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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, to work out the bugs. So we settled on Temecula, specifically the Pechanga RV Park.
We loaded up the RV, started the engine, turned on the air conditioner, and then turned on the air conditioner again because it wasn’t working. Then we turned off the engine, and turned on the air conditioner. It still wasn’t working. Then we turned on the generator, and turned on the air conditioner, and 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 loveable old couples who talk about everything far more than it needs to 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 who was more than happy to break the valve on our propane tank, causing the ten dollars in propane to whistle and steam its way out into the afternoon sun. My wife commented that it would have been 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 broken valve, 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 barbecue instead of use 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 to the connections, only to notice that there were wires dangling from underneath the RV -- long electrical important looking wires that were frayed from being drug down a freeway. I crawled underneath the RV and I noticed something else rather unusual. Jutting from underneath the RV, just about where the toilet, shower, and sink should be positioned, there were pipes -- pipes with no ends on them -- pipes that looked suspiciously incomplete. "Uh, honey," I called, in the understated tone 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 don’t know where it went. We used to have one. We doubt that it could have fallen off on the road. We hope we would have noticed. We doubt anyone stole it. A big black tank full of wastewater, as I recall, is not on the list of commonly stolen items. 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 night. Dinner conversation centered around what might have happened had we not discovered that the wastewater tank was missing. We decided, that evening, 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 RV park office 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, feeling that we had enough adventure for one trip. Did I mention that our gas gauge is broken? It is. 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 tow us off. We were only a mile away from our exit. So that was our trip. We’re gonna try again next week. Wanna go? |
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