Taking Down the Tents
We are now on our last weeks of the summer season, and the resort gets emptier everyday. Now, instead of lines and lines of RVs, there are many places that you can see right through several roads, with nothing there except the pedestal that holds the electrical plugs and the water faucet. Most of the departments are closed, the pool, activities, the restaurant, and the store and the main lodge are on shorter and shorter hours. The maintenance is down to a skeleton crew, which is oddly subdued.
Most of our friends have left for other places, many south to whatever winter place they go to, and Don left a week ago to head up north for the sugar beet harvest. He took the 5th wheel and I am in my Airstream. At first, I was very sad to see him go, and I do miss him, but the dog and I have settled into a comfortable routine.
It is really wonderful to be back in my Airstream. It is just the right size, and I am happy in my customized nest. I have been puttering happily, fixing things that needed attention, and making some minor changes. One major change is a TV. I never had a TV, well a little teeny LCD one that couldn’t talk to cable. Don can’t go very long with out a TV, so now there is 20” flat screen over my laptop table. Not sure about it, I watch it a lot more than I thought I would, mostly reruns. Since Don has it on a lot, I got kind of used to it, more for the background noise than actually watching it.
One morning I caught Mad Max- Beyond Thunderdome, one of my favorite movies. It stars Tina Turner for one thing and the rather yummy Mel Gibson. It is a violent, quirky and peculiar movie of life in the Australian desert after Armageddon, where methane from pigs is the fuel for a madcap collection of cobbled together vehicles. Then there are the children who survive a plane crash and live in a sort of salvage society, rather like Lord of the Flies. Several lines from this movie were part of our household : “wherever you go, there you are”, and “plan ? plan? There is no plan”. It has stayed below the radar of important movies, but I watched it happily, yet again.
Our agreement with Hart Ranch was to work until Sept 15. When I decided that going to ND to do the beets was too cold, too dark, and too much in general, I asked and the boss said that he could probably use me. When the time came, though, he is so over budget that he can’t keep me on. (Although there are two men who he has kept on salary, grrr) Kind of irritating as I had sort of counted on the money. But I don’t think I would have gone to ND anyway. I am now actually workamping, working 20 hours to pay for my site, which is better than nothing. It is very nice not to have to be there at 7 AM. Instead, I roll in at 10, just in time for morning break time and my downfall, doughnuts.
The weather is very odd, one day it’s in the 50’s then it’s back to the 90’s, I have piles of clothes that aren’t’ quite right for one day or the next day, but aren’t quite dirty enough to wash just yet.. We have had one frost, but today I lay under the trailer riveting patches on the underside, and the temperature climbed to 95. After lunch I turned on the AC. Then two days later we were wearing jackets and freezing.
Two days ago there was a brisk and chilly wind that came right in a giant crack in the Airstream’s door. I guess I knew it was there, but now it is letting too much cold in and I will have to fix it. This entails removing all the little rivets from the inside, and then shoving and pushing with boards under it until it goes back into the right curved shape to fit the opening. I have tried it before, but need to have a go at it again. Either that or I need a big fat piece of foam to fill up the hole. I borrowed an electric heater while I’m here which helps keep the propane consumption down. The nutty people who stay here in their RVs all winter get really big tanks from the gas company delivered, like the ones people with houses have. I guess it’s cheaper than a house that isn’t paid for, but it still seems odd.
We used to have the two way radio going all day, hearing what everyone was doing, whose TV wouldn’t work, whose water was leaking. Now, there is practically no sound from it.
From my window I can see the soft brown hills and the piles of big round bales stacked up for the winter. Pepe and I like to walk out behind the place in the hayfields, and the swales near the creek. If I face away from the CG, I can pretend I am really out in the middle of nowhere, with just the dried grasses and the wind. In one dip, there are some stumpy trees with bright red berries. We went over to look at them and discovered a depression down off the prairie level that must be a place that the deer go in storms. The grass there is lush and the weeds and brush have been either eaten or sat on so it is like a little secret pasture. The cattle that are now dotting the hillsides in search of what grass is left will come down to smaller, more protected fields for the winter and be fed the big hay bales. I kind of hope that will happen before I leave. And actually, I hope I get to see some snow before we flee to CA.
In the course of the summer, a big plastic “Quonset” hut has been put up as part of the old horse arena’s transition to a 6-12 grade Christian School. They are actually using the front office part of the arena as classrooms, which seemed impossible to me until I saw how small the student body is. A public high school tends to be huge, collecting as many students as possible so that the economics of scale make it more “efficient”. This size also makes the quality of education more factory like, and makes it harder to keep on top of the students. Most folks who can afford it send their children to these faith-based private schools, even if they are not particularly religious. Nobody says it out loud, but the public schools have a lot of Native Americans, many with the problems that go hand in hand with poverty, alcoholism, and despair.
The NAU, North American University still uses the arena and the stables are full of the student’s horses, so I get to hear and smell and see them. In the morning, the are turned out where I can see them beyond the piles of hay bales. As we have cool nights now, I can see them all having a small stampede for the sheer joy of running when they first get out.
Major change in plans: Don ran afoul of some ruckus with the union up at the sugar beet factory. He worked for a temp agency that recruits RVers to do this work, and although he signed up for his position of Assistant Mechanic properly, and no one else wanted it, the union people raised a big fuss. They invented several safety violations he was supposed to have made (which is ridiculous, as he is religious about safety regulations), and generally piled on the pressure until he saw there was no alternative but to leave. So he headed back to SD, and arrived here on Wed, but with a sick truck. It looks like the head gasket blew, so the truck now waits at the diesel hospital for its appointment next Thursday. I went from thinking I would leave here around the 25th of Oct, to thinking the 6th and now it’s the13th. Never a dull moment.
