Fort Stewart, Georgia
The lodging that our company provided for us was in the military barracks. This was new for me because I was never in the military. Lets just say that it made me respect the military even more. They were not unlivable by any means but they were also not fabulous either.
This particular work site was packed full of 40mm grenades, some of which were live and dangerous. (You can learn about 40mm grenades here: 40mm.) This was new for me as I normally did not work on "live" ranges. For some reason I really loved these 40mm's so I just wanted to share that little tid bit with you.
I visited the Warrior's Walk at Fort Stewart. This was a powerful experience. I really encourage you to click the link so you can see what it is. There was everything from newborn baby pictures with messages to daddy, six packs of the soldier's favorite beer, flowers, paintings, clothing, so many different personal messages that held immense emotion. I drove away in tears, with a heavy heart for the families who left memorabilia in honor of their loved one. Freedom is never free.
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| Warriors' Walk, Fort Stewart, GA |
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| Warrior's Walk, Fort Stewart, GA |
Ok, ok... let's switch moods. That was deep. I did visit some fun places as well. I went to Savannah, Georgia and did some sightseeing at River Street. I took some fun photos, ate some great food, found some fudge to satisfy my sweet tooth, listened and watched the street performers, and mailed out some post cards. Who says you can't have fun alone? Savannah was a neat little downtown area and I really had a good time.
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| River Street, Savannah, GA |
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| Street Performer |
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| Paper roses by a street vendor |
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Anniston, AL
The contracts for jobs are sometimes written so that the contract will be re-bid every 6 months and the company that is doing the best job, or places the best bid, is awarded the next six months of work, or however long. This is how the Anniston site was set up. I wasn't really sure how long I would be there when I took the job but the point of me being back in the field was to collect some cash so I was just going with the flow to see what happened.
After I worked a little magic and batted a few eyelashes the company offered Butch a position. It all happened so quickly and we still had our place in Belcamp, MD packed full of "stuff." It was organized chaos and a crazy couple of days. We went from having a home to completely back on the road in the matter of days. I jumped a flight to MD to help him pack and we moved out in a matter of 2 1/2 days. We gave a lot of stuff away, threw plenty out, took what we needed with us in totes and the rest landed in storage. I flew back to Anniston and Butch drove his truck packed with his things. Just like that we were done with the settled life and officially back on the road.
Anniston, AL was incredibly hot during the summer time. I'm not a fan of working outside during the crazy hot weather for a number of reasons. Directly below is one of the reasons. Fat, poisonous snakes were common in Anniston, AL. Our on-site safety officer required the entire sight to wear mandatory snake chaps or approved snake boots. If you've never seen snake chaps or don't know what they are click here: Snake Chaps The chaps are hot because they must be thick enough to protect you from the snake. Wearing these things while digging holes in the Alabama summer heat was not pleasant. However, it was better than the alternative. While "grubbing" and or clearing an area for the first time we had the option to wear Full Snake Chaps. I took that option!
My dig partner and I found a pit of metal clips from riffle grenades; I'm talking hundreds of clips. All of these clips had to be picked up so it was a slow process of scraping the dirt and digging each clip out of the ground. So, we sat down and got to it. I was sitting on a tiny log and after we cleared the area we had been working on we moved the log I was sitting on and began to clear that area. My partner moved some dirt around and thought to himself "what a pretty flower" thinking that a flower had popped up. Turns out it was not a flower, it was the inside (reddish color) of a copper head's mouth. My dig partner was inches from being bitten on the hand by a poisonous snake and I was sitting on this snake the whole time!!!! The only thing that saved us was the cool weather. The snake was still lethargic. Pardon my french but I have to tell you this part. Our boss thought it was just hilarious and warned everyone the following morning that they needed their "ass chaps" for protection if they planned to sit on any snakes!
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| Do you see anything wrong with this picture? |
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| The places we work are normally off the beaten path and this provides amazing views and time well spent in God's creation. |
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| This is what break time on the grid looks like! |
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| Looking fly at work |
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| I was selected to do some repelling at work. It was pretty awesome. |
I was working as safety for the backhoe this day. This means you stand on the ground, at a safe distance away from the machine, and keep him or her from running into anything, digging up ordnance that they shouldn't or letting anyone else get too close to the machine. You are the eyes and ears for the machine from ground level and it's an important job. So, I was watching the machine run and all the sudden a deers runs right passed me and into one of these giant holes filled with water. The deer was disoriented and had accidentally gotten inside the fence. It was the craziest thing. The deer made it out of the hole and by this time my whole team had noticed the craziness. The deer proceeded to ram itself into the fence over and over again.
