Go RVing
Sometime during all of this activity, a phone line was brought onto the
property. That turned out to be a bit of a chicken-and-egg thing, with
the contractor not wanting to pull the line onto the property until the
phone company did some bureaucratic thing or other, and the phone company
not wanting to do its bureaucratic thing until it knew the contractor had
pulled the line.
After two trips around that circle, I cut across the radius and
wound up speaking directly to the phone company CEO. She answered her
own phone -- try doing that with AT&T! She apologized for the dilemma,
and the deadlock was quickly broken.
That would not be my only contact with her; there was also the small
matter of an ambiguity in the long-term payment contract for getting
the line installed. (It takes more than a mere $25 hookup fee when
you live nearly a mile from the service point across trackless desert.)
But that was cleared up just as easily with a written clarification
letter.
I know lots of folks who are upset with their phone company and its
service -- but I like mine!
So now, with water, electricity, a septic tank, and phone service, the
only remaining thing to do was to collect everything into a single location
and park our travel trailer there! So we picked a spot, ran a line from
the septic tank, brought over a water line, electric service, and a phone
extension, spread some gravel, and we had our own RV pad! I went to an
electrical supply place and designed a custom power pole to accomodate
two RVs (in case somebody wanted to visit), and we're set up with all
of the comforts of home!