Yesterday morning we were rushing around to get Ty off to camp. I woke up early and went to the gym to squeeze in a workout before the long drive to camp. Ty had most of his stuff laid out all over his room the night before but threw everything in his bags before going to bed. The only thing we were missing was a sleeping pad for his backpacking trip. After searching his closet and not finding it, I thought I’d check the mechanical room. That’s when everything started to go south.
I opened the door to find water everywhere! Our water heater had obviously died. I turned the water off at the valves going into the water heater and began to clean up. Of course cleaning up meant cleaning everything out of the room and sweeping all the water towards the drain. Of course we had 90 minutes to leave and I still needed to shower and find the sleeping pad. The pad turned up soon enough but then came the shower. I went upstairs and turned on the shower and voila, no water! Seems I need even the cold water going through the water heater to get water from the shower. So back down to the basement to turn on the water so it could leak some more so I could take a shower. I took about a 90 second shower that felt like the polar plunge and then ran back downstairs to turn off the water. Then of course this meant more cleaning up. Once I had soaked up as much water as I could with towels, sheets and whatever else I could find, I had to take Ty to camp.
We headed out well enough and decided to take the road over to Fairplay to avoid the heavy traffic on I-70 going back to Denver. As soon as we came over the Continental Divide we saw the smoke plume. Seems as there was a new fire that looked like some mushroom cloud from those nuclear tests we saw on tv when we were kids. It was southwest of us so we were ok but boy was it huge. 2 hours later we were at camp. Ty knew the drill as he was there last year. I checked him in, gave him a hug and headed for home. He did forget his pillow again just like last year! With the fire I decided to head towards Evergreen and catch I-70 heading back to Vail as there couldn’t be any traffic going up to the mountains on a Sunday, wrong!
After an hour I managed to hit I-70 just east of Idaho Springs. Traffic was stopped. There was every kind of camper, RV and vehicle you could imagine heading out of Denver like some mass exodus from a natural disaster. Most had firewood strapped on their cars too even though there’s a Statewide burn ban, nice. 2 hours later I was home. Jag had been with the dogs all day and was starving as he always is. We ordered him wings and I went to pick them up only to get home and find they gave him the wrong ones. So back to the bar I went to get him the right wings. Then I had to wash all the dishes with soap and cold water. The water works if you have a faucet with separate handles. If it has only one handle, like the showers, nothing comes out.
I did call the plumber yesterday and they’re supposed to call me first thing this morning. They think it’ll be between $2000 and $3000 dollars to fix. I’m just hoping they can fix it today as I’m off to Denver tomorrow to pick up Lori. Jag and I are thinking of checking into a hotel so we can shower today. We’ll see as we might just wash our hair in the kitchen sink.
Mojo woke me at 5:40 so I’m up waiting to call the plumbers at 7 to make sure I’m at the top of the list. I’ll take Harley to daycare to get her out of here for the day. There’s about 8 large black trash bags full of stuff from the flood outside. Hope all goes well today, Happy July, have a great day, GB.