Tuesday, June 21, 2011

A Crappy Weekend

Okay, I confess that it wasn't all crappy, but . . .

You see, it all started durring a lovely RV outing. We had a wonderful time with everyone in our delightful RVing Women's group. The food, conversations, and doggies and kitties were great, but Saturday was very wet. I love my dogs, but neither wet fur and muddy feet, nor removing stickers are high on my Fun Monitor. After a riotious Trailer Trash dinner with the group, we returned to our coach to prepare for a quiet, dry, peaceful night. Angela went out to dump the tanks while I took the puppies for a walk. When I returned, Angela was still outside. I opened a window and asked, "Need help?"

"Nope," came the reply. Ten minutes later, however, she said, "Okay, I need you outside."

That did not bode well. First of all, it was raining madly, and it was 11:30, well passed Angela's bedtime.

"It seems the RV park's sewer hook up for our rig is backed-up or blocked," Angela said. "The rain could be the cause, but if that was so, the whole park would be in trouble. So, that means we're stuck with the problem. Of course, the office is closed too."

She didn't have to tell me that meant we really had a problem. What were we going to do with a sewage hose full of well, sewage? The good news was that the park link in the spot next to us was working. But, it was 40 feet away. Fortunately, we carry extra sewage hose for this sort of problem. Unfortuately, we usually know about the issue before we are hooked up for two days and can make the alterations before any thing fills the hose.

I could see by Angela's bussling around, getting out hoses, and thoughtful expression that it was going to be me holding our 'difficulty" for this switcheroo. I had visions of spending all day Sunday cleaning up a huge, smelly, yucky mess, even though it was not technically our fault.

With a great deal of care, Angela removed the sewage line from our rig and with much trepidation coaxed a bit more sewage into the park's input, unhooked it, and dripped more yuck into the near overflowing gap. Then, with a towel wrapped around it, just for me, she handed me that end too. Now, a 20' long 3" diameter hose filled with gunk is heavy, and rain was rapidly dropping into the upturned ends - splash, splash, splash - as I stood there with my hands full and my nose turned away.

She gingerly put extensions on each connection, hooked up to the rig, and then we inched our way over toward the new hole. She connected it slowly, but nothing happened! Dang. Okay, worse than Dang. You see, the new receptical was ever so slightly uphill. We have an 8 foot declining contraption to help with that, BUT, we now had 60 feet of hose slanting the wrong direction. It was not going to drain.

After the cloud of blue words dissipated, we got down to pulling lumber out of the rig's storage areas, looking for rocks, sticks and anything else we could use to overcome the problem.

It took half an hour more, but in the end, sewage was flowing, we'd had a nice warm shower and a few laughs. We crawled into bed and I said, "I'm so glad you thought of that towel."

Yes, it's a great thing to be married to a T.

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