It's late January, and the temperature here in Brandywine peaked out close to 70 degrees on Saturday. That said, we took advantage of the warm weather to drain, clean, and refill our hot tub. The kids had a blast getting into the tub as it was draining - my oldest son took it upon himself to help the tub drain by bailing water out of the tub. Here's a picture of his efforts - we told him that his efforts weren't amounting to much, but he needed the photographic evidence to believe, hence the pictures. I wish I could have said that I had the same amount of fun as the kids. After the water in the tub approaches a certain level, the siphon effect is lost and it becomes necessary to either bail the water out by hand, or to use a suction device to take the water out. In this case, I used a pitcher to bail water out of the tub, which worked just fine. Mid-way through bailing, I had this crazy idea that I should throw the water over the deck railing to prevent the water from getting onto the deck. As I stepped up to one of the seats in the hot tub, my foot slipped, and started a chain reaction of disastrous consequences. I tried to brake my fall by grabbing onto the sides of the tub, but my hands slipped also and as I was doing my reverse belly flop to the bottom of the tub, my head hit one of the seats, very hard. So there I was, sitting in a puddle of lukewarm water at the bottom of the tub, more embarrassed than hurt, and I couldn't help but think "boy, that was stupid". What was I thinking, trying to prevent water from getting on the deck? As luck would have it, shortly after it started to rain, so my efforts to keep the deck dry were futile anyway, but at least the deck didn't get as wet from hot tub water. Bottom line, don't try this at home.
