In praise of plumbing

So you didn't much like the quiz in my last posting? Oh, well, I'll try some bathroom humor to lighten you up. If that doesn't work, it will just go to show we have nothing in common.

No story in the paper recently gave me as much relief - figuratively in my case, no doubt literally in the case of the participants - than the one titled "Broken Toilet Is Fixed on Crowded Space Station."

Plumbing problems are always a pain. Knowing how much it costs to get a plumber on a Sunday, I was concerned about the national deficit if it came to getting a plumber to make a call in space. In the event, the Space Station commander and a flight engineer replaced some parts in the damaged loo and, Houston, they had lift off, or seat off as the case maybe.

When I crossed the Atlantic in the sloop Amerigo in 2002, one of the two heads broke mid-ocean, which terrified me as much as anything on the voyage - the big seas, tropical storms, the threat of hitting half-submerged objects. If the other head had broken, we would have been up an ocean without a paddle.

I just love plumbing. I am all for roughing it in the wilderness or visiting foreign counties so long as nice conveniences are convenient. My theory is that the older we become the more fond we are of clean and comfortable commodes. When all else has failed, that is the one thing we still have to go on.