I know it gets colder where you live. I know you get more snow. I know that schools didn’t close over weather like this when you were a kid.
I know it must seem like The South is inhabited by snowflakes who can’t deal with real winter weather.
I know there are warmer places to spend winter full-timing in an RV.
I know I’m doing a lot of this maintenance-and-repairs shit all wrong, or at least not the way you’d do it. I know it looks like I’m makin’ it up as I go along.
I know we’re not moving ahead with the cabin as fast as maybe you think we should.
I know you’re puzzled at why we haven’t moved out of the camper yet.
I know I oughta trim my beard. I know I often wear the same clothes two or three days in a row.
I know our rustic American Life isn’t your idea of how to spend retirement.
I know I seem to talk about Smudge more often than I mention Scout or Dipstick.
I know I repeat myself. I know I post a lot of photos of the same views, of sunsets, of whitetails, of burning trash.
I know I publish posts with typos.
I know I don’t write about politics and cultural issues as often as you’d like. I know you cringe when I write about politics and cultural issues.
I know you think I’m a right-wing nut job.
I know you think I’m hiding something. I know you believe that Life can’t possibly be as good as the picture I paint.
I know I’ve found the Life I’ve imagined. I know I’m in The Perfect Place, sharing it all with The Perfect Partner.
I know that you — most of you, anyway — wouldn’t do this. I know that some of you couldn’t.
You don’t need to tell me.
This morning we came out, intact, on the other side of this latest icy challenge. We were promised an afternoon high flirting with 40°F, and the mercury had quite the running start at it — The Mountain woke up to -1°F.
It broke through the freezing mark around midday. We hadn’t seen that since Saturday.
I’d been up and at it for a while by then, handling a few chores. In particular, I did some shoveling in front of the camper and lit off a full burn barrel. While I had the Ranger out, I drove down The Mountain to a neighbor’s, as much to enjoy the area on a beautiful winter morning as for the friendly conversation in his garage.
The one routine task on my list today was draining the waste-water tanks. I confessed to Deb beforehand that I was somewhat concerned that the dump valves might’ve frozen, and that’s why I was doing it a day ahead of schedule — just in case.
The valves were frozen.
Deb handed me her hair dryer. I scooted on my back over the snow-covered gravel and under the belly of the camper, and I started warming the valves and cables. A half-hour of that actually got the black-tank valve to move. Unfortunately, when the valve opened, nothing came out.
The tanks were frozen.
That, of course, was a large problem. The discovery also validated my decision to attack the chore a day early — just in case.
For a while I tried rigging up space heaters to thaw the tanks, without success or even progress. What we really needed was a forced-air “torpedo” heater.
Deb texted her cousin and asked if he had one. He doesn’t. I got in touch with our neighbor down The Mountain — the same one I’d visited earlier — and yes, he had one he’d gladly let us use. I drove down to pick it up, along with advice on how best to operate it.
It’s an electric-fired, kerosene-fueled contraption rated at 55,000 BTU. I set it up close enough to the camper to get heat where it needed to go, but far enough away to avoid melting (or igniting) anything.
Arranging straw bales to form a windbreak, I used a cardboard box, a concrete block and a heavy plastic cutting board to divert the heater’s horizontal output up toward the tanks. If that all sounds improvised, I can assure you it was — I used what I had, fiddling with and adjusting the setup as I noticed how well (or how poorly) it was performing.
I also opened the valves a couple of times to see if the heat was having any effect — it was, but not yet enough, so I stopped checking.
About 90 minutes after I’d fired up the heater, it ran out of kerosene and died. That’d be all I could do ’til tomorrow. In a fit of cockeyed optimism, I pulled the valve for the black tank.
Success — it drained normally. Ditto the gray tank.
I hope that one of these days we can be as helpful and as generous as our neighbors, including Deb’s cousin, have been to us. It truly is the best thing about being here. For now, though, we offer heartfelt gratitude and a willingness to pitch in wherever and whenever we’re needed.
This turned out to be a pretty good day. Another battle won.
Take care of yourselves, Patriots. Stay calm. Stay sharp. Stay free.
#WiseUp #LibertyOrDeath #Ungovernable
#LetsGoBrandon #FJB