3AM again

Well, after a month of a great 12 hour gig we were supposed to get a week off.  Lisa ran off to Idaho to  complete some housekeeping and get her Piffy fix.  I returned to Port A for some fishing and get caught up on some maintenance.  The week turned out to be four days of hard work for both of us and then we were called back.  I left at three thirty this morning, drove the 110 miles here and worked until five when Lisa managed to get back here.  Took a nap and now for the graveyard.  Thankfully  it is slow for now and will probably pick up tomorrow. The unpredictability of this work is a frustration.  Often we have no idea how long the gig will last. One day it is just over.

In this instance we are positioned midway in the worksite.  Other guards are positioned at the front gate and the workers funnel through them and then through us.  Of course we are both keeping meticulous records.  Generally our part serving no real purpose.  The real reason we are here.

This gate has to be closed at all times because I am told this area has been stocked with Trophy size Bucks.  The same source continued to tell me that Hunters pay as high as $5000 for the opportunity to hunt these Deer and an additional (from several thousand to as high as twenty thousand) if they are lucky enough to bag one of these Bucks.  Certainly folks of my ilk will never hunt here.  I've seen the advertisements and I didn't think it was that high, though the information came with a warning of consequences should any escape.  The area is surrounded by a ten foot fence. This to me is a pretty strange concept having grown up in Idaho and having participated in many hunts on Public land where my total cash expense was gas, grub and a License.  All right, and a tag.   I'll admit it, though I have not yet been successful, I have experienced the thrill of having some pretty big Bucks in my sights.  Call it Buck Fever that I never returned with meat. Oh well, think of all those dead pheasants.  But one can't but help comparing to medieval times when all the game in the kingdom belonged to the King for sport while the peasants starved.  Idaho by more than half is public lands.  By contrast, Texas has only three percent.  Yet in Idaho, there is a movement by the local elected pols demanding the US turn all public lands over to the State.  Despite the idiocy of the concept for instance who is to pay for the services of maintenance and fighting wildfires.  Of course those arguments never had any validity because the self serving politicos have no intention of performing or solving any of those functions, only to auction off the public's lands to the highest bidder and to somehow wrangle a share of the profit for themselves and their cronies.  I suspect the parties involved have no intention of staying around afterwards to deal with the mess.  Think Superfund.  And while Idaho, like Texas have huge populations slaving in minimum wage jobs, those same politicos rest easy in their gerrymandered voting districts.  Happily pursuing their own agenda's.  God forbid that they might represent their constituents.  Sad.  Things that I once thought were "entitlements" like fresh air and water I am learning is a vanishing concept.

Speaking of the contrasts between Idaho and Texas, future planners are trying to conceptualize what will happen to all of the unemployed oil workers in years to come.  Though estimates of Texas Oil being available for decades.  The planners describe the work force as transient, consisting of "man camps" and bringing no worthwhile upgrades to areas they settle in.  No schools, infrastructure etc.  I thought it humorous after talking with one twenty year old making nearly one hundred thou annual.  If Idaho had these problems.  

Lastly, one of nature's physical laws, like Newton law of gravity was driven home to me the other day by a large black spider.  These same types of spiders exist in Idaho, only about one tenth the size.  You know, the kind that leaps into thin air to bag a fly and swing back on a thin strand of web.  I was half hearted swatting one off the hood of the Bronco and being amused how it kept swinging back.  Durn thing eventually ducked under the bumper while I sat there chuckling.  Lucky bugger.  Here is where the natural law kicks in.  Driving to the next job location pulling a three ton trailer, difficult enough at sixty miles an hour in the short wheel based Bronco, twice as hard upon glancing down and seeing the inch and a half spider gently lower himself on ones bare leg while a semi truck is passing causing everything to go helter skelter anyway.  Suffice to say I survived.  Why did I not see it coming when this same scenario occurs over and over each and every time each year of my fifty nine years.  Call it the power of denial I guess.