Once I started selling books, our first luxury -- which fast became a necessity -- was an outdoor spa. The legacy of the novel whose working title was Conan the Hot Tub.After a hard workout, there's nothing like a twenty-minute soak in steaming hot water. Don't even need to run the jets and bubbles.
We bought a big oval model, plunked it down in the back yard, and my son and I built a deck around it, solid sucker made from 2X6's on eighteen 4x4 posts sunk a foot and half deep each. A structure to last the ages.
After twenty years, the deck got to looking a little ratty, the kids had moved out, so we demolished the deck, passed the tub to my son, and had a smaller model installed, to go with the new French doors into the bedroom.
Save for the very hottest days of summer, I use the tub.
Yesterday, I went out in the drizzle and opened the lid ...
Either we have a water-thief, or there's a leak in the plumbing -- there was just enough water left to soak my ankles ...
Yeah, yeah, I know, it's like saying the ashtrays in the Rolls are full, Cook over did the filet mignon, and Jeeves missed a spot when he polished the good silver -- how awful for me.
But still, a man my age, I need every bit of ammo in the war against entropy ...
Been looking at hot tubs lately myself. My doctor tells me it should be a high priority for me. If you look on Craigslist, there are bunches of them "for free." Knowing that you get what you pay for, I'm avoiding those, but new ones are mighty expensive. Not sure what we're going to do.
ReplyDeleteSkip all the frills; all you need -- and mostly all we use -- is a tub full of hot water. I know a guy has one at his cabin that is wood-fired. Little harder to keep the temperature constant, but he's got it down pretty well.
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