Niagara Bathroom

DAKOTA RIDGE RV PARK -- Golden, Colorado -- "Mr. Anderson? This is Linda at Dakota Ridge," said the voice in my cell phone.

She said it as if she were about to tell me someone had just died. 45 minutes north of Denver deep into the Rockies, we were just leaving the ranger station at Arapaho National Forest preparing for our trek to the top of Mt. Evans.

"There was a problem with your RV," said Linda. "There was water pouring out your front door. We had to turn off the water."

"Ok" was the best I could do. I think I managed to thank her.

Once again visions of blackwater churned in my head. It's hard not to imagine the worst at times like this.

Back at the campground 30 minutes later, water was still dripping out the front door. The whole rear half of the RV, in fact, was a cascade of water. Inside water squished up over my Tevas soaking my feet as I walked back to the bathroom. No noxious fumes. But it was hard to breath a sigh of relief. Everything was soaked.

While I went out to survey things from the outside, Marley quickly figured out what had gone so terribly wrong. The toilet had somehow gotten stuck in flush mode. Our toilet is kind of like an airplane's with a little valve at the bottom of the bowl that opens when, um, business is completed. At some point, we're not sure when or how, that valve got stuck and the flush water kept going.

And going.

And going right over the bowl and, like a rusing mighty river, moved down the center of our coach, down our steps and out our door. The good news is that if the bottom valve had gotten stuck in the open position and all that water had filled up our blackwater tank and then overfilled we would have had a mess of entirely different proportions to clean up.

Still, if the last mishap was a bucket of water, this was Niagara Falls.

What sticks out for me though is a comment Marley made as we were making our way down from the mountains. She wasn't being preachy, that's not her way, just observing, thinking out loud, saying it as much for herself as for me. "From a big picture perspective, how we respond is what matters. That's what the kids will learn from this."

She was, of course, right. And so, as much as my frustration seethed and I had to fight repeatedly the desperate urge to kick something, her words were a calming balm. And as it turned out, it wasn't so bad. Fortunately, you might say, we already had a wet vac. That took up the standing water and our "neighbor" here at the park was kind enough to go find a big box fan to help whick the moisture up and out. More than ten hours later, the fan, along with the heater jacked up full blast appears to have largely done the trick. There's still some moist spots, but I think they'll be dried up by this time tomorrow.

Anyway, by 2 pm we were on the road headed back up into the mountains. I'll leave the details of the rest of the day for tomorrow, but I'll offer four words as teaser: rain, hail, sleet and snow. And we simply couldn't have had a better time.

As I write I'm recalling something else Marley said, just as we were heading out again...

"You know it's entirely possible this happened for a reason."

At the time I remember thinking to myself, yeah the reason is the damn flush valve didn't turn off. But now that I think about it, I realize she may have been right.