The "Crappy" Stuff: Trailer Preparation

Allow me to set the scene. It's 10pm on a Thursday night, in the steamy back half of August, and Todd and are crouched around a hole in our work clothes with our hands using an ordinary kitchen mixing bowl (in a darling color, I might add) to shovel sewage tinted mud out of a four and a half deep foot hole in the ground. Behind us, the utility spotlight starts to tip. I grab it and use the mud in my hands to steady the base. Todd crawls into the hole. It's barely large enough to fit his body, and as he uses the hand trowel to scrape around the broken sewage pipe, he uses he side of the hole to lift his legs nearly above his head.

In the dark, I search for the grinder and plug it in.

"Okay," he says, and then the roaring of the grinder on the clay pipe drowns out the sounds of neighborhood stereo systems and our own voices. The grinder stops. We wave our arms through the cloud of dust, trying to see the progress, but in the stark illumination of the spotlight, we can't see anything but the edges of the ground. We wait. When the dust finally clears he tries again. And then again. Until the edges of the clay pipe are clean and exposed. I hand him the rubber Ferncos and the PVC we glued earlier in the evening. I hold my breath.

Almost everyone we know is downtown. They're drinking beer and watching a band we love play a free outdoor concert, but it's okay, I think because after two days of digging, two long hot summer days of shoveling just to find the sewer pipe, we're almost there. The shower is so close, I can feel it.

After a few more minutes, Todd gets the Fernco and PVC attached. While he works, I convince him not to run the line tonight. "Just cap it," I say. It's after ten at night and I've got to be up for work tomorrow. I haven't washed my hair in three days. He reluctantly agrees and begins to tighten the fittings.

I've been helping Todd dig since getting home at 4pm that afternoon. We are covered in sweat and mud and best of all, sewage. That's right. When you cut a sewage line, you get to watch as the 100 years of rear end remnants come slowly creeping out, and when you're more than four feet underground with no place for that sewage to go, it goes right where you think it does. On you.

 Finally, Todd gets the line set. I can see the excitement on his face. I'm already rinsing the tools in water hose, dreaming about a hot shower. Not a single spot on my body is clean. My white shirt turned brown long before. From across the yard Todd yells at me to try flushing the toilet.

I can hardly contain my excitement. I do instructed and then run back outside.

But what I see isn't what I expect. Todd yells and again the sound drowns out the car stereos.

It's leaking.

Flash forward to the present. It's been two weeks now since that long and literally crappy day. We showered that night in the water hose (thank goodness for privacy fences), and then by 10pm the next night, Todd had successfully run a new set of Ferncos with the PVC. By 11pm that Friday, we had the hole recovered with dirt and gravel. I mean, all's well that ends well right?

But let me back up again because what exactly were we doing trying to tie into the sewage line anyway? That hardly screams pleasure.

At the end of July, after we decided that we definitely wanted a Spartan trailer, we happened across an adorable Spartanette listed on Ebay with no reserve and a starting bid of $700. We had already checked out a Spartanette just outside of town for an incredibly cheap price, but the frame of the trailer was rusty and the size was too large to fit comfortable in our yard. The Ebay trailer we found was listed at 24 feet (it's actually a full 30), and for a 60 year old trailer, it looked pretty dang solid. We waited until the morning the auction was ending and placed our bid. We won!

But here's the tricky part. We live in the city with an average size yard surrounded by a seven foot privacy fence. Getting the trailer into our yard meant taking out part of the fence. Once we agreed on trailer placement in the yard, we realized that we would also would have to do some leveling. We wanted to put the trailer in the already establish parking spot along the fence, but we needed to take down ten more feet of yard in order for it to fit comfortably.

So while I was on a girls trip in Greece (eating Gyros, bathing in the Aegean, sailing to magical coves with crystal blue water), Todd was working his buns off leveling the yard and building a new retaining wall. Hey man, at least I agreed to let him rent the powered digger. Hehe. I'll let Todd give you the details about the excavation and wall building, and I'll spare you anymore Greece details (wine, wine, wine, cheese).

Then the last weekend in August, after we finally finished the three-day sewer line adventure, we met my parents in Missouri to pick up Wayne. (If you're wondering if my parents are still the kindest, most generous and patient people on the face of the Earth, you're answer is this: YES. Yes, they are.) For some strange reason, they continue to offer to help us, and like the greedy-needy people we are, we continue to accept. But we certainly appreciate it!

After a short visit with family friends in Springfield (thanks again, Roger and Mary!), we drove to Marshfield to visit up Wayne from, well, Wayne. I won't give you the full rundown on the gentleman from whom we bought the trailer, but I will tell you that he was absolutely fabulous. He was the sweetest, funniest man, and it was after meeting him that we officially decided to name the trailer after him. "Little Wayne," was Todd's suggestion, and I really couldn't turn down the idea of naming our 50's family camper so similarly to a notorious 00's rapper because, well, irony, people.

Next up: The journey home and Todd's perspective.