecured loan but get real with the interest rates, please.  

And on and on.  There will be a flurry of activity at the get-go if/when this property closes.  A quote on a septic system - I'll contact 3 companies and get some bids.  Get electricity to the property - unless it's going to cost a fortune, then it can wait until I secure more financing.  And get the water line run to the property. I can't see that costing more than 3 or 4 grand, it's not that much of a project.  And get the underbrush cleared on the front half of the property.  

Which means I'll have to go and put ribbon around all the stuff I don't want taken down. That'll take a bit of time.  I want all of those lanes cleared out.  Where they already took out trees and made rows. It's almost as if the owner wanted to build his own RV park, I have no clue why he did all of that. None of my business, I guess, I'll never meet him apparently. This is all being done through realtors.  But the fact that all of those rows already exist - that's a lot of tree felling that won't have to happen. There will be plenty more trees that need to come down, yes, but all of that is already out of the way.  

There is a plan slowly developing in my mind. The more understanding I gain, the easier it is to come up with a basic plan.  Money is everything of course.  

There is also future stuff that I am considering.  A convenience store with a deli - that also takes care of the lot rentals of course. Why? Because there is a huge piece of land with an office that accommodates 250 people in the office portion and even more in the warehouse part.  It's up for sale for 3 million, it was owned by BP, they moved out for whatever reason.  Someone is going to buy that facility sooner or later and I wouldn't mind facilitating lunchtime for whatever portion of them I can get to come down and buy lunch.  The nearest place to buy anything is 6 miles away.  People don't have forever lunch times.  

That was something that crossed my mind today.  I don't really want a gas station, just a convenience store and propane sales.  A log cabin type of thing, that sticks with the look and feel of the land.  Rustic look - pine trees and such don't need some "modern" feel to it. That's not what campers want anyway and those that do can find fancy RV resorts that better suit their desires.  I'm not going to try to appease everyone, the trees will drive off a certain amount of RV population and I'm fine with that.  They complain about them and say they want open clear land.  Yup, well that's not the theme of my park.  

Oh, the 250 people part of that facility up the street? That's what got me to wondering if they paid for sewer line over there. Otherwise, they must have had to install a very large septic system or several smaller ones.  It's an oil company, they can of course afford to do whatever they need, but I am going to find out if they have septic or if they paid to tunnel under the Interstate a sewer line.  

Yes, it has actually been useful that the land hasn't closed yet, because it's giving me time to really think about what I'm attempting to get into here. But, I am pleased with the property and the location and the availability of the utilities, wifi especially. Many RV'ers work out of their RV's, they live in them and travel from place to place. If you don't offer wifi, those types of RV'ers won't come unless they have their own wifi off of their phones (which is what I would have anyway if I were doing that type of lifestyle, I already have unlimited internet with unlimited tethering as it stands).  

But whatever happens, the fact of the matter is, even starting out small, the getting the utilities set up on the land is going to be more than I will have with the 401k and I am preparing my mind for more debt - but hopefully debt that will be supported by revenues. I just can't make a decision on what to do concerning loans until I get all the numbers in on how much all of it is going to cost.  

But, the things I will be installing, I have thought about endlessly. Water lines from the main connection, that's me.  I am not paying someone to do something that is quite easy, it's not brain surgery. Underground electric from the pole to the sites? I'm wishy washy on that one. The materials will cost at least 10k and that doesn't include installation.  Setpic? I'll pay someone to install but I'll run the lines to it from the pads.  I don't need help with that, that's as easy as the water line installation and I have contacts to get the pipe for cheaper than anyone can get it.  

The water, sewer, electric are going to be the money gobblers in this proposition.  Pad creation probably not so much, asphalt millings or concrete shavings I haven't looked into yet.  That's for pads and driveways. 

I will say James is all for this.  He'll work his ass off, I know him well enough, he's not a slacker, if I pay him an hourly wage, he'll get stuff done.  He's smart and can figure things out as well.  I could see him doing pads on his off time - just get a Bobcat rented for a month or two and he could get those done.  I have to keep working my job, I can't stop working til' I know I have the monthly income from this venture to be able to live off of.  I'm fortunate that I can get help from a person that is motivated, knowledgeable and likes to learn new things.  Cause' honey, all of this is new to all of us.  I have lived in trailers, but that isn't the same as attempting to build the place your rig is parked on. Apples and oranges.  

If you haven't figured it out yet, I am highly motivated to get this land and get this project going.  I have no fantasies of it up and running in a month. More like next year a grand opening. I already have numerous people that want to come.  I'm going to take 20 plus pics of the property after it's cleared and have a name-calling contest.  I can't come up with a name that isn't really unique. Whispering pines, Timberline, Piney acres -  and many more are already taken and are a bit  less than different. It's got to be something that at least remotely; reflects the type of place it is - tall pines, peace, quiet, restoration perhaps.  Nature, camping, trails, freedom.  I dunno, but I do know that others are far better with coming up with names like this than I am.  Someone has a eureka moment, comes up with this awesome name and walaah, there it is.  A permanent name is important not only for the image of the park, but the fact that you have to pay to have signs and billboards and ads put up.  

I can't just open a park and expect people to randomly find it, lol. It has to be advertised through multiple different media, but most importantly on social media sites.  Billboards are good for the nomadic traveler needing a place to stay for the night.  Local ads are good for the person needing a place to park their unit semi permanently. But if you want people to know about it and include it in their traveling plans, you have to be all over social media.  And have it come up in the top google searches - you pay a firm to do that for you.  You have to have your own website, your own facebook page and pretty much anywhere else - twitter, myspace, whatever gets the message across. Start your own RV group with your park name on it.  Get it up there in the google searches - again, you pay a firm to do that for you. I don't know how they do it, but they get it done.  

