Shaking Hands

We have the dubious honor of having a campsite that has a view of the dump station.  What's a dump station, you say?  A dump station is where an RV can dump or empty their holding tanks, gray and black.  Gray is the waste water from your sinks and shower and the black, well need I say more?

This campground on Allatoona Lake has only a few full hookup sites, most only have water and electric, that is typical of a campground right on a body of water, what with all the regulations for sewer near water.  So this dump station gets a lot of traffic.

Now folks all treat this chore a little differently, some like my late Father-in Law, with complete impunity, all the way up to folks that practically put on hazmat suits to take care of business.  Nowadays, most RV's sewer compartments operate pretty much the same way, hook up a 3" flexible hose, put the other end in the dump receptacle, open the black tank valve, let it drain, close the valve, open the gray tank valve to let the gray water wash out the hose, close the valve when empty, restow the hose and you're done. All in all, it is designed to make this easy and fairly clean.  Some like our motorhome make it just a even easier with a macerator that uses a 1" hose that never needs to be attached or unhooked as it is permanently attached, so never any leaking or dripping.  I digress.

Most folks deem to wear gloves, after all you are dealing with stuff you'd rather not deal with, right?  Well, believe it or not, many people don't including my FIL.  No big deal, right?  Yuck.  Jan and I fall into the middle on this, we sanitize the hose, sewer, even the electrical hookups with Clorox solution as we've seen some pretty nasty stuff over the years, and we always wear gloves.

The story this morning, an older couple pulls up to the dump station in a fairly new Class C, probably in their late 70's, both moving pretty slow, in fact she is a bit crippled up with a cane.  But they are not new to this game so she is out to direct him where to stop to make this chore as easy as possible, and after only two adjustments she is satisfied.  He gets out and makes his way back to the business area, opens a bay door and pulls out a plastic bag with the sewer hose in it.  So far so good, but then he reaches in with his bare hands and pulls out the hose.  He has to work to get down on his knees to get to the hose hookup on the motorhome, and when he goes to attach the hose, water, I will say water, pours out all over his hands, arms, and the hose he is trying to attach.  But he perseveres and gets it hooked up.  He then grabs a towel, wipes his hands off, always sanitary:-)  He then grabs the other end of the hose, opens up the sewer receptacle, and sticks it in.  Meanwhile she hasn't seen any of this because she took this time to throw away some trash in the dumpster nearby.  She makes her way back to see him happily dumping, and wiping his hands on the towel.  He finishes up, unhooks the hose getting more, remember I said I'll call it water all over his hands, she holds open the plastic bag, he stuffs the dripping hose in, hands her his towel so she can "clean" her hands as well.  They restow the bag, close up the compartments, he gets in his side, and she gets in her side and off they go!

The moral of the story is be careful and very, very reluctant to shake anyone's hands in a campground.