Water Water Everywhere!

That Sound You Hear? » Mississippi Girl by Faith Hill
Days Until My 21st Birthday » 16
Big News » President Bush condemned cloning experimentation and research in Korea. Yeah, he's stupid, but let's all just thank God he's not going the other way on this. Worse than Dubya being stupid would be Dubya wanting to clone himself. Seems we dodged a bullet there.

Now, today's story...

It occurs to me I've been back from the mountains for coming up on a week now and I still have yet to share with you any stories from the trip. And need I say? There were many.

I'll start at the beginning. We absolutely flew up I-75 arriving at the cabin almost two hours before we thought we would. And this is a Monday afternoon, folks. I'm not saying traffic should've been heavy, but we made the 1200-mile trek in 11 hours.

Once at the cabin, typical procedure involves turning on the telephone, electric and water. Well the first two went off without a hitch. But the latter we had a little trouble with. Though no one noticed at first.

Yes, indeed, it took us all a moment to realize that suddenly the cabin floor around the toilet, on one side, and the shower, on the other, was getting a bit soggy. This is not what you're hoping for when hoping for a shower after 11 hours pent up in a truck (to be fair, though, it was a roomy Ford F-350).

So as deductive reasoning would have you perceive, there were a couple of leaks going on in that little cabin. And we were bound to get to the bottom of it. The first step was to stop the uncontrollable liquid from continuing to flow into the building. Well pump off. Check.

Next: find the source. This proved to be a little more tricky. Luckily, we built what my grandfather has cleverly dubbed a "take-apart" cabin. In other words, the wall was gonna have to come off in order to get at the pipes. Before. After.

Problem identified. It so happens that in the mountains of North Carolina it, you know, snows in the winter time. And all the insulation in the world isn't going to hold back a good freeze. That coupled with a poor drainage system that left water in the pipes through the cold season yielded a predictable result. Cracked pipes.

And these were no friendly cracks, I say. These cracks demanded a retooling of the little cabin's plumbing system. And until that task was completed, no peeing and showering was permitted. Luckily our friendly neighbor down the way was a nice person. I am referring to Barbara, by the way, who has her own story to be told at a later date.

As you can see from the aforelinked photographs, it was a messy job. By the time we'd pulled in, McNeely's Ace was already closed so we had to wait until Tuesday to make the repairs. In the meantime, we still (luckily) had cold water. But this is mountain well water. Cold enough to freeze off— You get the picture. So unless you were looking forward to a bout with hypothermia, it was best to put off a shower until later.

Once the appropriate parts and tools were procured, the repair job was quick and easy. And my grandpa even installed a new/better drainage system so that this would not happen in the future.

All in all, it was a rocky start, but at the very worst it kept things from getting dull.

Ironically Speaking: Liz and I went to the orientation for our summer online class today. The teacher was absolutely hilarious, or at least I thought so. The catch is he lives in Mississippi and therefore we'll probably never see him again, making this the one time I've ever wished I had to actually go to class. My damn luck, right?