0038 - Pop is the most terrifying of all the Rice Krispies

The other night there was a leak at the RV park which resulted in the water being shut off for most of the day and all of the night. The showers and toilets by the office were working, but not the individual hookups. Mike, being the forward thinking monkey that he is, realized that we could couple our hoses and have enough reach to hook to the spigot and feed water into our fresh water tank. That way could use our tank with the water pump instead of hoofing it back and forth between our RV and the toilets in the middle of the night... Okay so it's just me that gets up in the middle of the night, what can I say? The boy loves me.

This is where we learned another valuable lesson about our RV.

There is no automatic shut off. We can fill the fresh water tank, but we apparently have to watch the control panel to see how full it is, and even then it only gives it to us in thirds... 1/3 full, 2/3 full and... full!

Here's how it went down: I was in the kitchen washing dishes, already a bit disconcerted by the sound of the pump running every time I turned the faucet on. This is all new to me, new sounds freak me out a bit... I know how Gracie feels. All of a sudden we heard a very loud POP. Mike put two and two together a bit more quickly than I did, all I knew is that something wasn't right, but I hadn't yet connected the water tank to the sound I just heard. When Mike investigated, he found that water was pouring out the bottom of the RV, so we *think* there is an overflow control mechanism in place - BUT I also read on a forum that the bracket that holds the tank to the bottom of the RV has been somewhat problematic for people... not necessarily with our model, but others. So we need to look and see if the bracket is still intact... the pop sounded suspicious to me. Honestly, at the time I thought the damn thing split open. Now I'm wondering if the bracket didn't pop off. The forum people said it's incredibly flimsy.

Tonight we experienced an almost-storm. There was a lot of bluster... the temperature dropped about ten to fifteen degrees... we thought we were in for one heck of a thunderstorm. A gully washer. :) The wind was blowing so hard that I moved the plants closer to the RV because they are still small and have already been shocked enough by all the moving. I humanize things sometimes. Sue me. (Happy note - the plum tree I thought I'd killed is back and better than ever - SQUEE!) All that happened is that, with the water having been restored this morning... the power went out. Dammit. When the air handlers are off it is disconcertingly quiet in an RV... until you start to hear the creaking. Aside from the wind and the power outage, all that happened was that we got about 27 drops of rain on our windshield on the way home, the result of our having washed the truck. Mike says it was his version of a rain dance.


It also made it all the more apparent that we need a surge protector. If lightning strikes the wrong place... if the hookups are in bad repair... whatever the reason, it could fry all of the wiring in our RV. That would be very, very, very bad.

So we went outside and met our new neighbors, talked to them until they retreated to the confines of their generator-cooled class-A's, and then sat at a picnic table with Ron and talked about solar power and evaporative cooling. Now we're inside reading blogs, watching tv and getting ready to turn in for the night.

Tomorrow we're headed to Cookeville. Got some houses we want to look at, but mostly it's Friday and we want to do something 'exciting'. Having this much time off becomes monotonous, and this afternoon I finally reached maximum boredom saturation threshold. We drive around pretty much every day, but it's so hot out there, and I get tired of being in the car.

The highlight of my day is going to the post office.

Seriously.

I fully intended to cook quiche for dinner, even bought an egg (had three, needed four - yes, one egg is all I needed), but decided that I would rather go to the local deli just to get out of the house for a bit. Little did I know, I still could have cooked the quiche and gotten out of the house for a bit. Oh well. I had chili cheese fries and that made me happy. Doesn't take much. (remember cheese?)