Potty Problems….. Slide Sorrows…. And Lots of Hair

I named my new Beast, Jeff – after the big, grey insatiable beast in Men in Black.  Turns out Jeff is also insatiable…. for money.

First of all, let me explain about the toilet system in the RV.  It’s STUPID.  When you flush, it makes a very loud, grinding sound for 90 seconds both inside and outside the RV.  Do you know how long 90 seconds can be when you’re trying to be discreet? The thing all but screams “Hey everyone, I’m going to the bathroom!” 

To really make sure that the system is as stupid and inefficient as possible, the geniuses who designed it put the pump right under the bed – so that you can’t flush at night without waking everyone up within 500 yards.   And then they put the only access directly under the bed with a little, tiny panel that might, if he hasn’t eaten a big lunch, fit a five-year old.  It turns out that there aren’t that many skinny, five-year old mechanics out there.  I have written to Fleetwood to tell them that they win the Award for Stupidity in Design.

So there I was, on day 2 with Jeff and the little light in the bathroom showed red all the time.  The brochure said it should have been green.  Since I had never seen or heard of a toilet system like this, I wasn’t all that concerned until it stopped flushing.

Now here’s an interesting thing:  no matter what time of year it is, or how many RV repair places you can find, no one will look at your rv for 3 months.  That seemed a little long to go without flushing.  Not to mention it was going to snow at some point.  Fortunately, the Cummins repair shop in Kansas City agreed to have a look – a fact I’m sure they regretted.

Then in St. Louis, my big slide-out wouldn’t slide in.  A mobile RV repair person told me I had sheared off a tiny little bolt which, apparently, holds up the entire weight of one side of the RV.  He replaced it, the slide came in and I was on my way to Kansas City with both toilet and slide repair now on the list.

They found a skinny mechanic who opened the panel and discovered – no doubt to his horror – that the entire pump assembly had exploded and the whole compartment was flooded with stuff…. and not nice stuff.  Lots of really smelly, ugly stuff that I will leave to your imagination. 

The repairs for the toilet and slide came to $3000.   I’m sure that $2000 of that was for pain and suffering.

Meanwhile, Woodchuck, Deadeye and I checked out a Hair Museum in Kansas City.  Back in Victorian times, the thing to do was make wreaths, jewelry and pictures out of the hair from dead people in your family. I have visions of all these corpses being laid to rest after they’d been shaved bald.  To be fair, some of the hair was taken from live persons too.  It was really quite an interesting thing to see and I came to the conclusion that Victorians had way too much time on their hands.  

We could have taken a course in how to do hair weaving but it was $2500 for 3 days and, besides, all of our brothers are bald so the wreaths wouldn’t have been complete.  Plus I have no artistic talent.

 Then we were off to Springfield and then Branson, Missouri.  I got Jeff back and was happy to learn that I could flush my toilet as often as I wanted, except at night.  My slide, on the other hand, was still causing problems.