For the last several years, I've saved a few days in the summer to head off into the far reaches of Arizona ( yes, there are places even more remote than Flagstaff, just ask my cell phone company ), and spend some time teaching welding at summer camp. Its been a organic process, we started off with whatever I could borrow and stuff into the back of my car, but after several years of doing it, I can make my way through the classes with a minimum of fuss and damage. It also helps that a number of the campers are repeat offenders, and thus have some prior experience with my laid back style of teaching.
But no matter how smoothly things are going at camp, it seems there's always some excitement going on back at home.
I get out to camp the first day, get everything setup, and am relaxing on the bunkhouse porch before bed, when my friend tells me he has a message on his cell phone from my ex-wife. ( My cell company doesn't have any service out there.)
So I call, and the water's out. Its not raining, and the underground equipment area isn't flooded, so its not the obvious thing. My dad's there, and he's trying to figure out if there's power, but I have three levels of sub-panels cross wired into everything, and none of the breakers are labeled, so he's struggling a bit, but my memory can only go so far. I tell him to turn everything on, and then go plug something in down in the crawl space plug.
Unfortunately the first two work lights he grabs are burnt out, but I would have expected that, but he wastes time going around in a circle a little, and finally grabs my big work like, which does work, and confirms that there is indeed power down in the basement.
This is good news in that the power shouldn't have gone out, but bad news in that the pump is now the suspect, and replacing the pump could be a challenge. Give how non-linearly things have gone so far, I decide to call for backup.
The nice thing about having friends, is that you can call on them in the most desperate of times, and they'll come over and help. My life is so hectic, that I don't have very many people call on me for help that much, but I do try and do my part. Mr. Hess is retired, and his kids are all grown, so its easier to get ahold of him. He says he'll come over and take a look.
Thankfully, the next report I get, after I give the cell phone a chance to recharge, is that the pressure switch is burnt out, and so they just have to get a new one of those and things should be back in business. For some reason, that takes three hours the next day, but I'm hoping that its because they sat down in the cave yakking most of the time, not because it was a major engineering effort. The water gets restored, and the crisis is over.
I wonder what's going to happen next year.
