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Topic: Fruity, with a nice finish ~ (Read 4 times) previous topic - next topic
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Fruity, with a nice finish ~
Yahoo Message Number: 110338
Greetings, Lazy Daze friends, from Key Largo, where I've had an experience that might reignite the evergreen subject of the risks and benefits of slides. Or might just be an interesting story.
 "This drawer won't close," Marie reported as she tussled with one of the drawers to the lower right of the kitchen sink.  "There must be something behind it, but I can't see or feel anything."  I assured her I would take care of it and eased her out of the way.  Let MechanoMan handle this.
 I tried pushing the small drawer closed; sure enough, it bounced back out as though hitting something springy. I visualized something sticking up from the drawer below . . . but then found the lower drawer was doing the same thing.  I released the upper drawer and pulled it out, peering back into the cabinetry and down on the contents of the drawer below.  Nothing seemed to be sticking up, and nothing in view explained while the lower drawer continued to push back when I tried to close it.  Hmmm.
 I asked M to fetch me an LED flashlite and peered into the backside of the cabinetry, which was only partly enclosed at the rear and revealed behind it a snakepit of wiring, cabling and piping for the various electrical and plumbing and water lines crisscrossing this busy area.
 Then I noticed that bulging thru from a portion of one of these cavities was what appeared to be some sort of plastic bladder, a turgid, ballooning lump of which was occupying space needed by the back of the drawers.  Well, I thought, THIS is odd; the commode room was on the other side of the nearby dividing wall but I couldn't think of anything in the kitchen or bath that would be related to this odd bag of liquid -- and besides, whatever it was, why was it only now interfering with the drawers when we'd owned the coach since Halloween?
 Puzzled, I sat back and absent-mindedly shown the light in the narrow, half-inch-wide gap between the rear edge of this cabinetry, which moves in and out with the pax-side main slide, and the cabinetry on the stationary wall dividing the main living/dining area from the bathroom.  Down by the floor, way back where the inner rim of the slideout comes into contact with the exterior wall of the coach when the slide is extended, was Something that I couldn't initially make out.  I moved the light around and squinted at it.  Suddenly I recognized what it was and, glancing around its immediate environment, grasped how it had gotten there.  And when I thought of the implications of what I was seeing, I almost swooned.
 I recalled that when I'd extended the slide after our arrival, I'd noted that it somehow seemed the far end of this slide hadn't fully extended and so I retracted it a few inches and then let the extension motor "push" a little extra at the end of the extension stroke, which seemed to fix it.  And thinking further back, I remembered an instance where on the drive over that morning, a car had pulled out in front of me, requiring braking aggressive enough to set off the usual in-cabinet cacaphony as things fall over etc.  This had, in fact, been the beginning of the causal chain.
 Because, sitting in a cabinet shelf that is exposed when the slide is out but covered when underway was . . . an unopened box of Black Box Merlot wine, a cardboard box about the size of a fat dictionary, with a silverized plastic bladder inside that held, in this case, 3.0 liters -- four bottlesworth -- of red wine.  When I'd hit the brakes, it slid forward and fell most of the way to the floor in the cavity created by the retracted slide.  All of this happened out of view, covered by the retracted slide.
 When I later extended the slide, the box was caught by the valence around the interior edge of the movable cabinetry and carried outward until it encountered the exterior wall of the coach.  There, my persistence in activating the hydraulic rams that move the whole assembly crushed and split the box between the moving slideout and the outside wall, pinning it there.  The bladder was mashed ever tighter until about a third of it popped thru the cabinetry gap in the back, partly relieving the incredible squeeze force it was experiencing . . . and making it impossible to close the two lowest drawers.
 There were several incredible things about this:  1) that the bag did not explode or rupture.  Thankyew, Black Box, for making a really strong wine bladder;  2) that the bag's serving spigot did not let go and squirt the wine out under tremendous pressure. This was due in some part to the fact that we hadn't opened the valve yet, which involves tearing off a foil seal placed over the aperture in the spigot; 3) that the bladder escaped the crushed box and positioned itself in such a way as to be discovered even though hidden; otherwise it would've been subjected to repeated slide-extension squeeze-cycles until it let go.
 And THAT would've been a disaster of the first water. Three liters of red wine would have exploded or just squirted not only throughout the interior of the cabinetry and rained down into the fuzz-carpeted cargo bays and their contents below, but would have saturated all of the numerous wiring bundles and boxes that crisscross the area. It makes me shudder just to THINK about the mess, the expense of disassembling, cleaning and replacing everything that would've been damaged, and even worse, the long-term gremlins resulting from all those acids in the wiring and fluid lines over time.
 And of course, it would've initially been absolutely baffling, as we hadn't missed the box of wine tucked away in its convenient disappearing shelf.  What a shock it would've been when the beloved A/Bus II began gushing red wine from every crack and orifice in that area.
 I pulled the slide half-in and gently worked the winebag thru the hole and safely up into the sink. There was a light stain around the base of the spigot; maybe a drop or two had escaped.  Getting the remains of the box out required innovative use of a slender tree-branch topped with a wad of (what else??) duct tape.  All done; no damage, and even the wine was okay.
 Sometimes in life, you whine about unexpected disasters that you can't help feel you just didn't deserve.
 And sometimes, you escape them -- sometimes realizing it, sometimes not,  So thank you, Lord, for not turning my wine into whine.

Gary Allen 2007 Phaeton 40 QDH (with four slides!) Williamsburg VA "Life in the Bus Lane"
 
Re: Fruity, with a nice finish ~
Reply #1 –
Yahoo Message Number: 110339
Just one more example of the advantages of Two Buck Chuck over wine in a box ;o)

best, paul

"Thriving not surviving" ‹(•¿•)› - "All of us have cancer cells in our bodies. But not all of us will develop cancer." from ANTI CANCER - A NEW WAY OF LIFE, by David Servan-Schreiber, MD, PhD - See our website at www. LazyDazers.com