It quickly became apparent that this deer needed some help getting back to the woods. So, my team leader took it upon himself to tackle to deer and throw it over the fence and hopefully back to safety. Being a photographer it was my first instinct to pull out my phone and try to snap a photo while it was all happening. It's crazy the things that happen to us while working outside all day.
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| Cameron saving the day... and the deer! :) |
It wasn't long before the contract changed hands and we switched companies. The changing of companies was a good thing because this meant (hopefully) longer work with the new company. As the weeks turned into months we started to feel a little more comfortable with our stay in Anniston.
Let me explain why it's such a hassle to never know when the job starts and/or ends. Imagine being so completely mobile that you learn to live with only what you can carry with you. Seriously, who is going to move everything they own every 3 months? It's way too much. It's a pretty unique concept for most people and I have to explain this because so many people don't understand how simply we choose to live in order to travel. I'm not packing an entire set of dishes, a whole house full of furniture, drapes and my 7th grade memorabilia every 3 months. No Thanks! We purchased a cargo trailer and that allows us to keep enough stuff with us to set up what we need each time.
Sometimes you might live out of a hotel for months at a time and sometimes the job is "stable" enough to rent an apartment or house. However, renting a place poses all new conflicts. When is the last time you signed a lease for 3 months? Most landlords frown upon short leases. Now that you've found someone to allow you to sign a lease, and you're not in a hotel room, you have to buy all the things that you don't have room to travel with like something to cook with, dishes, shower curtains, trash cans, you get the picture. So, without a trailer to carry that type of stuff you're looking at a fairly expense set-up fee each time you move. Buying the bare essentials (I mean living like a college kid) at Wal-Mart and the dollar store, normally cost us about $250.00. This gets pretty annoying when you move 5 and 6 times in one year.
Even with a short term lease you're still taking a risk because nothing in our business is for sure. We have a common phrase "flying or driving." This really happens... you go into work just like any other day and instead of getting your gear together the boss says "flying or driving?" This means they just canned you with zero warning and they need to know how you prefer to get home, are you flying or driving? At times, it really happens that quickly and with zero warning. So, now that you understand the living arrangements a bit more maybe our next decision will seem as brilliant to you as it did to us.
Why not buy a RV? No more leases, no more plastic totes full of clothes, no more packing and unpacking, and no more repeated trips to the store for trash cans, spatulas and cups. So we did it! In 2008 we purchased a used RV. Feast your eyes upon our first rolling home.
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| Our first RV |
We had just rang in the New Year. Welcome to 2009! Everything was going well and we were finishing our visit with Darius when I received the bad news that my cousin had passed away in a car accident. I was unable to take Darius back to the airport at the end of this visit because I had to leave to attend the funeral in Arkansas. This was the first of several tragic accidents heading our way. :( Rest in Peace David.
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| Rest in Peace David. I love you. |
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| Christmas in the RV with Big D. |
We had been working steady in Anniston so our finances were on track and we felt the need to treat ourselves. And treat ourselves we did, with two beautiful motorcycles. I have plenty of riding experience but all of my experience was off-road and on 3 or 4 wheels, not 2! My only 2-wheel experiences were on Butch's dirt bike and the scoot-scoot in Puerto Rico. I strongly believe anyone who is considering riding a motorcycle should not do so without first taking a rider's safety course.
After completing my course it was time to pick motorcycles. Butch decided on a 2008 Ducati Hypermotard 1100 and I got the 2009 Ducati Monster 696. It was cold when we got our bikes but that didn't stop me from riding to work in the 32 degree temps wearing every piece of cold weather gear I owned because I was dying to ride my new motorcycle. I was scared to death learning to ride on the highways, and in traffic, but I was lucky enough to have Butch teach me. He had a street bike long before he met me and his experience made my learning process much easier.
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| The day we picked up our motorcycles |
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| Proud new owner |
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| Do I look like I know what I'm doing? |
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| One of our many nights out |
At the time we purchased our RV Butch was driving a 2002 Dodge 2500. This truck could pull the RV but we decided since it was inevitable that we would be leaving Alabama sooner or later that we should get a truck more suitable for pulling an RV. The economy was in the dumps and no one was buying big, diesel gulping, expensive dually trucks. This was good for us because we found a brand new 2008 Dodge that was still sitting on the lot in early 2009. They needed to get rid of the truck and (we found out later) the place was going out of business. We traded in my car and my new vehicle became a huge Dodge Dually truck. We almost stole the truck from them. We really got a great deal.
