Two gates

After Parish convinced me to head south and live in Conway, Arkansas, the next important thing was finding a nice place to live. We decided to find an apartment, which would allow us to get our bearings and see what life would be like here. A house poses all types of responsibilities and investments that we weren't (and still are not) ready for. I started looking for apartments online and found a few. I sent Parish to scout them out and let me know if they looked as good as they did in virtual land. He visited a couple and said I would like The Ridge apartments.

When I visited in May, he took me there and we both liked everything about The Ridge. One selling point that attracted us immediately was the security gates at the entrance and exit. Only people that lived there received a clicker that opened the gate. Guests/sketchy people had to check in at a separate drive-in. You had to know someone that lived there in order to be "buzzed" in and then the gate opened. High-tech right?!

Well, it didn't take us long to realize that once someone drove through the gate, a car could follow behind and due to the motion sensor, the gate would stay open. Not as safe as we all thought. But, by then we had 51 weeks to go on our lease. We would watch a string of cars come in and not really know if any of them actually lived there. So, the big security gates had some issues, but I think they do keep some of the general public out. That was until a drunk driver drove through both gates. Oh yes, a genius drove through the "enter" gate while it was closed, flipped a u-turn and drove through the "exit" gate. Neat.

It took three-weeks to fix the darn gates. During the three-week gate hiatus, weird things started happening around the apartment. Parish found a dirty mop in the back of his truck and vomit on top of his truck. Gross! Some punk graffitied the trash can area and stole a sign off of P's truck. There was also odd people driving around the complex and acting sketchy.

Now that the gates are fixed, problems have subsided. So, maybe I will have to re-think the actual safety of the gates now. I guess they do serve an important purpose.