Leak Repair Success!

One of the pluses of being in site 244 is that we back up onto the dog run and a field where cattle graze, so we get to see some interesting animal behavior. This morning we watched a man with a dog and a ball. We've seen lots of dogs chasing balls, but this one was different. First Ken noticed that the ball was a large red one. Then we saw that the dog was moving it about using only its nose. It looked like a soccer player as it pushed the ball back to its owner. When the ball was lodged against the fence, the dog managed to toss it up and balance it on its nose, like a trained seal. This provided us with entertainment during breakfast.

After breakfast we drove over to Mission Bell where we dance to Darryl Lipscomb. This morning I danced with Jean. She'll be leaving the Valley on March 10. I'll miss her--she's been a great partner and I've been lucky to have her to dance with. She's an accomplished dancer and very sociable and nice. Our C-1 class level tip included Marty and Kit, Clint and Helen, and Bill and Marlene. We did well with lots of help from the experienced dancers.

After the dance we drove over to McAllen to see if we could get our vacuum power brush fixed. The guy who looked at it concluded that there was nothing wrong with it. He explained that it is vacuum driven, so if it wasn't spinning fast enough and working effectively, it must be a problem with the vacuum cleaner. We thanked him and went home to wash the filter and change the bag on the Dirt Devil. Although the bag had not seemed overly full, the difference was dramatic, and the whole rig got swept.

This afternoon was the test for Mark's latest efforts to stop our leak. It was with hope but trepidation that I got ready to hose the side of the slide. First I taped off the window and the slide seal area, although we did not think these areas could be involved. I turned the hose on the crucial area and let it run at fair pressure for a minute or so, and then I waited five minutes before checking to see if any water had appeared in the slide corner inside. So far, so good. I decided to wait a few more minutes and look again, then went out to spray more heavily and for longer. Successive checks inside were negative, so I removed the tape from the window area and hosed it all again. When no leak appeared, I removed the rest of the tape and really hosed the area heavily. Success! I called Mark and thanked him for his persistence and insight.

We paid two RV dealers hundreds of dollars to fix the leak with no success. Mays RV told us they had removed the screws and put sealant in the holes. Watching Mark remove the screws, it didn't appear that the screw holes had been sealed. We were surprised to see how large the gap was between the sidewall of the slide and the metal strip along the outside. Mark pumped a lot of sealant into the gap, and that may have been the key.

Ken started preparing the bike rack and other areas for painting. He spent a couple of hours sanding the rust off, but the wind was too high to spray paint. It's springtime and the sunshine is encouraging us to catch up on our maintenance tasks.

Tonight we watched our recording of the Olympic Women's Figure Skating Finals. All of the skaters were impressive, but the gold medal winner, 19-year-old Korean skater, Yu-Na Kim, was entrancing.  We are casual skating viewers, but we learned a lot about some of the finer points by watching the skating during this Olympics.  We really liked the Americans Rachael Flatt and Mirai Nagasu. Although they didn't medal, they're definitely talented and at sixteen should have more Olympic games in their futures. Both have appealing personalities too.