The gremlins were bountiful last night. Having clicked the ‘publish’ button, and sent yesterdays entry off into the blogosphere, we jumped into bed to watch a film. Before starting the movie, Bec implored that I read our days activities to her. As I started to read, I noticed that it sounded like it had been proof read by a monkey. I was unimpressed with my efforts and began to sulk about how I need to make sure I read over it properly in future. The updated (and hopefully literate) version can be read here: Day 32: Finding Nemo.

Then, with the intention of laying down to watch a movie foremost in our minds, our media player decided to call it quits. It didn’t matter what we did, it just wouldn’t read any of the files off of our main hard drive. In an effort to rectify it, I quickly copied our chosen movie onto a USB drive, only for the file to remain resolutely unplayable. By now, in a mood that was worsening by the minute, I plugged in our second hard drive. Mercifully, the films on that seemed to load and play without an issue. By this point in time I was beginning to think that maybe the problem was with the hard drive rather than the media player, so I copied our wanton movie to the working hard drive. My temper escalated exponentially when that hard drive then failed to boot up as well.

I was at my wits end, and anyone within a stones throw of our van, which would pretty much encompass the entire park, probably would have been well aware of it, such was my unhelpful bellowing. In a last ditch attempt to get the movies to play, after listening to some advice from Bec, courtesy of an Internet chat room, I deleted the one file that we were trying to watch. Surprise, surprise, an hour and a half after we sat down, the media player and all of the attached hard drives booted up and worked without a drama. It would seem that we had one corrupt file, which just happened to be the movie we wanted to watch. Trying to play it crashed the whole system. I’m blaming the whole fiasco on Bec, since it was her turn to choose a movie.

As late as it was by this stage, I was too hyped up to sleep, so we put a movie (a different one than originally planned) on anyway. It was well after 2:00AM by the time we finally switched the lights off, and drifted off to sleep. So much for an easy, relaxing evening.

Come morning, all I can say is, thankfully we had an easy day planned for today. Another day of remaining at the caravan park, getting some of the housework done. While Bec tidied up inside, I headed outside to have a look at the fridge wiring. I won’t get into the specifics of the latest issue that I came across, but in short, the wiring from the front of the van to the fridge is woefully inadequate to handle the current expected of it. Suffice to say, the result is a voltage at the fridge that is too low to activate my fancy new automatic switch. Thankfully I discovered this before going to the effort of wiring it in, but short of rewiring the van (which is not a job I am confident in doing whilst we’re on the road), I’m right back at square one.

So in theory, our fridge ought to work on mains power and gas, but when plugged into ‘The Beast’, it will be erratic at best. The result of this is that when we travel, it will warm up somewhat, and then need extra time to cool down when we change over the power source. Hence the reason we have been seeing elevated temperatures when pulling up after a day of driving. Secondly, with no cutoff switch between the fridge and the battery, we have to be sure not to flatten the battery. Whilst it runs off an auxiliary battery, so there is no chance of not being able to turn the ignition of ‘The Beast’ over, it can prove fatal to the battery if it is repeatedly drained of power. Not something I relish the thought of, given a new battery is in the vicinity of $500.

So with our fridge issues no closer to being solved, I turned my attention to giving ‘The Beast’ a good going over with the vacuum. There is no end to the places a dog hair can manage to weasel itself, so it’s a big job trying to hoover as much up as possible.

With our chores done, the dogs let us know that they thought it was well and truly time for them to get a bit of our attention. So we hooked them up, and went for a walk. We were going to head out through the back of the park towards the river, via a gate we’d found the other day. As we went to unlatch it, the woman sitting primly beneath the awning of the van adjacent took time out of her phone call to inform us that it was in fact a private gate. In the interest of continuing harmony within the park, I decided not to tell her what I thought about her notion that this particular gate was her very own private property. Instead, we politely apologised to have so inconvenienced her, and then used the other gate at the opposite end of the park.

Back from our stroll, and with the heavens about to open in an incessant drizzle that would ensure that it was just damp enough outside to make it miserable, we braved the fickleness of the media player, to enjoy another movie. Thankfully, the issues with the movie box seem to have been relegated to history, as it fired up first time for us.

Following the movie, I prepared a hearty dinner for us, carefully setting the table and serving up a delightful meal. As we sat down to eat, I retrieved the couple of bottles of ginger beer I had put in the freezer before the movie, in an effort to quickly chill them. It would appear that there is nothing wrong with the freezing function of the fridge, as both bottles were well and truly cold. So much so, the contents had already begun to solidify into icicles within the bottles, something I wasn’t aware of until I opened the second one with a resounding pop. The pop was quickly followed by a fizzle and a whoosh, as ginger beer spurted upward. I didn’t want to look, but I knew it was bad when a cold, sticky drizzle of ginger beer rain started to drip back down from the ceiling.

Until next time, stay safe, have fun and don’t forget to write.