I’m not real sure I should be writing about this. After all, it does involve weird observations over many months. And it’s about our neighbors.

Weirdos that they are.

Let me lay out the scenario. For the past year and a half we’ve had a site in the RV park that’s catty-cornered from the bathhouse. If you don’t know what catty-cornered means, renew your edumacation in southernese and understand that it means crossways. As in not directly in front of, but a bit cockeyed. Stop laughing, it’s not that funny.

A guy had a house built and he wanted a sink in every room. The contractor thought that was rather strange but he complied with the request. The new homeowner blew a gasket because the sinks were crooked.
The contractor said that he’d done what the homeowner wanted, but the homeowner bellowed “Cock-height! I said cock-height!”

And now back to our regularly-scheduled ramble.

Right. Bathroom people.

Since we’re (DON’T SAY IT) across from the showerhouse/bathroom we can’t help but observe the comings and goings. No, I didn’t actually make that pun. But seriously, we’ve observed the same parade of people day after day. The Bathroom People!

Through the coldest winter in years, through the rainiest spring in years including floods, through rain and tornadoes, through a not-so-cold winter and now through floods that ripped through the park, the county and through the Brazos valley. The Bathroom People! They should deliver the mail!

I confess that I simply don’t get it. These people truck over to the bathroom from the far side of the CG by golf cart, foot and even car through any kind of weather to use the CG bathroom. Tornado warning, sure.
Torrential rain, sure. Sleet, sure. Flash flood, sure.

Here in the CG we have perfectly fine running water and perfectly fine running sewer. And it’s not as if the bathroom people would let something stew in their tank for a month; they LIVE ABOARD. They’re always present and could drain their tanks whenever.

It just goggles me. There’s one couple who shows up _at least_ eight times a day. I don’t want to think about it. What posesses these people? I’ve never seen the like in any other CG.

I’m sure there’s some perfectly fine imaginary explanation but I don’t think I want to know what it is. Maybe some things should remain life’s little mysteries.

…comes to mind because we’re celebrating our escape from Camp Parking Lot.

Yes they did have to get the exhaust brake part from BFE overnight, and yes they did have to fabricate the other exhaust brake part that apparently a North Georgia shop said “that’ll do.”

A previous shop turned the adaptor pipe around, welded a piece to it, just stuck it in the brake housing and called it good.

Notwithstanding that exhaust gas temperatures hit 1500F.

We are damned lucky!

Anyway, they cut us loose or pushed us out of the nest but we arrived back at LOR a bit before dark. Mom got on the radio and manuevered me into our spot, which we obviously can’t get into, with no arm-waving or shouting at all. We usually do it without excitement.

Howdy folks! Long time no grouse at!

We cranked up The Barge for the first time in a while on Monday and waddled our way down to Texas RV in Cypress to get some repairs done; repairs we should have done earlier but put off. She ran great after not having moved in so long.

You know that as we’ve mentioned she has a tendency to break something on the way to a repair shop. That’s happened on the way to the last two shops and true to form she did it again. I’d noticed that the fuel gauge moved a bit over the 60 miles while normally it wouldn’t; we pulled in at the shop and we were happily pumping diesel fuel all over the parking lot.

Fortunately this was on the “cool” side of the engine and nothing caught fire. A three-foot piece of cheap rubber hose simply sprung a leak. I’ll add a piece of hose to my parts bin and it’ll never happen again.

What are we doing here? Glad you asked. We had a crack in the exhaust manifold and a bunch of soot on the exhaust brake housing and we’d been ignoring all this for too long.

First repair was the hose, which took all of 10 minutes including hunting in the shop for some hose. Next was the manifold.

Twenty-three year-old exhaust manifolds don’t want to come off. It’s as if they’ve grown there. So you spray the bolts with P-Blaster or something, let them soak and hope for the best. Our tech gave it a try yesterday evening and promptly broke a bolt. He squirted them again and let them soak.

Promptly at the crack of noon or so he appeared today and got started. Clanging, banging and air-hammering and shaking the rig tugging and pulling. For FIVE friggin hours. Laying on his back under the engine reaching and working upward. With all the crap and crud falling on his face. I hope they’re paying him enough.

I certainly didn’t want to pester him but I checked in after a couple of hours and said “You’re not cussing near enough.” He said that he had to walk away every now and then and let loose so I told him to not hold back on account of us!

And then he discovered that he’d have to take the turbo off to get at the last two bolts. And then he discovered that the adaptor tube going to the exhaust brake was in fact cracked in half.

So…can we get the tube from PPL here in Houston or does it have to come from Elkhart? We can’t move until the exhaust is fixed; can our tanks hold out that long? We have electricity and water, but we’re eyeing that drainage ditch out back.

Tune in tomorrow!