Shopping day

You know the old adage - when the going gets tough, the tough go shopping? Well, today I went shopping. First stop was Tractor Supply where I bought chicken feed and marveled at the high prices of their plumbing supplies.

The next stop was Lowes (hiss, spit) where I marveled at the dreadful grammar and presentation on the signs in their car park.

How much effort would it really have taken to make that sign grammatically correct? How much effort was put into ensuring that it doesn’t make them a laughing stock? We will never know because it was probably somebody passing through what is laughingly called an education system at their base in North Carolina. Perhaps they were pre-emptively smoking weed in anticipation of weed being legalized in all 50 states?

Anyway, shopping took most of the daylight out of the day and I ended up working in the dark. What I did was to buy some plumbing bits to make my water inlet work. I already had a brass pressure reducer from Walmart (of all places). My problem had been a lack of a way of converting the 1/2 inch water pipe to a 3/4 hosepipe fitting. That took no fewer than 3 adaptors! Lowes (hiss, spit) has a lot of plumbing supplies but it always seems to be a case of getting several things to achieve what one piece should do (but never seems to be available).

This time, since I’m using the piping for pressurized water, I’ve primed my tubing before gluing. I had to get a 3/4 threaded to 3/4 slip adaptor then a 3/4 slip to 1/2 slip adaptor. That meant that I had also to get a length of 3/4 piping of which I have used about 3 inches.

I drilled a hole through the floor under the handbasin, close to the wall so that I can secure my piping to the wall. I’ve scraped my paint finish a little, unfortunately. I’ll fix that later though. I had to measure carefully before drilling the hole in order to avoid the underbody ribs. I’ll put my tubing in another day.

While I was out I bought some rope, drawer handles and some cleats. Those are the cheapest way of putting rope tie-downs in the back of the bus. I have boxes of stuff in the back of the bus - mostly clothing I’ve not worn in years. One day I’ll have to go through it all and see if any of the clothes fit any more. For the moment I’ll tie them down because over the next week or so my bus has a mission. I need to go and get some sheets of plywood to fix the floor in a trailer on the land here. I can’t fit them in the back of my car and I’m very wary of using the roof rack. The back door of the bus being usable and the aisle being usable, I can fit several sheets in through the back door and stand them on their sides.