Summer 2017 trip prep

Getting ready to leave for our summer trip involves plenty of work.  I tested the telescope with the solar filter and camera mount to make sure everything would work well when viewing the eclipse.  Note the sunspot:

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I filled the fresh water tank and turned on the pump which supplies pressure to all the fixtures in the RV.  I heard a spraying noise, and ran into the master bathroom to find the toilet leaking fresh water.  I winterized the RV after our 2016 Assateague Island Sukkos trip, which involves opening low-point drains and then opening all water fixtures to allow the water to drain out of the fixtures and out the low-point drains.  Unfortunately, I didn’t think of the toilets as water fixtures, so I didn’t do this.  The toilet’s supply valve must have been filled with water and cracked over the winter when it froze.  Getting the supply valve disconnected from the toilet was easy:

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I ordered two new valves, since the kids’ toilet broke in the same way.  The new valves won’t arrive before we leave, so I had them shipped to my brother’s house where they should be waiting for us when we arrive on Sunday.  In the mean time, I capped the water supply line so we can use the water in the rest of the RV:

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For now we’ll have to flush by filing a container with water and manually pouring it into the toilet.  So much for our glamorous RV lifestyle.

Art Imitates Life

Remember January 9th, 2015?  Sure you do, that was Day 520, when we were camped out with our RV and PPG at the fabulous Trona Pinnacles:

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I didn’t get to fly that weekend because of rain, but thankfully Dodge has put together a dramatization of what it would have been like:

An old friend recently e-mailed “the way you’ve turned your lives into art — in the best sense– is truly remarkable.”  I’m not sure that this is what he had in mind.