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| Proud new owners. |
Keeping it real with the local area we bought tickets to a Nascar Race at the local Talladega Superspeedway. I wasn't overly excited to watch a Nascar race but I'm normally up for anything (at least once) so I happily participated. It turned out to be a really good time. If you've never been, it's worth going at least once. To get the link below I googled "best nascar crashes at Dalladega" and our race was the very first video. Nascar Crash Click the link to watch video from the crash that happened at our race. It was an epic crash. The crash was directly in front of us. Luckily, we were all the way up top and away from the car but nonetheless, it was exciting and the stands went WILD. The driver was safe, exited his car, and ran to the finish line. I never thought I'd say this but it really was awesome!
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| 04/26/2009 - Talladega Superspeedway |
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| I'm a redhead, I burn easily. Embrace the hat. |
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| Butch was keeping it real with the locals. He grew the beard and got a camo hat so he could fit in. HEHE |
Living full time in a RV will show you just how small they really are. We decided if we were going to do the RV lifestyle we needed to get a nicer, larger RV. After all, this was our only home, right? So, in 2009 we purchased a much larger, much nicer, big daddy, toy-hauler RV and called it home. We now refer to 2009 as "the year of debt." The toy-hauler part made sense for us for several reasons. #1, we had toys! #2, the toy hauler part served as a living area while we were living in it. The back area quickly turned into a man cave but I was allowed to sit back there from time to time. :)
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| 39 feet of RV. It was gorgeous. Look how tiny the big truck looks compared to the huge RV! |
Anyone who knows Butch knows that he continually talks about dogs. He knows so much about dogs. He once bought a dog book so he could sit around and learn about different breeds. He love, loves dogs! He had been talking to me about getting another dog and I told him he was crazy. There is no way I'm getting a dog in an RV. I stood my ground. So, he decided to go for my soft spot... chihuahuas. He just "happened" to find a local breeder with really cute chihuahua puppies and thought we should just take a peak at them. We're just looking at them, right? Not only did we get a puppy, we got TWO puppies! We had been doing some research and read that having two dogs together would help with the kennel issues during the day. We also researched the breed a lot before getting new puppies because we didn't need a repeat of what happened with Tido, the Italian Greyhound.
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| Meet Cassie. |
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| and her brother, Ruger. |
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| They were so, so tiny. Their heads were the size of the key fob. |
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| I should've known this meant trouble! |
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Dad's Surgery
Being near my family was also a blessing when the heartbreaking phone call came telling me my father was being admitted to the ICU. My dad went in for a very normal procedure called Esophageal Dilatation but things went horribly wrong when his esophagus was accidentally torn during the procedure. It was an outpatient procedure, supposedly no big deal.
After the procedure my mother instantly noticed that he wasn't acting right and was in a great deal of pain. The office assured them things were fine and released them. They didn't make it all the way home before an ambulance had to be called. The pain was severe and things were quickly taking a turn for the worse.
By the time the ambulance arrived he was spitting up blood and no longer lucid. My Sister, Dessa, is a paramedic and was on duty this day. It was Dessa who responded to the call and helped to save our Father's life. I can't even begin to imagine what she went through being the person that had to care for our critically injured Father. I believe God always puts us right where we need to be. Understanding why we are there is another story entirely. We are all thankful that my sister was the person who cared for my father in the back of the ambulance but it was emotionally draining for Dessa.
The three hour trip from Anniston, Alabama to Tupelo, Mississippi definitely did not take me 3 hours this day! Eating out of vending machines, trying to sleep in the ICU waiting room, and watching the clock for the next visitation became the norm. Hours turned into days; days turned into weeks. Luckily, my boss knew my parents and had worked with them previously. He was very understanding to my situation. I missed an entire week of work and I'm thankful he was understanding because I would have been with my Father no matter what, job or not.
We almost lost my Father on several occasions and the time we spent in the ICU was nerve racking, emotionally draining, and physically exhausting. There was so much more that happened during this time but I don't want to take up the entire blog with all the heartbreaking details. I will sum it up by telling you that we are all very thankful that my dad is still here with us today. After many months he has made an almost full recovery and we take nothing for granted. Nothing is guaranteed, and every day is a blessing.
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| My brother sleeping in the ICU. This is how we all rested for about a week. |
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| This is one of the happy times we all remember during my dad's hospital stay. He wasn't exactly with it but he was still the same ol' dad inside so when I told him I was going to bring him a big stuffed animal he told me they would be good target practice. So, I fixed him up and got him some target practice. The nurses all that this was great. You'd have to know my father to know how much he picks and plays with people. This is so him! |
The
next portion of the blog made this entirely too long so I had to break
up 2009. Next up we visit Europe. Stay tuned, coming soon! :)
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