Dump Driving

One of the things I love most about my husband is the treasury of poop stories he has shared with me. He's too shameful to report his own poop, though; so I must be his raconteur.

My husband, The Metatherapist [1], is a fashion photographer. A few years ago, he was working on a shoot in Los Angeles. He was in charge of the big RV they rented to transport the models, hairstylists, makeup artists, and others to the shoot location. Beyond transportation, the RV also served as the on-site dressing room, beauty salon, snacking spot, and, most importantly for everyone on the shoot, the restroom.

My husband is a veteran RV commander. Here's his breakdown of the essentials regarding RVs and poop:

An RV has two waste tanks. One is for "gray water," which means water that's come from the sinks and the shower. The other tank is for "black water" -- the "proceeds" of the toilet use.
If you've ever used a toilet on a bus or train, you've seen that blue liquid slopping around. The same stuff is used in RVs, along with special toilet paper that's supposed to break down in the blue chemical soup.
A good RV captain frequently presses the button on the dashboard that illuminates a gauge displaying the levels in the gray and black water tanks. That's the primary way to tell if you need to dump the tanks. The other way to tell is when the stink from the black water tank infiltrates the RV; then everyone on board will alert you.
When the RV is parked and the poop tank is full, it will just stink. But when the RV is speeding along the road, hitting bumps and potholes and shaking up the brew in the tank, the stench can be intensified to retch levels.
The tanks are emptied at a dumping station. On this shoot, for instance, a nearby gas station served as the spot. First, a hose drains the black water tank into the dumpsite, which is akin to a sewer. If some un-dissolved poopy toilet paper clings to the hose, it will have to be picked off by hand -- rubber gloved, of course. Then, the gray water tank is drained. This cleans the black water out of the hose and may flush any remaining cling-on TP. The disposable rubber gloves are carefully removed by pulling up on the palms, and then rolling them off the hands, inside out.

And now, back to our story.

One day, the shoot went especially long. Both the gauge and the odor in the RV screamed that the RV needed to take (or leave) a dump. But my husband was exhausted. He decided to hit the hay, and dispose of the swill in the tank the next morning.

Well, he overslept -- if you can call 4:00 AM oversleeping. (Fashion shoots are not as glamorous as people think. They tend to start early.) The crew was waiting for him to pick them up and drive them to the location. On fashion shoots, time is money -- lots of money, if you're paying a top model for her time. So there was not a second to waste at the dumping station.

What to do? What to do?

My husband crawled under the RV, opened the valve of the poop tank, and sprung out just in time to avoid the impending deluge. He dove into the driver's seat and took off down the freeway.

The RV sprayed a long brown line for miles, spotted with clumps of un-dissolved toilet paper, and rivulets of blue goo. He chortled as he watched it in the rear view mirror. And he made great time. His lateness didn't interfere with the shoot after all.

Good thing there were no highway patrolmen around that night, because dumping like this is illegal. The crime was perpetrated in the wee hours before dawn, so he had the cover of darkness on his side, too. But in our post-9/11 world, besides illegal dumping, this could result in arrest for terrorism. Don't try this at ho-- err, in your mobile home!

-- Crapola [2]