Rug Doctor

We’re down to our last few days in Gunnison...in this park, anyway. We’ve decided to bag our plans in Littleton as it’s just too hot there and we’re having too much fun here! So, we’re going to hang out in Gunnison for another week or two. But, we’re not going to stay here. Any additional days at our friendly park would be charged a hefty day rate, so we’ll take advantage of the weekly rate at a nice park across the highway. Besides, we’re ready for a slight change of scenery.

We had a fabulous long weekend with Paul’s sister and brother-in-law. This is the second time they’ve met up with us on our travels. They seem to like doing that and we very much enjoy their visits. We made a day trip to surprisingly magnificent Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park, and a return trip to super scenic Crested Butte. Between our adventures we managed to eat our way across tasty Gunnison. One of these days, I’ll pull together a write up of our fun on Bullwinkle’s Travels.

Of course, not all of our days here have been about fun and adventure. Some have been quite mundane. Yesterday was one of those days.

In preparation of our oh-so-short travel day later this week, Paul spent some time yesterday morning checking tires and batteries and such. While he was hanging around the moose, our neighbor explained that he was about to clean his carpets and inquired if we would like to use the rented machine after his job was done. We passed on the offer, as carpet cleaning is on our growing list of things to do during our two months in Kansas City this Fall. With our daily chores complete, we soon found ourselves twiddling our thumbs. Suddenly the idea of tackling the carpets sounded like a good idea. Why not knock out a “Kansas City to do” before we get there? Besides, with less than 200 square feet of carpet, how big could this small job be?

We probably shouldn’t admit this, but we’d yet to clean the carpet in our soon-to-be two-year-old moose. We’re fanatical with our vacuum cleaner, so the carpet looks practically as good as new. That said, we both knew it was overdue for a good cleaning.

Convinced that we could complete this job in an hour or less, we nabbed the Rug Doctor. As soon as we rolled it into our rolling home the task became more complicated. Suddenly, that little red machine didn’t look so little. Actually, it was huge! There was no way we were going to be able to maneuver that thing around most of our house without bumping into doors, walls or cabinets. We ended up doing about two-thirds of the job on our hands and knees using the upholstery tool. There were just a couple of spots where we could actually make a pass of the big red machine. After a couple of hours of crawling around and wrestling with a long hose, the carpet was clean and damp. Our table, chairs, recliner and other things that normally sit on the carpet filled nearly every inch of our tiled floor. Moving around our home was like mastering an obstacle course. The place was a wreck!

Thankfully, humidity is practically non-existent here in the high country. So, everything dried fairly quickly. It was half-past happy hour before we had nearly everything back in place and returned the machine. By the time we eased our sore bodies into bed, our rolling home was back to normal.

Today, we’re feeling better and our carpet is clean, fresh and fluffy. With one big “to do” done, we’re ready to get back to the business of having lots of fun in Gunnison.

Next time we make a date with the Rug Doctor we’ll know: Cleaning a little bit of carpet is a really big job!