Our RV Adventures

For some reason I tossed and turned a lot last night, so I didn’t get up until about 11:30, and then got coffee started.

Jan was watching an episode of Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives about a place that does specialty waffles. Jan looked over at me and said, “Waffles really sound good.”

And my answer to this was, “Oink, Oink!” So 15 minutes later we were on our way to the Oink Café over in Tempe.

We had eaten at the Oink Café in Tucson a little over a week ago, and really enjoyed it. How can you not like a place whose slogan is “Breakfast, Lunch, Bacon!”

And a spur of the moment trip is not unusual for us either. Years ago, early one Saturday , we were jonsing for a good bowl of gumbo. And this was before there were any good gumbo places in the Clear Lake area. So with 15 minutes notice, we were on our way to Mulate’s in Breaux Bridge, LA, 225 miles away. Any you haven’t lived until you’ve spent a Saturday night listening Zydeco music and watching Cajun dancing.

And this runs  in my family too. Back in the summer of 1963 after a late lunch, my parents started talking about doing a trip out west, and an hour later, we were on our way for a three week trip, doing Yellowstone, Grand Canyon, and even Disneyland.

Getting to Oink, we had about a 15 minute wait before we got seated, but as before, worth the wait. And of course we both went with waffles. Jan’s with Strawberries and Whipped Cream, while I went with a Waffle Combo, with an egg.

and Jalapeno bacon.

In addition, following up on my Half Flight of Bacon last time, I got another one this time, trying out the other 4 bacon flavors.

Last time I got Applewood Smoked, Honey, Jalapeno, and Pepper,

while this time I got the Hickory, Sugar Cured, Pecan, and Apple Cider.

All were  delicious, but I will say that the flavors that stood out the most, that I could identify by taste alone, were Jalapeno, Pepper, Hickory, Pecan, and the Apple Cider.

Getting home, I finally started working on changing out the cartridge in our Moen shower faucet. After removing the coverings, I used a pair of slip joint pliers to try and pull the cartridge out of the housing. But it wouldn’t budge, no matter how hard I pulled.

But I was prepared for this, having a specialized cartridge puller from my last time doing this.

But I quickly discovered that sometime since then, the screw tip had broken off, leaving it too short to screw into the cartridge handle. So it was off to the nearby Home Depot to get a new one.

The one they had was completely different, and was a Danco product,

a company I’ve not been too happy with in the past.

And getting it home and trying it out, I’m still don’t like Danco. Despite fooling with it for over an hour, I still wasn’t able to get the old cartridge out.

And in fact, I didn’t expect to have a problem getting the old one out this time since I had thoroughly coated with Plumber’s Silicone Grease the last time.

So checking the Internet, I found that Lowe’s sells the old one, the one that worked last time, so I’ll pick one up tomorrow and take the Home Depot one back.

Hopefully it’ll work this time.

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Today was another nice, quiet, cool day with not much going on, though the excitement did pick up later in the afternoon.

I  had thought that I might get around to replacing the cartridge in our leaking Moen shower faucet, but life, i.e. doing nothing intervened.

A little before 2pm Jan and I headed out to have lunch at one of our two favorite Chinese places here in Apache Junction, #1 Eastern Buffet.

But as we had heard, #1 was now under a new name, and I assume, a new owner, since the place has under gone a major renovation.

Now known as Woochi Super Buffet, it seems like even the food has been upgraded.

Their Hot & Sour Soup was really good, almost King Food good, and everything else seemed hot and fresh.

In fact there were 4 or 5 young women roaming the food aisles, apparently calling in needed food on their cell phones which was then passed out through a window.

Our next stop was the O’Reilly’s Auto Parts to pick up some Tire Black to finish off my recent wheel cleaning, and also check to see if they had phosphoric acid, but they didn’t, so it was on to the Ace Hardware right down the street. And that’s when things got interesting.

Turning in to the parking lot, I followed a black Fiat Pop and parked right next to him. As I got out, a strong gust of wind grabbed the door from my grasp and  my door edge scraped along his right rear wheel well edge.

With no hesitation, the Fiat driver jumped out and started yelling at me, saying I damaged his car and he was calling the police. Which he did.

As we waited, I gave him my insurance card, which as it turned showed my National General Insurance had expired 13 days ago. It haven’t of course, I just hadn’t yet put the new card in the truck after printing it out. And now he started ranting about how I didn’t really have insurance and I was lying to him.

He was calling National General when the police officer, and after about 30 seconds, he told the officer that they said I didn’t have insurance.

So I now called Nat Gen for myself, and noted that it took me a little almost 3 minutes to work my way through the phone tree to talk to a person who could confirm that I had insurance in force. So at this point I handed the phone to the officer who after talking to the agent, glared at the guy who had lied to him. It was obvious that he hadn’t really talked to anyone since he didn’t have time to get through to Nat Gen.

While we were standing there, I looked carefully at the paint smear, about the size of a silver dollar, like this.

Wetting my fingers I rubbed the smear, noting that there was no damage to the metal. And as I rubbed, the paint smear just disappeared, ending up looking like this.

And this was with only about 15 seconds of rubbing.

30 more seconds with a dab of rubbing compound and you couldn’t tell it had ever happened. When I showed it to the officer, he just grunted and again stared at the guy.

When I called Nat Gen around 8 this evening, no claim had been entered, and they said they would call me back if one was. Told them they shouldn’t pay any claim because there was on damage.

So we’ll see.

“Let a smile be your umbrella, and you’ll end up with a face full of rain.” ― George Carlin

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