Yeah, I really don't like that.
I'm a guy. More specifically: an old guy. I have to get up in the middle of the night to visit the bathroom (how's that for being delicate?). Last night, around 12:30, I tippy-toed into the small bathroom of the Aspect. One of those toes touched something wet... of course, my first thought was: the cat peed outside her box! (Side bar: when she is being sweet, she is "Izzy"; when she is being a pain in the butt, she is "the cat".)
As a good cat Daddy, I reached down to take a "test smell." Yes, parent of all kinds know what I am talking about. Relief that it was just water.
Wait! What? Water on the bathroom floor of our new motorhome?? That ain't right. I grabbed a towel and mopped it up. With a chorus of swear words. Because I work better and faster when swearing. From the bed came a sleepy, "Are you OK?"
It's 12:35 in the morning, I am kneeling on the floor of the bathroom, mopping up water that shouldn't be there, and trying to figure out where it is coming from. Yeah, I'm fine, thanks for asking. I probably didn't come out that way.
"Well, turn on the light - we're all awake now."
Bathroom disco - we have lights and vulgar lyrics. Little Izzy is hopping all over the place, thinking this is some new night-time game. I squeezed my hand through the small access opening under the little sink in the little bathroom... found both water lines and ran up towards the sink. Yep, that's wet. And warm. OK, it's coming from the hot water line connection to the faucet.
I am not new at this RV stuff. We have owned a bunch of them over the years. Every damn one has had some kind of leak, somewhere, when new. Like looking for Easter eggs, I have found ours. But, my hands are too big and my back too creaky to get a decent angle at the connection. So, I do the next best thing: run outside in my underwear (hey, it's the middle of the night in an RV resort - everyone is in bed by 9:30) and turn off the city water supply. I open the faucet to relieve the water pressure on that connection. Then wipe up the rest of the water.
At this point, all three of us are wide awake. Joan is more svelt than I am, and certainly more flexible... she is able to get a hand on the connection and give it a turn. Close enough - we'll leave the water turned off and try to get some sleep.
Sleep didn't come easy... and when it did, I had unpleasant dreams... dreams of flooding water and - even worse - shooting school photos. "Where the hell did that come from?" you ask. While visiting with Mark and Cindy yesterday, a discussion of what we used to do came up, and I related the story of calling a kid "a shithead" while taking school photos. Followed by a little visit with the assistant principal about appropriate language while in the school... followed by my explanation, and my apology... as I recall, it went something like: "I am sorry the kid is a shithead. If you can keep him from being such a shithead, I am sure I won't be indiscriminately calling kids shitheads, even though it is factual statement." I remember her trying to hold back the laughter. I remember me thinking, "I need to build my commercial base so I don't have to shoot everything that comes along, just so we can survive." You do what it takes when you are building a business. As usual, I digress.
The next morning, we found some water on the other side of the bathroom wall... from the same leak. I just didn't go to that part of the cabin last night. On the bright side, we know the leveling jacks are working good - the water flowed both directions. ;-)
With a couple hours of restless sleep, we ran water from our fresh water tank instead of the city water connection when we cleaned up... that way, we could take pressure off that connection. We are meeting Steph and Dan for breakfast, and we aren't going to have time to stay around here and babysit this water situation.
We had a nice breakfast with Steph and Dan. The ladies had planned to do some shopping afterwards - a new Container Store was having their Grand Opening, and they were both anxious to check it out. We arrived at the store around 10:00 - the place was packed... it looked like a Black Friday event. Dan described it well: "It reminds me of the IKEA of container stuff." They had 14 registers open and the lines were still crazy long. They were moving people through at a steady pace, though. Joan found a couple things for the motorhome, I found an interesting hose wrap to keep our fresh water hose contained when it isn't hooked up.
We were in the Container Store over 2 hours. Seriously. Not like it is a guitar store. I did my best impression of a patient husband, but it was kinda interesting looking at the myriad of stuff to store your stuff...
After the Container Store, and a side trip to Michael's (more girl stuff), we came back to our place for a tour of the Aspect and the resort. Stephanie was polite, finding all that is good about the Aspect, and never saying, "Where's your couch?" ;-) I think they were surprised to see how big this resort is, and how many different kinds of RVs and homes are here.
By then, we had worked up an appetite, so went off for lunch, and more conversation. We really enjoy spending time with them. We took our scooters to lunch, and took the "scenic route" home: up through Sun City Grand, off to the west, and then back south again. It's a pleasant ride, without much traffic.
Back to the Aspect... Joan was able to use some non-skid fabric to get a better grip on the water line connection. It was time for us to turn on some city water and dump holding tanks... our first time dumping the black tank with this unit (that's the poop tank to you non-RVers). It went slick. Then the gray tank: pretty much just pressing a button for the macerator pump. Again, all went like it is supposed to. I turned on city water to put some in the fresh water tank and test the previously-leaking connection. Seems OK right now... time will tell.
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