Murphy dropped in to help with the water heater installation!

First, we had intermittent rain, and I didn’t want to work on an open hole in the trailer in the rain.

Then I had to replace my 20 year old drill, so I got one of the new models with the keyless chuck.  But when I started drilling new screw holes for the mounting collar, the drill bit stuck in the hole.  I couldn’t get it to go all the way in, and I couldn’t get it out when I reversed the drill.   And then I discovered I could just pull the drill off the bit, leaving it stuck in the side of the trailer.  I figured the problem was that the new drill was just a cheap piece of junk!

So I took that drill back and got another one.  While I was in the store, I noticed that some of the drill bits had hex ends instead of round ends.

Aha!  Light dawned!  My problem was that I was trying to use the round-ended bits that I used in my old drill with a chuck key.  So I bought new hex bits to go with the new drill… and hopefully things will go a little more smoothly now.

I am taking a break to work on some tatted Christmas gifts…. will try to finish the job Monday.

The weather is turning a lot colder a lot faster than I expected.  It is already freezing at night in the mountains.  So our October camping will probably be to the south.  We are thinking of an area of R. Shaeffer Heard COE that we have not tried yet.  It has a smooth grassy approach to the water instead of the steep cliffs of our previous stay there.