Our RV Adventures

and fixed it . . . I think.

It was really nice this morning to have absolutely nowhere to go. We’ve been on the go so much it seems lately that it was nice to just sit outside for a while with our coffee and pumpkin/cranberry bread, and contemplate doing nothing at all.

But of course, that never seems to last long, now does it?

Coming back in the rig, Jan got on the phone to firm up the last of our medical appointments for this coming February. Since we’re both Medicare, our appointments have to be one year and one day past last year’s. So this means that our dates are gradually creeping forward. So I guess if we RV long enough, we’ll end up seeing the doctors in April or May. So to avoid this, Jan keeps track of last year’s dates, and tries to schedule this year’s just one day later to help avoid too much creep.

Then I got on the phone with Thousand Trails to check out another membership that I’m thinking about buying. It’s a Platinum level, with 21 days in, park to park, with unlimited free days. Unfortunately it doesn’t add any more parks to what we already have. So I’ll probably keep looking around.

A little later in the afternoon, I got back on my shower leak problem. Since the carpet  was damp again, I knew the leak was back, so I got the flashlight out and checked the bottom opening that I made last week. Looking around carefully I found a lot of wettness, but nothing to indicate where it was coming from. So my next step was do something I had planned to do last week, but ran out of time. I turned the water on in the shower.

When I had looked at this problem in the past, the carpet seemed to be just as wet when we were gone for a few days and taking no showers as when we were taking two showers a day (1 each). I figured that this meant the leak was on the supply side to the shower and not on the output to the shower head.

I was wrong.

With the shower water running I got back down on my hands and knees to look in the bottom opening again. But even before I got all the way down, I could hear dripping, actually running water. But it wasn’t leaking down at the bottom. It was coming from higher up, by the faucet.

So getting back up (with a lot of creaking and joints popping, I uncovered the access hole I had cut directly behind the faucet itself. And this is what I saw.

Not just a drip, but an actual stream of water.

Looking at the volume of water leaking out, it was obvious that not all of this water was coming out on the rug. Otherwise we’d have been splashing around in the bedroom after every shower.

So it seems like most of this was just dripping down into the water bay right below, and then out onto the grass through the drain holes.

Turning off the shower water, I tried to turn the plastic fitting, hoping it was just loose, but it wouldn’t budge with my fingers.

I couldn’t just be that lucky this once.

About now it was time to head out for dinner and a Wal-Mart run up in La Grange so off we went.

Every time Jan and I make this trip up to La Grange I always thing about the time we visited the fabled Chicken Ranch, aka The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.

You can read about that in this blog from December 2014, as well as a number of other neat places to visit in this area.

I had been wanting to get my McRib fix before they go away, so we had supper at McDonald’s first.

Several little known McRib fun facts:

1. Chicken McNuggets and the McRib were invented by the same European Chef. (Who knew that McD’s head of food development was a European Chef?)

2. The McRib was invented because when Chicken McNuggets first came out, McD’s could not buy enough chicken fast enough to meet the demand. It just didn’t exist. So the McRib was rolled out to take the ‘heat’ off McNuggets.

3. McRib’s come and go based on pork prices. They normally dip in the fall, which is when the McRib is pushed out again. Then over the next few months, McD’s enormous purchases of pork drives the price up, and the McRib is pulled off the market.

After our Wal-mart stop,and getting back home, I took another look at my leak problem. Turning the shower water back on, I used an inspection mirror to check the underside and back of the connector, but didn’t see any sign of a crack or break. But it kind of looked like the water was coming out of the back of the nut.

So turning the water back off, I used a pair of locking pliers to loosen the plastic nut and back it all the way off. Two things I noticed were that, unlike the other connections, this one had no Teflon tape on the threads, and it also looked like the washer inside the nut might be crushed or disfigured.

But tonight I wanted to see if I could maybe stop the leak, or at least slow it down substantially. So I wrapped the threads with Teflon tape and tightened the nut back on as tight as I could with my fingers using a rag over the nut. It can be risky to use pliers for this because it’s very easy to use too much force and split the nut. So hand-tighten only.

I then turned the water back on and watched for a few minutes, and saw no leak at all. But to be sure, I put a plastic bowl under the joint, and let the shower run for 45 minutes.

And this is what I had.

By dripping water into another bowl for comparison, I figured out that this is about six  drops. Not bad, especially since none of us takes a 45 minute shower. Or at least not a hot one, anyway.

So I won’t declared this officially fixed, but at least it’s taken care of until I can try and get a new compression washer, or rebuild the connector.

Wrapping up, here’s a McD’s non-McRib fun fact.

McDonald’s is the largest toy distributor in the world, just due to the ones included in every Happy Meal.

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Thought for the Day:

You can get more with a smile and a machine gun than you can with a smile alone. – Al Capone

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Well, today’s journey didn’t get cancelled like yesterday’s trip to Galveston, so we headed out for Conroe 120 miles away about 9:30 to meet up with our friend Linda at the Chili’s there. Leaving the park, it was nice to see that the river was no longer running over the bridge leading into the park.

We made a potty stop at the Flying J just after we got onto I-45N, getting to the Chili’s right before noon. Linda showed up a little later, and after ordering, we got down to the serious business of catching up on each other’s lives.

Linda just recently returned from Peru where she was teaching English, and also investigating the possibility of opening her own bed and breakfast there. She spent most of her time near Calca, Peru, which is about 12,000 feet up in the Andes, though she’s visited places all over Peru, including Machu Picchu and many other ruins. Sounds like a lot of fun.

After we finished eating, Linda brought her laptop into the restaurant, and after hotspotting it to my phone for Wi-Fi access, I checked out and fixed a couple of problems for her.

After saying our goodbyes, Linda headed out for Fort Worth, and Jan and I drove across the Interstate to pick up a few things at Sam’s Club. Then it was back on the road for the 120 mile trip back to the Colorado River Thousand Trails park.

Out in Katy we detoured by Brandi and Lowell’s to pick up some Amazon packages that had come in during the last few days. Then it was back on the road for Columbus.

We made another stop at the Sealy Oasis at the Bernardo Rd Exit for some Dunkin’ Donuts’ coffee, and a pit stop. Then when Jan discovered that they also had Pumpkin Munchkins, DD’s version of donut holes.

And of course with Jan, it’s all pumpkin, all the time.

We finally got back to the rig a little before 6pm after a really nice day.

Tomorrow I want to get back looking for my shower leak. Hopefully I’ll be able to track it down now since the paneling is open.

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Thought for the Day:

When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work, because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that is the beginning of the end of any nation!

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