So maybe Robert Falcon Scott and Richard E. Byrd (author of Alone) wouldn't be too impressed with the "cold" that we've been having here in the highlands of southern New Mexico -- after all, it's only a Dry Cold. But then again, so was theirs.
Last night I got overconfident and slept without wearing my winter parka. Big mistake. When I jumped out of bed this morning I wondered first if the water had frozen inside the RV. In my rig, freezing the plumbing is not destructive since the plumbing runs off of the water pump and inside reservoir, which makes for plenty of air spaces in the plumbing. It hadn't frozen, but the water pump hesitated like the starter motor in a car, after a cold winter night.
Last night I got overconfident and slept without wearing my winter parka. Big mistake. When I jumped out of bed this morning I wondered first if the water had frozen inside the RV. In my rig, freezing the plumbing is not destructive since the plumbing runs off of the water pump and inside reservoir, which makes for plenty of air spaces in the plumbing. It hadn't frozen, but the water pump hesitated like the starter motor in a car, after a cold winter night.
Since I was getting suspicious of a "hard freeze" inside the RV, I had implemented standard winter survival techniques, such as filling a pan of water the night before. In the morning, if you do discover a freeze, you can still get breakfast going. What a difference it makes when that first bit of hot food or beverage starts to warm you from the inside.
The next bullet to dodge was the laptop computer. It won't fire up when the temperature gets too close to freezing. Gee, do I need to change the anti-freeze? It did fire up this morning, but just barely. The computer screen backlit my condensed breath as I typed.
The reader might be asking: why not just spend $100 per month on heat, for three or four months per year? How unsporting of the reader! As a child our house was kept at 72 F every day of the year by parents who normally wasted nothing. But worse than the money was the monotony and sterility of it all. And even worse was the fanatical indoorsy mindset that it implied. Perhaps it is that very fanaticism that caused me, as an adult, to rebel against the standard housie lifestyle.
I like to stand somewhat aside from my own skin and watch my mind focusing on one primal threat to survival. There is a dramatic intensity to it, just as there is when bicycling up a killer hill. The endless clutter of the outside world fades into insignificance. The Cold cleans the mind just as it cleans everything else in the natural world.
If nothing else, playing with this type of adventure is a break from the standard RV stereotype of seeking "adventure" by sucking gasoline down every mile of paved highway in North America, or fighting for the laundry cart with an old biddie in Yuma.
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