Indiana report

OK, so I didn't update from the road yesterday.

My focus on was on driving and it's a hassle to try to blog from a Treo smartphone while I'm at the wheel. Dangerous too.

It's about 10:45 a.m. on Wednesday and I'm sitting on a couch at the Crawfordsville Public Library, using their free Wifi to catch up on email and blogging.

The drive to Indiana yesterday was easy and non-eventful. Shortly after I got onto I-55 near Hayti in southeast Missouri, I noticed one convoy of electric utility trucks after another headed south toward Louisiana and New Orleans. Over the next 375 or so miles to Indianapolis, I counted 183 utility company or tree service vehicles headed in that direction. The last I saw was a convoy of 17 big orange Asplundh bucket trucks headed west on I-70 near the Indianapolis International Airport. So it's clear that people are converging on Louisiana to help with recovery from hurricane Gustav.

The cops were out in force along I-57 on the 30-mile stretch north of Cairo, Ill., so I set my cruise control on 67 (posted speed limit is 65 mph) and let the ticket-bait blow past me.

I phoned the Watson's service department for advice on how to drain a hot tub for winter and learned I needed a wet-dry ShopVac to suck the water out of the pump. We have two ShopVacs and they're both in Arkansas, so I was faced with the prospect of buying a third.

I phoned our friend Lauri a few minutes later and was lamenting the ShopVac purchase. No problem, she said. She and Jim don't have one and can use one, so just sell it to her for what I paid for it after the hot tub job is done.

Cool!

Next, I called my friend Dom in Indianapolis. While we were at the Baloughs' house in Colorado in July, Dom offered me a USB turntable he had bought with the intention of digitizing his record albums. Turns out there is some kind of electrical problem - probably unshielded wiring - that causes unacceptable noise in the signal from the turntable. So he offered it to me for the cost of shipping.

Dom had it all packed up for me when I got to his place about 4:10 p.m., so now I have even more stuff to do when I get home.

I also phoned Maria's parents and arranged to crash at their house for the night. I bought a $29.95 Ridgid wet-dry vac at a Home Depot in Indianapolis, noting that they apparently don't carry the ShopVac line.

I then drove directly to our Thorntown house where I pulled the access panel off of the hot tub, shut off the power, connected the garden hose I'd brought with me and opened the drain valve. Then it was off to dinner at my in-laws' house, some TV and bed.

The Ridgid wet-dry vac did a fabulous job of sucking the last few gallons of water from depressions in the seats and below the drain level on the hot tub. I disconnected the pipe to the pump, poked the vacuum hose into the opening and used my fingers to form something of a seal around the connection, hoping that there was enough suction to pull the water from the pump.

There was. I shut off the vacuum and opened the tank to find several gallons of water where none had been before. Voila!

It was one of those ultra-rare (in my case, anyway) situations where a job turned out to be easier than expected.

Maria and I had discussed me bringing back a wash stand and/or a bookcase, but the Subaru was already so full of stuff - air bed, turntable, waterproof bag with sleeping bag and pillow, duffel with clothes and toiletries, tools, wet-dry vac, etc., that it would have been a major hassle getting anything large aboard.

Besides, the temperature was already in the sticky humid 90s and I was sweating profusely from what little work I'd done already. So those things will have to wait for another day.

I'm meeting Lauri for lunch at noon, then I'm back on the road to Arkansas. I rather expect my stay in Indiana will amount to something a little less than 24 hours.