There are a large number of internet sites that rate and review your camp site and include it in their listings.  

I could go on, but you can see that this kind of project has a lot of different facets to it - some of it time consuming, some of it money consuming, but you have to do all of it to make it a successful venture.  I will have a professional set up my website replete with an online reservation system that will pay for a site rental in advance and reserve it in advance.  It seems endless all of this.  But it has to be done, all of it.  Anything missed is revenues declined.  You have to spend the money at the get go to get the word out, it's not just setting up a park, it's making it know to the RV'ing world that its' there and you are welcome to come check us out.  I can see thousands of dollars spent on all of that alone.  

To be honest, my mobile home park idea would have been easier than this.  But, my mind switched gears after looking into potential profits.  And the social aspect.  RV parks don't have the social stigma of mobile home parks.  A mobile home park isn't out of the question, but not on beautiful land like this.  Tear down half the trees to put them on there? Naw, not happening. Just get barren land for a mobile home park, put in a bunch of old mobilies, fix them up and rent them.  In reality, my truck parking idea has far more income potential and much less investment than a mobile home park. 

And RV parks - you don't buy RV's to rent them out, everyone already owns them.  You just have to have an appealing place to bring them to you.  And this whole thing is a challenge. I like a challenge.  All of it.  Work through one thing and then work through another - and another - and another.  You get it done and you think how good of a feeling it is that you got that accomplished and now tackle the next thing.  Money will be a thorn in the side, but it will keep me realistic as well.

Home? I got here late. The boys were all happy I walked in the door.  Taylor was gone to the neighbor's house, I saw her for 2 seconds before she came in, said g'nite and went to bed.  James I talked with for a while, especially about this venture - as I said - he's all for this.  These are my friends, if they want to help they can also reap the rewards of helping out.  I'm not looking for handouts here, that would be wrong on several fronts. I don't want free labor, I need help and it's something I will pay for, just as any business owner would do beyond what that owner can do on their own.  But, they are people I can trust.  Without any doubt, I can trust both of them.  James works at his own pace but he gets it done.  Taylor is highly organized and would take care of accounting to anyone's delight.  I wouldn't mind hiring her to run the place initially, but she wants to do stay at home stuff for now.  I respect that and there's nothing wrong with it.  But she is someone that can take care of business and do it efficiently.  

Their friends are willing to help as well. In fact, it was discussed quite a while back that they live on property.  I didn't bring that up, they did. I dunno how far I'm going to go with all of this, but also Maria would probably help out for either a place to live for free or a paycheck.  I just need friendly people - I don't need people that can't smile, be friendly and talkative and can take some normal customer - abuses. If a customer starts s*** and starts cussing anyone out, then it can be taken to the next level. Like, get the h*** out of the park, take your sorry @$$ and your rig out of here and don't come back.  I don't expect that to happen, yet, there are sorry people that affect every business. Still, you have your reputation to think of and even if they are demons from hell, you have to try at least to de-escalate anything and attempt to come to an amiable conclusion.  

This whole thing has become a bit overwhelming the more I find out the things I will need and the information I will need to know  I'm not giving up at all, but the learning curve here is huge.  I don't considering myself low IQ - I'm attempting to learn everything as I am confronted with new information.  

I've said this for many years on my blog - I write this stuff out because it helps me think things through.  This is by far and away the biggest undertaking I have ever attemptied in my entire lifetime. This is why you see me writing some of the same things, over and over here.  I write something, stop writing and sit back and think about it for a while.  I go do some research and then I might come to a different conclusion. I am not double-minded as some of this may appear. Where I say one thing and then switch to something different.  I had literally no clue what I was doing when I started the land search.  And after months of research, I can honestly say I am still far from being any kind of expert.  But, if I write all of this out, it causes me to think about my intended actions or thought process and then causes me to question it, confront it and learn other, more informed views of it.  

If there is one thing I have definitively learned in my life, it's to learn from other's mistakes.  What did you do wrong? What did you do to fix it? How can I avoid making the same, costly, mistake?  RV park owners are not free with their information, I am finding out.  They went through the same ordeals and I guess they think you should pay to play, find out about it at your own expense.  Some day, down the road, I will be able to offer advice and opinion on how to go about doing this, Right now, I just offer my observations of what I am dealing with.  

There is nothing more to say today about this.  Tomorrow I am going to call the power company, at least the one I think that serves the area from the research I have done and ask them to get me information about what it will take to get power to the property. This is of UTMOST importance. No power - no park.  

Addler is not happy with me lol. I've been gone alot. I give him and Aspyn a lot of attention when I get home. But, he just doesn't like me being gone so much.  Hopefully the day comes before his earthly days are over that I can have him roaming around with me doing the stuff one the property.  He can come every time, he's a good, obedient doggy. You have to somewhat pay attention to him wandering off, yes, it's just dog nature out in the wilderness.  But, he always comes back.  

Yes, it's getting late. I got home late.  I can't just get home and go to bed or something.  3 days out and out again tomorrow - it's somewhat depressing.  I'm more of a social creature than not, sitting in a truck alone all day long is no longer acceptable to me.  It pays my bills but it doesn't serve my desired life.  I'll take whatever debt risk I need to to get this business up and running. I have nothing to lose, this is what I've always wanted to do. Debt is the deterrent here, don't do it! Yes, do it if necessary, under a business setup, not your personal name if it's a business loan.  An LLC is necessary.  Just one more thing on the list.  It's a roll of the dice. Start small and try to do it with minimal loans and debt, or start it all out, get it all done, have a much larger monthly payment - but hopefully have the revenues to more than pay for it. You tell me. I don't know, I haven't decided yet and can't really come to that conclusion until after I know what my initial costs are.  Even then, it will still have to be a decision either way.

With that, I bid you a good night.