Most of our friends have left for other places, many south to whatever winter place they go to, and Don left a week ago to head up north for the sugar beet harvest. He took the 5th wheel and I am in my Airstream. At first, I was very sad to see him go, and I do miss him, but the dog and I have settled into a comfortable routine.
It is really wonderful to be back in my Airstream. It is just the right size, and I am happy in my customized nest. I have been puttering happily, fixing things that needed attention, and making some minor changes. One major change is a TV. I never had a TV, well a little teeny LCD one that couldn’t talk to cable. Don can’t go very long with out a TV, so now there is 20” flat screen over my laptop table. Not sure about it, I watch it a lot more than I thought I would, mostly reruns. Since Don has it on a lot, I got kind of used to it, more for the background noise than actually watching it.
One morning I caught Mad Max- Beyond Thunderdome, one of my favorite movies. It stars Tina Turner for one thing and the rather yummy Mel Gibson. It is a violent, quirky and peculiar movie of life in the Australian desert after Armageddon, where methane from pigs is the fuel for a madcap collection of cobbled together vehicles. Then there are the children who survive a plane crash and live in a sort of salvage society, rather like Lord of the Flies. Several lines from this movie were part of our household : “wherever you go, there you are”, and “plan ? plan? There is no plan”. It has stayed below the radar of important movies, but I watched it happily, yet again.
Our agreement with Hart Ranch was to work until Sept 15. When I decided that going to ND to do the beets was too cold, too dark, and too much in general, I asked and the boss said that he could probably use me. When the time came, though, he is so over budget that he can’t keep me on. (Although there are two men who he has kept on salary, grrr) Kind of irritating as I had sort of counted on the money. But I don’t think I would have gone to ND anyway. I am now actually workamping, working 20 hours to pay for my site, which is better than nothing. It is very nice not to have to be there at 7 AM. Instead, I roll in at 10, just in time for morning break time and my downfall, doughnuts.
The weather is very odd, one day it’s in the 50’s then it’s back to the 90’s, I have piles of clothes that aren’t’ quite right for one day or the next day, but aren’t quite dirty enough to wash just yet.. We have had one frost, but today I lay under the trailer riveting patches on the underside, and the temperature climbed to 95. After lunch I turned on the AC. Then two days later we were wearing jackets and freezing.
Two days ago there was a brisk and chilly wind that came right in a giant crack in the Airstream’s door. I guess I knew it was there, but now it is letting too much cold in and I will have to fix it. This entails removing all the little rivets from the inside, and then shoving and pushing with boards under it until it goes back into the right curved shape to fit the opening. I have tried it before, but need to have a go at it again. Either that or I need a big fat piece of foam to fill up the hole. I borrowed an electric heater while I’m here which helps keep the propane consumption down. The nutty people who stay here in their RVs all winter get really big tanks from the gas company delivered, like the ones people with houses have. I guess it’s cheaper than a house that isn’t paid for, but it still seems odd.
We used to have the two way radio going all day, hearing what everyone was doing, whose TV wouldn’t work, whose water was leaking. Now, there is practically no sound from it.
From my window I can see the soft brown hills and the piles of big round bales stacked up for the winter. Pepe and I like to walk out behind the place in the hayfields, and the swales near the creek. If I face away from the CG, I can pretend I am really out in the middle of nowhere, with just the dried grasses and the wind. In one dip, there are some stumpy trees with bright red berries. We went over to look at them and discovered a depression down off the prairie level that must be a place that the deer go in storms. The grass there is lush and the weeds and brush have been either eaten or sat on so it is like a little secret pasture. The cattle that are now dotting the hillsides in search of what grass is left will come down to smaller, more protected fields for the winter and be fed the big hay bales. I kind of hope that will happen before I leave. And actually, I hope I get to see some snow before we flee to CA.
In the course of the summer, a big plastic “Quonset” hut has been put up as part of the old horse arena’s transition to a 6-12 grade Christian School. They are actually using the front office part of the arena as classrooms, which seemed impossible to me until I saw how small the student body is. A public high school tends to be huge, collecting as many students as possible so that the economics of scale make it more “efficient”. This size also makes the quality of education more factory like, and makes it harder to keep on top of the students. Most folks who can afford it send their children to these faith-based private schools, even if they are not particularly religious. Nobody says it out loud, but the public schools have a lot of Native Americans, many with the problems that go hand in hand with poverty, alcoholism, and despair.
The NAU, North American University still uses the arena and the stables are full of the student’s horses, so I get to hear and smell and see them. In the morning, the are turned out where I can see them beyond the piles of hay bales. As we have cool nights now, I can see them all having a small stampede for the sheer joy of running when they first get out.
Major change in plans: Don ran afoul of some ruckus with the union up at the sugar beet factory. He worked for a temp agency that recruits RVers to do this work, and although he signed up for his position of Assistant Mechanic properly, and no one else wanted it, the union people raised a big fuss. They invented several safety violations he was supposed to have made (which is ridiculous, as he is religious about safety regulations), and generally piled on the pressure until he saw there was no alternative but to leave. So he headed back to SD, and arrived here on Wed, but with a sick truck. It looks like the head gasket blew, so the truck now waits at the diesel hospital for its appointment next Thursday. I went from thinking I would leave here around the 25th of Oct, to thinking the 6th and now it’s the13th. Never a dull moment.
posted by Thistledown24 at 7:27 PM
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