Another weekend has come and gone. I swear, they are going by much too fast and sending us into the time of the year when daylight is less and less, and the temperatures are dropping like a rock. Who's talking about the possible sighting of snow at the end of this week? Oh, that's somewhere in the southwestern part of New York State. Better them than us, I say. We'll get to experience those snow flakes soon enough.

This past weekend, I spend sometime putting way my 'stuff' around my camper. It's easier to do this a bit at a time, rather than all in one weekend. Always a depressing chore to do every year at this time. On the upside, a friend of mine was able to pinpoint the source of a water leak I've had in my camper over the past month or so.

This week, we hope to fix the problem before any damage can occur, courtesy of water. Trying to find the break in one of the water lines was a major chore. Thanks to an endoscope, we found the break, most likely caused by one of the mice or chipmunks that like to call my camper their second home.

And on another low point to my weekend, and please don't laugh too hard after reading this, I decided to mow one more time before closing up camp, and in the process, mulch the many leaves that have fallen over the past couple of weeks. Mistake one was deciding to mulch leaves with my riding lawn mower. Mistake two was having the mow deck too low to the ground. After a few passes around my campsites lawn, leaves bunched up underneath the mow deck, which after a certain amount of time, gets pretty hot.

Well, first came a bit of smoke, quickly followed by a shot of flames to my left. I turned off the mower as quickly as I could, hoping the flames weren't about to light up my gas line and blow my butt sky high. Luckily, I had a water hose nearby and quickly doused the flames. Or so I thought. On the other side of the engine there were flames shooting up. I was so lucky to have that water hose nearby and doused those flames as well, along with cooling down the mow deck engine and my tires. I thought for sure the tires or other parts of the riding mower had fire damage, but luckily, the only thing that was burned, were the leaves under the mow deck.

That was a close call, and I'll be sure not to repeat that stunt again. Let the leaves fall where they may and let the campground owners deal with clearing them out as they do every year. I hate leaves. Well, at least when they are on the ground. Just putting that out there.

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