This week, Younger Son went back to school. (Yay!) On Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, the Rocky Bayou Christian School bravely took the high schoolers on a retreat. (Better them than me.) So, when Younger Son went east, Hubby and I hooked up the camper and headed west to the Styx River campground. Even though it was only for a couple of days, the short respite seemed worth all the trouble of getting the camper ready.
All went well the first day, in which we lounged around the pool, had a nice potluck dinner in the activities building (even if it was heavy on pasta with spaghetti, two pasta bakes, and macaroni and cheese), and took a long walk with the dogs. That night, we were awakened out of a sound sleep by something that sounded like rain, except the rain seemed to be only hitting the center of the camper over the air conditioner. I did the smart thing and took the opportunity to go to the bathroom while leaving Hubby to figure out what was going on. After all, he’s smart with mechanical things, having a Y-chromosome.
Just as I flushed the toilet, he turned off the air conditioner, which released an avalanche of water into the camper. My first thought was that somehow the water from the toilet had made its way to the ceiling and was now raining down sewage. Fortunately, I was wrong. Hubby deduced there was probably a clog in the A.C. line allowing water to accumulate. We mopped up the mess, turned the A.C. back on, and went back to bed, hoping whatever had caused the build-up of water was a slow accumulation. Not thirty minutes later, we heard the sound of water again. We turned off the air and opened the windows, trying to get a little sleep while worrying about what the heck we were going to do the next day without A.C. with the temperature predicted to be 100. Although we could have stayed occupied away from the camper, we had our two dogs with us, who did not want to be slowly cooked alive. Hubby informed me he would have to get on the roof of the camper the next morning to try to see where the problem was. That idea worried me even more.
Because our little camper doesn’t have a ladder leading to the roof like the more expensive models, Hubby backed up the truck as close as he could, hoping to stand on the back and somehow climb up the smooth sides to the top. When we realized that solution wasn’t going to work, he decided boosting me up would be the answer. As there was nothing on the top to grab onto, I quickly nixed that idea. I was afraid he would shove me up one side and I would sail over the other. Then a brilliant thought came to me. We had a short ladder for getting into the top bunk bed in the trailer. Hubby fetched it, stuck it in the bed of the truck, and leaned it against the side of the camper. Then we looked at each other. Yes, we have attempted stupider things, but don’t ask me what.
Since I am smaller and more agile, we decided I should climb the ladder. After all, if I fell, he might be able to catch me, whereas if he fell, he would be on his own. I made it to the top, wearing flip-flops because I didn’t want to take time to change into tennis shoes (yeah, I know, not too smart), and stood staring at the covered air conditioner unit. Now what was I supposed to do? Hubby instructed me to take the cover off, and passed me a screw driver. The first two screws came out easily. The other two were determined not to budge. He passed me up an assortment of screw drivers, none of which did any good, and I was afraid I was going to fail in my mission. Finally, God took pity on me and finally enabled me to remove the last two screws. Now I was looking at the innards of a foreign-looking thing-a-ma-jig with unrecognizable parts. Have I mentioned that in addition to being technology challenged, I have no mechanical ability what-so-ever? That’s okay because I have other talents, like perfect pitch, which, of course, served me no use at all in this situation.
I did have the presence of mind to tell Hubby to turn the air conditioner off before I stuck my hand in the innards, one part of which was a rotating fan. At least I was that mechanically savvy.
“Look for a hole that’s clogged,” he instructed from below.
Since I didn’t know what anything was, I didn’t know where I was supposed to look for a hole. Besides, the unit was hot. There were some wet leaves in the way, so I cleared out the debris. I finally poked my finger into a hole in a doo-dad above where the leaves had landed, but it was small and there was nothing in it. I was kind of hoping for an obvious pipe sticking out that could be blown out. But water started draining down the top of the camper to the spout leading to the ground, so Hubby and I crossed our fingers that the few leaves had been the problem.
I replaced the cover and screws, and climbed down without falling and breaking my elderly neck. Miraculously, the A.C. worked fine after that. Sometimes blind luck really does pan out.
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