Fun with Stuff

The Wreckreational Vehicle We had great ambitions when my father-in-law gave us his used RV. We could drive to the Grand Canyon, we thought, or Europe! Europe would be great—maybe Paris. There’s nothing like Paris in an RV. But then those who love us advised that a shorter trip might be in order. We decided that a trip to the Pechanga RV Park near Temecula, just ninety miles from our home in Southern California, might be the perfect way to work out the bugs. We loaded up the RV, started the engine, and turned on the air conditioner. The air conditioner wasn’t working. We turned it off and on several times with the same result. We tried it without the engine running. Then we toyed with the generator, flicked various switches, and had little discussions about what could possibly be wrong. We speculated, devised theorems, and checked the oil. None of these seemed to make the air conditioner work. My wife and I are working on becoming one of those lovable old couples who talk about everything far more than it needs to be talked about, making sure that each point is repeated at least twice. We do this because we enjoy it. If anyone were traveling with us, I am sure we would drive them mad. The broken air conditioner gave us a great opportunity for such discussion. We broke with tradition, however, and actually came to a conclusion, which was to forget the dang air conditioner and drive with the windows open. We made it safely to Temecula, where we found a man at a convenience store who was more than happy to break the valve on our propane tank, causing ten dollars in propane to whistle and steam its way out into the afternoon sun. My wife commented that it would have been far more fun, if not more profitable, to have put our money into a slot machine. The man who had “filled” our tank informed us that we had a problem. We asked him if he knew what we could do to fix the problem or if he could give us directions to an RV repair shop, but his answers did not seem to correlate with the questions we were asking. He did not speak English very well, which comes in real handy when you break someone’s propane tank. We sat on the steps of the convenience store for a half-hour while the tank continued to leak, and the air conditioner continued to not work. I thought of lighting a cigarette, but then I reconsidered because I didn’t want the RV to blow up and because I don’t smoke. Once the propane tank was empty, we decided that we could cook using the barbecue instead of the stove and that we could take cold showers instead of warm. We would still get by. The RV Park was only ten minutes down the road. We pulled in, and I began hooking up the connections, only to notice that there were wires dangling from underneath the RV—long, electrical important looking wires that were frayed from having been dragged down a freeway. I crawled underneath the RV, and I noticed something else unusual. Jutting from underneath the RV, just below where the toilet, shower, and sink are positioned, there were pipes—pipes with no ends on them—pipes that looked suspiciously incomplete. “Uh, honey,” I called, in the understated tone that I tend to use in times of crisis, “I think we have a problem.” I described my findings to my wife. We performed experiments in which she flushed the toilet and ran water down pipes while I watched water splash onto the concrete. My wife came out of the RV, looked at all the water, and did that thing where you laugh and cry simultaneously. Turns out we had no disposal tank. It was gone. We knew it was there before, because it was on the RV when my wife had cleaned it out and used the sinks. We doubted that it could have fallen off on the road. You’d think we would have noticed something like that, or seen the cars in our rearview mirror as they careened off the side of the road trying to avoid being hit by a big black wastewater tank. The only other option we could think of was that someone had stolen the tank. But why? To me, that seemed comparable to stealing a kitty litter box, and that requires a somewhat demented thief. Months after the incident, we discovered that drug dealers often steal these tanks for use when making speed. That was one explanation, but it remains uncertain. I expect that, someday, the disappearance of our wastewater tank will be featured on Unsolved Mysteries. We did solve one mystery however. The severed wires explained the broken air conditioner. They also explained the broken refrigerator, which was the source of our next crisis in which we had to run to the store to get a cooler and some ice before all the meat went bad. Also, it was too windy to barbecue. We ate out that evening. Dinner conversation revolved around what might have happened had we not discovered that the wastewater tank was missing. We decided, later that night, that what we had was a metal tent. Without a functional toilet, shower, sink, stove, air conditioner, or refrigerator, that’s basically what the RV was. It did have beds though. Thank goodness for that, because otherwise the ants wouldn’t have had a place to sleep. Maybe that’s what they meant by working the bugs out. My wife described our situation to the man at the office of the RV park, and he agreed that maybe we should leave because we were an embarrassment to the RV community. He didn’t say that last part, but I know he thought it. We did stay the one night; we had to at least do that, but the next morning we were on the road home. We felt we had already had enough adventure for one trip. Did I mention that our gas gauge was broken? It was. We ran out of gas on the freeway, on a bridge over the Santa Ana River, in rush hour traffic. It took two tow trucks to get us off the freeway. We were only a mile away from our exit. So that was our trip. We’re going to try again next week. Wanna go?