Sing it to us, Willie!

o/`o/`
On the road again,
It feels so good to be on the road again!
o/`o/`

I woke up at about 7:30 this morning realizing that I had to get my miserable failure of a patch off of the hydraulic hose in case the guy needed it off.  At $85 per hour, I don't want him to spend an extra $40 taking off my OOPS.   So, I got it off, then I thought - maybe just the vinyl tubing wrapped around the holey hydraulic hose (triple alliteration there, baby) would work.  Maybe that aluminum was just so slick it acted like teflon for all that hydraulic fluid screaming "YOU FOOL" at me as it splattered off the chassis rail and onto the ground.  "Patch off, Patch on, Daniel-san!"  (We'll see how many read the blog that are old enough to catch "The Karate Kid" allusion)

Well, it WORKED.................. better?!?  The rate of spray was greatly diminished and the driver's side slide came in 1/2 inch before I told Irene to stop because we were still bleeding hydraulic fluid.  DRAT!  We'll wait I guess.

We had time for a game of Scrabble.  I wonder if Irene ever is going to get tired of getting thumped?  Then at 9:30 she asks "Should we call coach-net to make sure he's still going to come?"  "No, dear,  he's supposed to be here between 10 and 11, so I'll wait until 11 to call to see what's up."

9:56 - Just finishing the "Mauling in Midland" Scrabble game and Billy calls to get directions to the RV campground and by 10:20 he is there.  It only took about 15 minutes to assess where the torn hose tied into the hydraulic pump at.  Then another 10 minutes for him to crawl under the rig and cut the Tie-Wrap holding it in position to the top of the chassis rails.  Another 5 minutes to pull the hose from the far side AFTER he tied a piece of safety wire to it to use to pull the NEW hose BACK over the chassis rails.  So in 1/2 hour we had the old, torn hose out (I get to use the plural "WE" here because I"M the one PAYING for this)

Then he's off to get a new hose made that will be about 2 feet longer so it can be tied off away from the slide control arm so this won't happen again.  40 minutes later he is back with a pretty, new hose.  It only took about 20 minutes to install and it was time for the test - would it work, or just keep laughing at us.  We tried to bring in the driver's side slide:  It just whined for about 5 (OH, NO!!) seconds and then started to come in.  It had to clear the air out of the line first is why it was delayed.  YEP!  YIPPEE~  We buttoned up the rig for travel including bringing up the jacks (which use the same hydraulic reservoir).  Once all the slides were in and jacks up the reservoir could be properly filled.  Then we needed to put some more hydraulic fluid into the reservoir to replace what now lay soaking into the pea gravel under our rig.  To finish up it took another 15 minutes to get the false panel that covers the ride height adjustment pistons over and VIOLA! DUN!

While he wrote up our invoice hooked up our Ford Flex toad and then we hit the road.  It was 12:25.  We are now barreling across West Texas having just gone through Abilene.  Irene started driving just after that giving me the chance to write this blog posting since we knew that you were all on the edge of your seats waiting to read if we got out of Midland today.  Lord willing, tonight we will make it to Marshall and I can take my honey out for Valentines day dinner at A&W or Dairy Queen or some other Texas based haute cuisine.