Cold Snap

As I said before, when it's the coldest winter you've seen in your lifetime, and you're living in a tiny "house" with literal paper walls, heating becomes paramount. Heat comes from the propane tanks that are hooked up to the trailer. They are larger than a normal propane tank that you might have for your outdoor grill, but when it's cold as a well digger's shovel outside, the heat runs constantly, and you can run out of propane very quickly. When you run out of propane, several things happen.
First, you don't want to get out of bed. Oh, yeah, the propane will ALWAYS run out in the middle of the night. You won't want to get out of bed because it's the only warm spot in your whole house.
Second, you'll get miserable and angry because you're freezing, but still have to go to work. I am not Elsa from Frozen.

You're insane.

Third, when, for reasons like procrastination or forgetfulness, you don't called the RV park office to get your propane tanks refilled, your water pipes can freeze. That means you have no water.
It's just a bad scenario all around.
Sometimes, however, you just aren't home to know your propane tanks ran out in the first place. This happened to me in March. Ross and I had gone to Aggieland, that is, College Station (WHOOP) to take our engagement photos. While we were leaving to come home on Sunday, a crazy cold front came through North Texas. We literally drove on ice for miles on the way back. When we got closer to Dallas, and road workers had spread sand on the roads, and we made better time, but a 3 hour trip took us about 5 hours total. By the time I got home, the temperatures had dropped significantly. I think it was 12 degrees out. When I park outside my trailer, I run in expecting to be greeted by a purring cat and warm, snuggly air. WRONG!
The propane tanks had run out while I was gone! This is what I came home to instead:

Icicles from my faucets and ice in the toilet. That's how cold it was inside my trailer. It makes me shudder just thinking about it. Luckily, I remembered and got my propane tanks refilled the next day and made it nice and toasty when I got home from work. Which was good because the icicles may have gotten as big as the ones outside:

Brrrrrrr!!!!

May you ALWAYS be warm when it's cold out (and procrastinate very little),
Ray

The Story of Bob and the Flood

As you know, this winter saw the lowest temperatures in history across the country. Texas was no different. Lucky me, this would be the winter I spend in a tiny place with paper thin walls. I think they are literally made of paper. Paper with a sheet of siding on the outside. Not super conducive to a warm, cozy house. However, the heating system in my RV works great. It definitely helps against the chill of winter outside. Until it runs out. If your propane runs out, you can't cook food, you can't heat water, and you can't heat your house. Your house with paper walls. Did I mention record low temperatures outside?
Thankfully, I had an electric blanket on my bed and a space heater (you know, the one I use for warm showers), so I could do ok until I got my propane tanks refilled. However, when it's freezing outside, the water also freezes. When I don't have water, I can't take a bower, I can't water my cat, and I don't have anything to drink either. Except wine. I have wine. But after a while of drinking wine every night, you get dehydrated. And when you don't have any water, are dehydrated, and only have a space heater to heat your entire house against degrees of 20 and lower (in Texas, that's SUPER DUPER COLD), you do the only thing you can do - call your soon-to-be father-in-law to come help you.
I've said before, I have the best parents-in-law ever, and it's true. When I tell Bob that my water is frozen and I don't know what to do, he and Fran come out to my RV, with sandwiches from Arby's no less, to see what they could do. When they get there, Fran and I eat our sandwiches at the table and Bob goes out to do manly stuff involving wrenches and gloves and spigots. It's taking him a while, and every now and then he comes in to ask me questions I should, but don't, know the answers to. Like, can the RV park owners thaw my hose for me? Is there a number I can call? Do they have a frozen pipe policy? Hindsight is, of course, 20/20, and I should have read the welcoming packet or the monthly newsletter Shady Grove gave me. If I had, the following wouldn't have happened.
Bob is outside again trying to turn the water off from the source so he can unhook my hose from it and thaw it out. Suddenly, Fran and I hear cursing and running water. Make that gushing water. The spigot broke off and water is spraying EVERYWHERE, mostly on Bob who is trying to shut it off. It's quickly flooding the area behind my trailer and running over to my neighbors' space. They've come out to watch the show. They probably heard Bob cursing. He's German. The man knows how to yell loud curse words. But who could blame him? It's 18 degrees and pitch black out, he's soaking wet with freezing water, and the wind is blowing hard and cold as well. Seeing how the situation has gone from a nuisance to a catastrophe, Fran and I scramble back inside to find a number to call. I finally read the bottom of my welcome flyer, and see there is in fact an emergency number listed. Yay! When I type it in my phone to call, my phone already knows the number. Turns out, it's just the main number for the trailer park. No one answers. Not cool. As we contemplate what to do next, I finally read everything on that flyer. One line says, "During freezes: if no water, do not turn handle to water spicket ,as it will break. Call office." Oops.
They are correct. It will break. And this will happen:

Fran, the cool-headed thinker that she is, says something about the owners living right next to office, and that maybe they could help. I'm anti-social enough that I put off calling the office to refill my propane tanks even though I'm cold in my own home, so I really didn't want to go tell the owners that their new tenant is making them a small pond behind my space. Especially at 10 o'clock at night. But water is still pouring out of the spigot, and we've got to do something. At least Fran went with me.
The owners were watching TV when we walked up, and I had to knock loud enough to bother their dogs for them to notice someone was at their door. When a frazzled Karen (name has been changed to protect the rude) opened the door and heard our lamenting cries, she showed no pity. "Well, you weren't supposed to do that. The handle broke, didn't it?" Me: "I guess so..." Fran: "We don't really know what to do. We've never camped in the winter before and don't really know about the pipes and hoses freezing. Water is getting everywhere. Can you turn the water off for us so we can cap it?" Karen: "No we can't. It would turn off water to the whole park." Me: "...so... What can we do?" Karen: "You'll just have a high water bill."

 

So, we left and went back to the RV. Bob is miserable. I feel terrible. And he has to go to Lowes to get a cap thingie to plug the spigot. While he's gone, Fran and I listen to the soothing sound of water flooding my neighbors stuff and wait. Soon we hear some shouting, and some cursing, but this time it's not from a tall German man, but a woman. Karen came over to inspect the damage. And I guess she saw it.

In what seemed like 15 years, Bob returns and goes to work shutting that stupid spigot off. He tells us when he come back inside that Karen griped at my neighbors for having a bunch of stuff outside their RV (you aren't supposed to store things outside, or, ya know, throw trash on the ground). She also wouldn't let them move their cars out of their parking spots and move them to the office parking lot, even though everything that was wet (so, everything) would be ice by the morning, and they may not even be able to move their cars at all by then. Yeah. Karen is a peach. Granted, this is what my neighbors' space looks like:

But really, Karen, don't we have more important things to be angry about? You're standing in 6 inches of water right now. Whatever. Bob got the water turned off, finally, and looked like he just jumped in a pool with all his clothes on. If he hadn't been shivering, it might have been comical. He and Fran left with a couple of towels, and Bob came back the next day to re-hook up my water hose to the RV. While I was at work, the RV park had fixed the spigot. Thank you. At least Bob had easy work that day. He wasn't too happy about the situation as a whole, but at least he stayed dry this time. And I had water again! It may not have been fun, but it sure was an adventure.

May you always read the fine print and stay warm and dry,

Ray