Tuesday, September 20, 2011

What a Week

Sunday morning we received a call that one of our large dogs back home had broken out of the fence earlier in the day and was hit and killed by a car. It was a terrible blow. Rocky was a real sweet heart. He weighed in around 100 pounds but thought he was a lap dog. He was Great Pyrenees and German Shepherd mix. He was a gentle giant. We really will miss him.

A few hours later we found out that a good friend had suffered a stroke. He is only forty-seven years old. It has evidently affected one side of his body. We are sending prayers his way.
We are still enjoying our time in Oklahoma City. We invited our Oklahoma City friends over for dinner Sunday night. Dawn prepared pot roast, potatoes, carrots, salad and hot rolls. For dessert we had strawberry cake. Dinner was great. We all enjoyed Dawns cooking and we all over ate.

After dinner Donna and Beccy drove us downtown to the Oklahoma Memorial so that we could see it at night. Thanks Donna and Beccy for taking us down there at night. We would have never found it by ourselves. 

It looks totally different at night and each chair is lit with a soft light below it. I cannot describe what a peaceful place it is even though it is located in the heart of downtown.


Monday morning Dawn did the laundry and I defrosted the refrigerator. We’ve been smelling a horrible sewer smell and I emptied and flushed the black tank. Our fiver is equipped with a black tank flush system.   
The tank water was almost clear but we could still smell the horrible smell. Dawn walked around the fiver and said she could smell it coming from the front area. She decided we had a broken pipe and I explained to her we didn’t have any plumbing in the front of the fiver. I opened the basement door and the smell almost knocked us down. I removed everything from the basement and crawled into the basement and removed a section of the basement wall in order to access the plumbing.

Well, there is no sign of a leak and I couldn’t smell the horrible smell. I do have terrible allergies and it does affect my sense of smell. Dawn said she could still smell it but it wasn’t as strong. I told her it might be coming from the neighbor’s trailer and just collected around our trailer. She wasn’t buying that and we walked back around the trailer. She opened the door to the propane tanks and was sniffing around. She told me that she could smell it a little around that area. I had already turned off the propane earlier in the day. I sniffed around the area and agreed it was in that general area. I stepped around the corner under the tongue of the trailer and got a good whiff of the horrible smell. I suddenly realized the smell was coming from the battery vent. We opened the front basement doors and removed the battery cover.

BINGO! The battery was hot. It was boiling and putting off a terrible sulfur smell. I went over to the shore power pedestal and turned off the power to the fiver. O.K, now I need to disconnect the cables from the battery. I just panicked and was not thinking straight. We have a battery disconnect switch and it never occurred to me just to turn the switch off.  I‘m terrified of batteries. I don’t know why. I just am.
Dawn drove to the store and bought a gallon of distilled water. When she returned with the distilled water, I called my son and asked him which cable should be removed first. He told me to put him of speaker phone and he gave me step by step instructions on how to disconnect the cables and add the water. It was getting dark out so Dawn held the flash light so I could see what I was doing. The battery was almost dry.

I hate to admit this, but I have neglected to check the battery. We bought the fiver in 2007 and I have never added water to it. I don’t know why I even had the battery switch on. It’s one of those out of sight, out of mind things.
Needless to say, the battery is fried. With all the cables disconnected the smell disappeared. This is one of those lessons I will not forget. The battery will be checked on a monthly basis from now on!

That is one really good battery to have lasted four neglected years, even with this terribly hot summer!
Tonight we met with Donna and Beccy for dinner at the Big Truck Taco restaurant. It is a small kind of hole in the wall place. The food was outstanding.

After dinner, we came home to kick back and relax.

Travel Safe Dawn and Denise