Oh, Black Water, Keep On Rollin’

“The Tongs of Blackwater” sounds like it could be a chapter in our Lord of the Rings book. But in our case, ‘Blackwater’ is more of an equipment failure than a folksy riverside village, and the ‘One Ring’ is a failed gasket.

Our son Jade doing tech support in the belly of the beast.

Louis and Dinah’s Excellent Adventure has unfortunately not been very excellent so far. We have been like a NASA rocket launch that keeps getting delayed…

A faulty switch in the RV, a generator that would not turn off, a missing gasket in a water filter and a toilet clog have combined with the current dangerous heat wave to keep us bivouacked at an RV park in Aledo (west of Fort Worth) since Wednesday.

Luckily for us this is near the home of our son Jade, who kindly offered his expert help in diagnosing the switch and generator problems. On the plus side, we have gotten to see him and his wife Brittney, who is pregnant with our first grandbaby.

Friday morning was highlighted by a run-in with RV “black water.” Anyone who has RVed knows what this is. Unlike the famous Doobie Brothers song, our black water would not “keep on rollin.’” Tongs and a yardstick were eventually deployed in the toilet to ease the situation (see included photo).

Unluckily, we have been marooned in the 105-108 degree heat in Aledo, working in our 85-degree temperature RV to remedy the problems, as Dinah masterfully reworks our schedule to get us somewhere cool fast.

After the events of the last two days, we will definitely not be asking, “What else can go wrong?”

We plan to head north Saturday morning, going to Kansas on the way to swinging over to Colorado, as we travel out of the heat as quickly as possible to some of our preferred destinations.

There hasn’t been much to photograph, but included for your enjoyment are a few images…

Stay cool!

Dinah and Louis