Mammoth Outfitting

                          *** Warning ***  Do Not Overload Your Wagon!
                                          It Will Only Carry 2500 Pounds
     From the Platte River to the mouth of the Columbia the trail is strewn with discards.
                  Too heavy a load will wear down your stock and leave you stranded.
                                  But Don't Forget To Bring What You Need!
                                                                                    -Compiled by Prof. Jim Tompkins

The leaking roof seal isn't fixed yet. Ed thought he'd identified the spot but after a careful application of silicone sealer, it's still leaking. If I were an eternal optimist I'd say we were lucky that it's been raining every day since we brought it home.  Any leak or even suggestion of a leak is going to show itself right now--not when we're out on a trip.

Adding insult to insult, Ed discovered the black water tank wasn't draining.  He tried everything--wires, snakes, evil chemicals, hands and feet, all to no avail. Finally in desperation he decided to cut the pipe so he could get to the tank, but before doing so he needed to find the pipe. He peeked in the door that lets you access one of the other appliances and saw the tank was right there. And there was another valve on it.

Open the valve, it drained straight away. Yahoo!  No cutting, slicing, or expensive repairs.  Just a twist of the secret valve.

Next we need to clean out the toilet and flush all the plumbing, install a windshield curtain, and start decking it out.  As much as I want to run out and buy a new set of dishes, pans, and cooking utensils, I know that would be stupid. We have twice the dishes we need right here in our cupboards. And how many pans do you need for a three-burner stove?  Honestly, all I really need to purchase is a spatula and a ladle.

The issue with the windshield curtain is that there isn't one. I didn't mention that we'd gone to one of those huge RV dealer lots a few months ago. We were just shopping; it was long before we were ready to buy. All the salesmen were busy, so they loaned us a little golf cart and let us loose to tootle around and climb in any and every RV we wanted to. We spent an astonishing long time there and climbed in a lot of RVs. Most of them had cloth curtains you could pull over the windshield at night--a necessary item, and once we recognized that, we assumed they all did.

But--oddly--when we took possession of ours it instead had heavy plasticized pads the exact size and shape of the windshield and side windows. The corners of these pads were fitted with large, round magnets.  Very cool--we tried one out in a window and discovered the magnets exactly matched the ones installed in the glass. Thrilling, no?

No. The windshield had been replaced, by the dealer, at no cost to us. He volunteered to--we didn't even have to ask. But he replaced it with a standard RV windshield--no magnets.

So the sensible thing would have been to take it back and insist he put in the Thor standard magnet-equipped windshield, but we chose not to bother.  We'd already seen the curtains on all the other models, and there was already a curtain runner installed just where it needed to be.  So we simply spent a few bucks on some lovely, blackout panels at the store and sewed them together with velcro at the center. Of course, our incompetent seamstress had to rip the seams and re-sew them correctly, but eventually it worked.  Lighter weight and less trouble than the heavy plastic pads would have been.

Lovely curtains!