Waking Up In Parking Lots

From May 2005 to March 2006 we worked for a company based in Tampa, Fl. We were required to pull a 20' work trailer and travel the country working at various shopping centers. There were about 50-60 items that we were to record and we were called commercial surveyors. Each of us had a golf cart to tool around the shopping center in performing our various duties. Some of the things I had to record was gathering meter numbers and matching them to the tenants (not an easy process), counting parking spaces, copying each and every sign on the property as well as several other things. Jim had to wire track the irrigation system and locate all the valves, wire track the parking lot lightpoles and many other things. Not a tough job and it paid on a per job basis so the money was pretty good. However, some of the locations we were at were......interesting to say the least!

Our first location was just outside of Tampa. Very commercial somewhat upscale area with lots of big name stores and there we were, parked in the parking lot. We had never been to Florida or even the east coast before so all of this was a new and exciting adventure for us. Jim called me on the radio to tell me that there was an alligator in the drainage ditch in front of the Lowes store! The next morning he went out to walk JoJo, our very sweet but not very bright dog, and thought he'd go see the alligator again. He didn't notice that JoJo had walked out on the grate over the ditch and when he did he called her back and she slipped and fell right in the ditch! He had to pull her up like a fish on the line before the alligator had her for breakfast!! I swear that any puddle there bigger than a plate has an alligator in it!

We went from Florida to Long Island, NY for our next assignment. The roads out to Long Island were so bad that our license plate on the motorhome sheared off never to be seen again. During our 1-1/2 month stay we had some great fun like driving out to the Hamptons just to sightsee, we were interviewd by a reporter for an article about working fulltimers and several other good experiences. However, on our way back to New Jersey, right at the toll booth on the bridge going into the Bronx our motorhome transmission gave up and there we sat. They have tow trucks that just cover that bridge so they towed the motorhome off the bridge to a "safe area". We had Progressive Insurance so they found a tow truck (it took 3 hours) big enough to tow our 33' motorhome with a 20' trailer on it plus the tow truck itself was about 25'long through the streets of the Bronx during rush hour traffic. It looked like some kind of bizarre train!! Very funny the looks we were getting. One week later we had a new tranny and off we went.

We did several assignments in New Jersey, Maryland, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania (where we saw our first fireflies and an old time, small town type 4th of July) and finally in North Carolina. From there we had to make a fast trip across country to Medford, OR to meet a deadline and do a few jobs there. Then on to the Sacramento area just in time for the above average rain they were having there. One memorable location was in a not very nice part of Sacramento. We set up our rigs in the corner of the parking lot and about an hour later saw two armed security guards creeping along the side of the motorhome. They didn't know who we were and as it turns out that corner of the lot where we parked is notorious for drug dealing! Once they found out we were legitimate they suggested that we move to the center of the parking lot under the lights and even recomended that we get a gun! Which we did not!! During our stay there we had to call the security guys because someone was smoking a crack pipe!

We went a little further south of that location and worked in a beautiful shopping center but were warned by the police that it was also a high crime area! Happily, nothing sinister happened there.

The reason we left that job was because we grew tired of waking up in parking lots to the sound of the lot sweepers and trash trucks! We had a company credit card for gas and food since most of the time we were forced to eat out which I know sounds great and it was for awhile but 20 extra pounds later it no longer sounded like a good thing.

We didn't get to see as much of the areas we were in as we would have liked because we were so busy and had deadlines to meet but we did have some fun. Jim was able to go out on the group charter fishing boats three times, we saw Plymouth Rock, drove out to the end of Cape Cod, etc. Someday we hope to go back to some of the areas just to sightsee.

We left that job in March of 2006, drove back to Tampa to give back the work trailer and then came back to Montana for our next job.