Time off

Our life has been remarkably unremarkable for the last couple of weeks.  We’ve been hunkered down here west of San Antonio just relaxing.  SWMBO has discovered that she is an artist.  Who’d a thunk it?  She’s been snapping pictures of everything, everywhere on the trip down and now she’s painting those pictures.  And she’s pretty good.  Her hills suck but she’s good at trees, lakes and skies, particularly sunset skies.  I’m sure the hills will improve – they couldn’t hardly get worse.

Next summer some of those eco-freek, tree-hugging, granola crunching, do-gooders who invade Cow Bay are going to go home with some art by a new local talent.  I’ve seen the glazed “gotta buy something before we leave” look in their eyes and I know just exactly how to cure that problem for them.  But she’s gotta either get the hills mastered or paint really flat landscapes – REALLY REALLY flat ones.

While we were downtown we found the River Walk and had lunch.  That was also a floor covering shopping trip.  We no longer have carpet in the back half of the bus.  Marilyn ripped all that out immediately after we arrived and she has been varnishing the walls while the floor is messed up anyway.  Eventually we need to put something back on the floor but it sure as hell won’t be more carpet.  I have never understand why RV builders think that people want carpet in a residence that is going to be used at the beach or in National Parks.  Its just so incredibly stupid.  Tile or hardwood is the only way to go.  If you want something warmer you can always throw an area rug on the hard surface but at least that way you can clean it occasionally. 

As it stands now it looks like our new floor covering will be ceramic but only once we find someone willing and competent to lay it which likely means a trip back to Nipawin.  We talked to a dealer in San Antonio but his “expert” owned a conventional motorhome so he “knew” that you can’t lay ceramic tiles in a motorhome.  And he’s right - you can’t do it in a production motorhome because they flex like a cheap ladder and would crack the tile immediately if not sooner.  I don’t think we’ll tackle laying the tile ourselves but its been done plenty of times in bus conversions so that isn’t a concern.  We’ve got our favorite tile layer, Phil-the-flooring-guy in Nipawin and he’s looking increasingly like our best bet to get the new flooring done.  In the meantime we’ll live with floorpaint over the plywood.