I’d like to take yawl on a journey with me this morning. One like you don’t often experience.

I used to wear you out talking about my early morning trips to the hot tub with me soaking and posting. Then it stopped. There is a reason I haven’t posted from the spa lately. Because the damn thing was out of commission as of late.

So here is the whole story about the hot tub.

About 3 years ago now, me and Mrs. Lewis were up in Colorado, doing our best imitation of a couple of 2020s hobos, riding the rail from one place to the other. It was a great trip, but coming off COVID and a severe shoulder problem that I’ll blame on the Covid vaccination that I felt like I was required to have, if we were going to hold with our plans for that long awaited trip.

On our way back to Texas we stopped off in Colorado Springs at a Bed and Breakfast for a few days couple to recharge our batteries. (Not literally. We weren’t driving the family Tesla)

Anyhow this place came with a nice hot tub on the back patio area. Several times a day, I’d go out and climb up in the middle of it and I evidently thought that hot tub was doing me more good than any medicines or therapy could.

My brain kicked in while coming on back home and I decided if only I had a hot tub sitting out back that my problems with the shoulder would be seriously mitigated. In fact I became obsessed with carrying through with that plan.

By early 2022 I had my first hot tub hooked up and ready to go. Of course since I couldn’t stand to think of my grandchildren and those that created them not enjoying the fun I was having so I ordered them a swim spa that is now operating just feet from my own personal hot tub. When I say my personal hot tub, I’m not saying that it’s just for me. But being wise enough to know that I didn’t need to dip those children in this very comfortable 100° water for extended periods of time, that another unit was a complete necessity. Besides, having those children in here, splashing me constantly wasn’t in the cards either. So here comes the compromising solution. And it’s worked very well.

We were just one big, happy wet, family around here for about a year. That’s when I noticed that I was constantly adding water to this hot tub. And it wasn’t from being splashed out.

I got the hot tub people back out here to check it out, and they found that a majority of the jets had been over-tighten at the factory, causing them to crack overtime. The manufacturer of the hot tub finally admitted that they had had other issues related to manufacturing during a period of time when this tub was built. They blamed it on the Covid shut down and their people not showing up for work and having to hire untrained employees. I had no problem with understanding that. It seem like this country and maybe our whole world was in turmoil during that time.

A couple of months later, the new tub showed up and they put it into service. The new one worked fine until a few months ago. Then it started losing water faster than the one before had. I got the spa people back out here and the technician diagnosed the problem and it should be fairly easy to repair on site. Some other fitting had surely cracked.

I continued to use it by adding water to it daily. But a day or so later I looked down while sitting there one morning and noticed a long crack or slit in the shell. I looked more and there was a second slit. I called to report my findings and that’s where the fun started.

From the manufacturer: The user has damaged it. The user doesn’t have a proper foundation beneath it. It can’t be our fault because we built thousands of these hot tubs and that is the toughest and most rugged liner we have ever produced.

They went on to say that they have set these shells out in the direct sunlight on top of their manufacturing building and left them for months (or was that years), letting the Arizona sun beat down on them without doing any harm whatsoever.

I completely drained the tub and got some help over here and we jacked it up on one side and took photos and even a movie showing that it was sitting on a good level concrete foundation. I emailed that information off to them and set back and waited. a few weeks later than for me that I knew hot tub would be built to replace the bad one.

Of course, this particular model wasn’t in the production line at the time so it took a few weeks (or was that a few months) to get it produced.

Cutting to the chase now, yesterday Tub#3 showed up and I’m taking it on its maiden voyage this morning, as I write this.

So Far So Good, as the saying goes.

I was going to add a video here, but FB is making it near impossible to attach a video all of a sudden. So this still photo is the best I have to offer.