In my last post, I showed the catch basin I made to contain any fluid that might leak from the HWH hydraulic synch cylinder. No fluid has leaked since I had a drop of fluid last weekend. I’m thinking now that the drop of fluid I saw running down the threads on the U-bolt holding the synch cylinder may have been residual oil from the original leak. Perhaps a small amount of fluid remained on the horizontal steel mounting tab for the cylinder. When I fiddled around with the jacks, this residual fluid may have run off the tab and down the U-bolt threads.

On Wednesday, my lifelong friend Jim Birditt rang me up. He was headed to the Wild Horse Pass Casino (map). He’s a truck driver hauling household goods for North American Van Lines. He planned to stop overnight and park his Peterbilt truck in the casino truck/RV lot. I rode the Spyder there in the afternoon to meet up with him. We had a cold one and caught up a bit. I’ve known Jim since I was in the 8th grade. We spent a lot of time hunting together in the 90s.

We talked about the mysterious hydraulic oil leak. We came up with a theory. The synch cylinder has two pistons inside that move when fluid pressure is applied to one side or the other. There’s a shaft that moves with the pistons. This shaft extends out of one end of the cylinder. The shaft has a seal. Maybe at some point, after we set up here at Towerpoint RV Resort, the shaft seal leaked some fluid. Maybe the seal rolled or something was caught in the seal allowing fluid to seep past. If some foreign matter was in the seal, it may have washed out with the leaking fluid and the seal re-seated itself. It’s just a theory, but I can’t come up with any other explanation for why the cylinder would leak fluid one day, then stop leaking. The hydraulic system works fine, I’ve moved the living room slide to apply pressure in the cylinder and there’s no leakage now. I’ll keep the catch basin in place for a while just in case it leaks again.

Jim was planning to head to Tucumcari, New Mexico the next morning. I showed him an alternate route. He’s been driving trucks all his adult life and knows just about every route in the country. But he never went up the Beeline Highway (AZ87) through Payson, Arizona to get to I-40 east. He usually goes up I-17 to I-40. He tried my suggestion on Thursday morning and phoned me later to tell me the route worked out great. He picked up I-40 at Holbrook.

On Thursday evening, Donna and I prepared a whole chicken. I used my favorite chicken rub – Lambert’s Sweet Rub O’Mine – and cooked it on the Traeger wood pellet fired grill.

Traeger wood pellet fired grill

I cooked the chicken for about 80 minutes and used a quick reading meat thermometer to check for proper internal temperature. I shoot for about 170 degrees in the breast and over 180 in the thigh. Cooked on the Traeger, the chicken remains moist while fully cooked at these temperatures.

Whole roasted chicken with Sweet Rub O’Mine

Donna served it with steamed broccoli and wild rice cranberry salad. A delicious meal!

Roasted chicken quarter with broccoli and wild rice cranberry salad

On Friday morning, we played pickleball. The courts aren’t filled with players and people waiting for games anymore. Things have really thinned out here as most of the snowbirds have headed for home.

We went to Tia Rosa’s Tacqueria to meet up with David and Karin Von Kay for lunch. We first met David and Karin in Des Moines, Iowa last year. They were in the site next to us at the fairgrounds where David was showing his 1966 Chevelle in the Good Guys car show. Donna and Karin have stayed in touch and frequently trade recipes. It’s so much fun to meet new people on the road and hook up again at another place later.

Things are winding down for us here at Towerpoint. Our initial two-month stay officially ended Friday. I settled up our electric bill, then extended our stay another six nights – we’ll leave Mesa on Thursday the 21st. I have a few things to get done before we go. At first we thought we’d stay an extra five days and leave on Wednesday. I have the initiation to the Elks on Tuesday night, so I thought an extra day would be good.

On Friday evening, Towerpoint had their final end-of-season party. Free beer, chips and salsa and pretzels. Hard to beat free. Donna and I wandered around the pool area where the party was in progress and visited with a few people we know from the pickleball courts. We were happy to see Howard and Nancy there – they’re the friends that had a horrible traffic accident with their motorhome resulting in severe injuries to Howard and his mother-in-law. Howard’s a trouper and seemed to be doing better than expected. They plan to stay here for a few months while Howard and Nancy’s mom recuperate.

The party included live music – something Donna and I always enjoy. The band was good in spite of the fact they used a synthetic drum track – I always prefer a full group of musicians – even drummers.

Good music – we love live bands

Donna brought a hoop and did some hoop dancing. The band really appreciated her efforts as it encouraged dancing and attention to the music.

Donna hoop dancing

Oh yeah

It was extremely windy making the hooping difficult for her – but it was impressive nonetheless.

From here our plan is to head up to Cottonwood for four nights. This will give us a chance to make day trips to Jerome and Sedona – plus I can catch the Moto GP race a week from Sunday. We’re not sure where we’re going from there.

*Just so you know, if you follow one of my links to Amazon and decide to make a purchase, you pay the same price as usual and I’ll earn a few pennies for the referral. It’ll go into the beer fund. Thanks!