Monday, May 9, 2011 - Clarinda IA

Power & Light, Hastings NE, May 8, 2011

Oh shit...

This has been an interesting day. Clarinda IA and Nodaway Valley Park is not where I expected to be spending the night. Some days even the vaguest of plans go awry.

Some time early in the sweltering hot humid afternoon I pulled off the road for a pee break and to refill my water cup. Funny smell in the bathroom - guess the airflow has reversed for some reason. It happens. Ah well.

I pull back onto the road and hear a funny scraping noise, look in the mirror and see a scrape in the dirt and a small dust cloud where I left the verge.

Back to the verge I go.

Yikes! - the leading edge of the black water tank dropped and is dragging on the ground. This ain't gonna be fun - as luck would have it that black tank is darned near full. That's about 20 gallons and a hundred and fifty pounds of stuff now vastly complicating this little problem.

Stay tuned

I have long had an uncanny way of getting out of tight spots on the road - I have many many such stories from my long distance motorcycling days - now there's another to add to the growing list of RVing tight spot stories.

Night camp

Site 9 - Nodaway Valley Park, Clarinda IA

Verizon cell phone and EVDO service - slow extended service
Locate Nodaway Valley Park on my Night Camps map
Check the weather here

Something Useful Can Be Artful

A life, I believe - lived well and openly - with a certain sort of careful attention to form and function - creates art - or, at the very least, inspires it. I believe that art is contained in the ordinary events, that the small things we see and hear and learn everyday provide opportunities to explore parts of ourselves or our society in a way that can actually produce art. Whether it is a story you leave behind or one you take with you, I believe that any given situation is rich with opportunities to participate in the creation of something useful that can also be artful.

Living Art - Photography By Catherine Jamieson

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