The Events of Saturday, December 11, 2010

          I MISS MY WASHER AND DRYER‼ Sorry to complain, but sometimes it’s the little things on this trip that get to me. Today was to be a clean-up day. For the past nine days we have been on the go, every day, all day, to visit Washington, D.C. We have had a great time. But as several of us put on our last clean pair of underwear this morning, we knew the time had come to stay home and get some cleaning done. Last week, during a subway ride home, Caitlin and I brainstormed all that we could think of that needed to be cleaned, fixed, organized and generally put back in place in the RV in preparation for being on the road again. Also, no one had blogged for the entire week, so the plan was to keep the computer busy all day long. However, first on the list was laundry and we estimated it would take nine loads to clean what needed to be cleaned. Woefully, we were seriously mistaken.

          We slept in a bit today, given that we didn’t have a shuttle to catch. Waking when our bodies dictated had us all feeling well rested. Jim and Abby fixed up a yummy breakfast of scrambled eggs and bacon, which we enjoyed in our P.J.s. Then the cleaning of the RV and the people in it commenced. We sent a pair off to the showers and the others started in on the cleaning. When the showered pair returned, two more were sent off. However, Ben and Lindsey came back complaining of cold water, so I delayed my shower until almost 11, in hopes of a warm shower, as it was 35° out. By the time I finished with my shower, the RV was mostly clean. So it was time to start laundry.

          The campground has two bathhouses with laundry facilities attached. Each laundry facility has three washers and three dryers. So we hauled three loads over to the nearest laundry room, filled the machines, put in the quarters and pressed the start button. Nothing. Well almost nothing. The wash time said 25 minutes and the water was just dripping into the tub. Outside I found a maintenance worker for the camp. Yup, he says. Those machines are slow to fill and they only fill about half or two-thirds of the way. You should use the machines in the blue bathhouse. NOW he tells us. Well, since we had nine loads, we took the next three over to the other machines. These did fill much more rapidly, but we were to find out later, that they didn’t spin the clothes very dry. We returned to the RV to find the boys hard at work vacuuming, sweeping and washing the floors. So we busied ourselves outside in the cool weather to refill bottles, move stuff around in boxes to make things like soap more accessible, etc.

          Soon it was time to check on the laundry. Well, the maintenance man was correct. The top third of each load was still essentially dry and undisturbed, so we had to rewash those clothes. Three more loads to be washed. Meanwhile we started the rest of the clothes in the dryers and then moved over to the other laundry room to do more of the same. There we were surprised to find our shuttle driver Nick using one of the dryers. Seems vandals had broken into the laundry facilities by his permanent trailer site and busted all the machines to get out the change. We filled the remaining dryers, and added quarters only to find that the bottom machines didn’t work and it looked like Lindsey had added time to Nick’s upper dryer instead. Ever the gentleman, Nick offered to reimburse us, but since his jeans were due to be dry in 15 minutes, and there was now 45 minutes of time on the machine, we planned to move our laundry to his machine once his load was dry. After filling the washing machines with three new loads, I set off on a mission to the office to let them know of the problem with the dryers. On the way, I met another worker for the campground who explained you had to hold the button down for the machine you wanted while you put your quarters into the single quarter slot. I mentioned that a sign to that effect would have been mighty helpful‼ She reimbursed me $1.25 of the $1.50 we lost and I returned. By now it was way past lunchtime.

          I swung by the RV and told Jim and the kids to go ahead and eat without me. Then I persuaded Caitlin to eat her lunch in one of the warm laundry rooms to monitor our machines and give our hanging clothes a warm place to dry. I set off for the other laundry room to do the same, only without my lunch. Now this morning we had discovered we had a bit of a dilemma – we were low on quarters. The office had said we could get quarters from them but were only able to convert $20. In the process of shifting our clothes to the dryers, I found that the fast filling set of washers were poor spinners and the clothes were still pretty wet when I put them in the dryer. Nick, our kind shuttle bus driver, then let me know that the dryers weren’t very good and often required two cycles. Well I barely had quarters for one cycle, so he kindly converted $5 cash into more quarters for me. When Abby finished her lunch, she came with her book to “sit” with the drying laundry while I went to eat lunch. The boys completed fixing some minor repairs in and around the RV and all too soon it was time to bring the laundry back to the RV. We were going to have a family folding party, “many hands make light work” sort of stuff.

          Big problem. Very little of the laundry was completely dry. We raided the kids’ piggy banks and turned up a few more quarters and dried things a little longer, but without much success. Soon Ben and Jim were stringing clothesline in 40° weather on a cool, moist, overcast day. Load after load went up on the line and when that was full, laundry was strewn about the RV. By now it was time to start preparing dinner. When we are camped, I like to prepare several dinners, so that, when we boondock, I can just heat things up. Ben prepared ten cups of rice in our rice cooker to be cooked outside so as to not add MORE humidity to our drying laundry. I prepared three chicken dinners and Lindsey and Abby made a batch of brownies. Now all this preparation was waiting for a small oven with one shelf. So I started cooking the first dinner at 3:30. The second and third, in smaller casserole pans, went in at 4:30 and the brownies went in at 5:30.

                By the time all the food preparation was done, it was beginning to get dark and cold. Time to bring in the laundry, which, not surprisingly, was still wet. Jim rigged a zigzagging clothesline over our  bed in the back of the RV. Soon the RV was filled with hanging clothes. We kept turning up the heater to dry the clothes, but then it would get too hot and too humid, so we switched to the A/C to keep the air moving with less humidity. We ate dinner around 6 pm, and at around 6:30 the brownies were done. Caitlin returned to blogging while Lindsey washed dishes, Ben swept, and Abby prepared for bed. Soon the brownies were cool enough to eat, and they were a welcome break to a busy day. Then, as the rest of the gang prepared for bed, we erected another clothes line over the kids’ sleeping spaces. So we slept, under a canopy of drying clothes, tired from a day of hard work, but pleased that tomorrow we would be all clean and ready to be on our way.