A Flood of Biblical Proportions

Route 101 South
San Jose, California

After a wonderful seven days in San Francisco, during which John had root canal, and Jeff worked astronomical hours, heroically biting the bullet to have dinner with us after a couple of 12-hour days, and I lost my reading glasses and Fedex lost the replacement pair I ordered, we are once again on the road.

My mother always counseled that it was a grievous error to put all your troubles on one plate, so I’m saving this last one for another paragraph.

It seems I went to wash my hands and couldn’t get any water. I jiggled the faucet up and down and up and down and up and got only a small drool. I called John’s name and there was no reply. He was outside washing the windshield and had turned off the water to the coach. No problem. I went to the kitchen, turned on the electric water pump, and washed my hands in the kitchen sink.

With brilliant powers of recall, after I’d washed my hands I turned the switch off so that the pump wouldn’t run and deplete our battery once he put the water back on. I congratulated myself on my foresight, deciding not to mention my brilliance to Mr. Superintendent of the Coach, lest I sound like an excited child bragging to Daddy that she’d finally learned to tie her shoes.

We left for the root canal. Later while we were getting our salt-encrusted car washed (we had been parked right on the water) John’s phone rang. It was the RV Park. Our rig was leaking. A neighbor had noticed, turned off the water and alerted the management. We hurried home.

Now re-read sentence two of paragraph three and you will see that I left the spigot in the bathroom in the up – as in the on – position. In the four hours that we’d been gone, the tap had been running continuously. It filled our grey water tank – which John had not turned to drain – then backed up through the shower, overflowing and flooding our shiny new black floor.

When we arrived, the water was off, the floor had a sluicing of water which we toweled up, and things seemed to be somewhat under control. Then we sat back and watched as the soaked pine under flooring slowly expanded, and pushed the beautiful new floor into a compromising position, with bubbles here, cracks there, and a strange new surface tension that made you feel like you were a little kid in one of those ball tents people rent for rich kids’ birthday parties.

This morning at 5 I awoke with a start and realized that if the sub floor was soaked, then the storage below was likely soaked too. And I was right. The only real casualties were my new suitcase and all my summer clothes in the cloth suitcase next to it. I will have quite a laundry load when we get to our next campground. I hauled both suitcases out of the bus and put them in the back of the car to dry – along with one of Jeff’s Christmas gifts, which I pray is not damaged inside its box.

So Nick, you wanted me to let you know what I was up to. I’d say, up to my knees and the water’s receding. We’ll stop at a couple of body shops and see if we need to replace the entire floor, or if we can get away with just the worst affected tiles. Meanwhile, we’re both wondering if we have homeowner’s insurance included in our RV policy.

Another dear friend suggested I might want to quit this RV living and get a real house.

Right. If you’re going to ruin a floor, you might as well flood a really big expensive one made of oh, I don't know, some rare African wood and make it worth your while. No, I'm much too dangerous at this point in my life.

And now, I’m going to go stand on a bump. Don’t laugh. It could work.