Home ground

Kinda funny. Living in an RV is one of those surreal circumstances were you just hitch up, move out, and wake up to your digs the same as they were when you were miles away. That’s what happened yesterday. In my last post I said I’d be in Vegas until I left for the trip north…what a fibber. I woke up in Pahrump today…no…not in one of the houses.

Speaking of ‘the houses’, Monte, Vickie, and I came out a week ago to check out the property and right on the highway, at an intersection with a light, is a ‘gentlemen’s club’. In other words, girls get naked in there and we were laughing our asses off over how it would be hard to convince your wife you were at the gas station across the street for four hours where you rig was parked.

I did the ‘woman’ thing and changed my mind about driving back out here on Monday for the propane tank set-up. One of the main reasons for my change of thought is the propane line is trenched and runs underneath the pad my coach sets on and I need a flex pipe long enough to reach to the propane coupling on my coach. I actually put a lot of thought into this whole thing and had the trenching done so the propane line is about 15 feet from the water/sewer/power connection because that’s how it comes into the coach. I want to make sure it all works since this will be home with a few trips thrown in every year (I hope – damn the cost of diesel/fuel).

By the time I got fuel, vacation prescription refill, and quad zillion bottles of Baileys (it’s a family reunion thing and it’s about $15 a bottle cheaper in Vegas than it is in MT and ID), and got tied down and hitched up, it was around 6:30pm. Damn good for me since I didn’t want to fade freeway traffic thru Vegas. But it put me into the property after dark.

There’s a chainsaw in my future. Yes, the chainsaw massacre is going to take effect on a couple of trees/branches right at the turn in to the property. I backed up three times and pulled forward – inching my way along with my flashlight (stop and look) so I made sure not to take out the damned phone company post that I wanted to run over and crush – daylight wouldn’t have been quite as stressful but the turn still would have been an issue. It won’t be next time I pull in.

I got unhitched, didn’t even have to level up because Don Kenzevich did an incredible job on the work he did for us. Pulled my truck around so I had headlights on my work area and turned the back porch light on from Vickie’s house. More flashlight time because everything runs off the backside of the coach, power on – crank on the air conditioners, water hooked up – yikes! No water.

I checked everything, out to the pump which sets on the back of the property, the power switch was on but nothing happened when I flipped the switch back and forth and there was no water pressure, I checked the power station outside and all the breakers were on, I checked the breaker box in the house and all the breakers were on. WAH WAH!

It was 11pm and my brain was fried, I got up at 4:30am on Saturday and that hitching and unhitching and running chores in the heat of the day just takes the sap right out of you. I know now why daytime people are so frigging grouchy. You get up at 4:30am and the day takes eight years to pass, you look at the clock and it’s 9am, only two years have gone by…brutal!

I called Jamie Dunn, the electrician, all around handyman that’s been out wiring the shed, the coach hook-up, and running the conduit/wiring in the trench. He wasn’t stressed at all about coming out and checking out the pump to see what the problem was. HOLY SHIT! This is nothing like Vegas. It was a wiring issue with the breaker to the shed that caused the problem of no power to the pump. He left about 1am.

By now the coach was cool, the motosat was bringing the cyber world to me, and after a shower and some website work, I got to bed about 2am. Up at 7:30. UGH! Oh well, life will settle here soon.

I have to say that I’m completely impressed with Pete Alfred (home inspector), he’s very reasonably priced and also works in Vegas, not just the Pahrump area – he’s the one that I called to find out about a landscaper/gravel hauler/excavator AKA Don Kenzevich – and Pete told me to call him anytime I need anything. And my completely impressed is almost jaw dropping amazement at the job that Don did for us on the gravel roadbed, utility line trenching, garbage clean-up, and all-around job performance…he works out of the Pahrump area too – he was doing a job in Death Valley when I first contacted him. And Jamie Dunn, what a great find, a real person with handyman skills that isn’t dropping the ball – even at 11pm. These three guys have restored my faith in fast courteous, friendly service and stripped the Vegas tarnish and varnish from my jaded view. NICE!

Sis is on her way out for a stop over today before heading back across the country so it’s BBQ time and a few hours of ‘yippee, we have our own digs together’.